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