Are you a good math teacher?

Here is a list I found in  a research paper about good teaching practices, and I think most of us teachers will agree on these.

A good teacher

  • raises questions that give for all students to contribute an answer;
  • makes students think;
  • provides problems/questions that may have many different ways of solving and/or may have many different correct answers;
  • uses real-life situations whenever possible and relevant;
  • develops mathematics concepts, ideas, and skills based on problems;
  • builds on students’ previous knowledge and experiences;
  • requires students to argue clearly and convincingly about the correctness of their answers; and
  • makes available follow up tasks to reinforce what students have learned.

For Fun

If you’re a math teacher, give yourself one point if you do the item on the list and zero for not doing it.  The perfect score should be 8/8.

What’s your score?

The  above list was the output of the APEC Conference on Innovations in Teaching and Learning Mathematics in Tokyo, Japan on January 15-20, 2006

Leave a Reply