AMSTI Preservice Training - Mathematics

I completed AMSTI year 1 math preservice training for the 3rd grade the week of January 23rd through the 27th, 2017, with Mrs. Amber Trantham. We began the week by dissecting the math standards and the process skills. Mrs. Trantham also discussed how and when we would be using the standards and process skills throughout our training. She set a standard very early in training that we would be in charge of our learning during training; we were responsible for what we included in our notebooks and where our discussions would lead. This was an excellent example of how to create a constructivist environment in a classroom and was very beneficial to us as students in that we were able to connect the information to our own prior knowledge and experiences. 
We did many hands-on activities during the week. I have not previously experienced math in a way like this and it was very eye-opening for me to see just how interactive math education can be. Mrs. Trantham let us use any manipulatives from her AMSTI kit that we thought would help us understand the content and the learning became very personal. This personalization continued in our math notebooks in that we were encouraged to document our learning in ways that would help us think of or remember the content but also in ways that could be easily communicated with others. I found it very beneficial to be on the student side of notebooking in that I gained a better understanding of how important the freedom is in differentiating instruction for students. I can easily look back in my math notebook from AMSTI and recall almost everything that was discussed throughout the week because the notes are my own. I am very eager to implement notebooks in my own future classroom because I think they are ideal for differentiation as well as formative assessment in that they almost eliminate the chance of assessment bias that unfortunately comes with teacher-made or pre-made assessments such as those found in textbooks. 
Another major learning I have from the AMSTI training is just how many trade books can be related to mathematics. Mrs. Trantham gave us several examples of books that not only related to the math content but also to the process skills and values that we should be modeling and teaching our students, such as perseverance and curiosity. She stressed that stories help students relate to concepts and likewise allow our students to see others who may struggle in similar ways to them. This helps to build classroom community and makes our students aware of the relationship between math and the rest of the world. Mrs. Trantham described math as, “the discovery of relationships,” and I do not think those relationships should be limited to what we find in the standards. Relationships are an essential part of life and if we as teachers can explain and model to our students the importance of relationships we are helping to build not just their math competence but also their life skills. 

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