Teachers & Math

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   1) The human knot activity was the activity that peaked my interest most. I have done this activity before and it is loads of fun, but is also a great team builder/strategy building activity. This is an activity we could do to start the event off, to help everyone get comfortable with each other, and loosen everyone up, before diving in to knot theory. I still believe that hands on activities will be best to keep teachers engaged and will help keep things related to them and their students. 
   2)On the MTBoS blog, I found a post written by an elementary school teacher, who was writing about a post she saw regarding complex fractions. The post she was referring to, was a post about complex fractions in higher level math. She was trying to connect complex fractions at the higher level to division in 3rd grade and 5th grade. She had lots of great questions throughout her post like, "How does the way we represent fraction division relate to one or both of these ways to think about fractions?". I really enjoyed reading this post, because I would never expect an elementary teacher to even think about complex fractions. When I think about the mathematics taught at the elementary level, I think about foundational concepts and basic problem solving skills, when really the ideas children are exposed to are in direct correlation to what they will see in high level math, they just don't know it yet. 
   
   When thinking about in-service for teachers, I think it is important for teachers have the ability to ask questions and reflect. Having a question area or a "parking lot" for teachers to write down their thoughts or questions throughout a workshop, I think will not only benefit the educators, but also help drive the workshop in various directions. Teachers are always thinking about how to introduce their students to topics in various ways in order to meet the needs of all students, so being able to work together to answer each other's questions I think is very important. Reflection is also a huge piece of educating as well. The author of the blog post mentioned that when she first looked at the complex fraction post by another educator, she thought it would be way too complicated to even look at, "I have to admit, when I saw her Twitter post with the words pre-calculus and simplifying complex fractions, my inclination was to skim right by because I would not understand the post anyway." This is something that we as educators have to help encourage ourselves to do just as we do with our students. Reach out of our comfort zone. Talk to educators of all age levels. Reflect. Reflect. Reflect. 
   
   https://kgmathminds.com/2017/11/26/fraction-division-and-complex-fractions/