Blog Post #5 - Week 9

Hi everyone!! Thank you so much for returning to my math blog once again this week!! I learned lots of math in these past two weeks through our textbook and our lectures! I am very excited to share what I have learned while adding my own thoughts and opinions to them as well! So, let’s get started!

I am really intrigued by the van Hiele taxonomy of geometric thinking that we read about and then had a good discussion about in class. The van Hiele taxonomy breaks geometric thinking into 5 distinct levels: Level 0: Visualization, Level 1: Analysis, Level 2: Informal Deduction, Level 3: Deduction, and Level 4: Rigour. Click here for a brief article that provides even more detail about the van Hiele levels to deepen your understanding! These levels interest me quite a lot because they provide a framework from which a teacher can work. By identifying what level of the van Hiele taxonomy a student is in, a teacher then has a reference to determine what that student knows and what thinking rationale they use; without the taxonomy, a teacher would be forced to guess their students’ level of thinking for each geometric subsection. As a teacher candidate, I am glad that I have learned about this taxonomy because I believe it will be of great use when I am teaching because it will make it so much easier for me to identify the level of my students so that I can better serve them. It is important for educators to remember that a student’s spatial experiences, not age, determine their position in the taxonomy which reinforces our importance as teachers to guide them through the levels to be where they need to be. I also had some fun thinking back to when I was a student and what levels of the taxonomy I would have been at when I was a student. I wonder now that I have not been in intensive math courses for a few years if I have lost some of my touch and would now only be at level 3 😊!

Vojkuvkova. van Hiele Level 0. Proceedings of Contributed Papers. Accessed November 9, 2019. https://www.mff.cuni.cz/veda/konference/wds/proc/pdf12/WDS12_112_m8_Vojkuvkova.pdf

Vojkuvkova. van Hiele Level 2. Proceedings of Contributed Papers. Accessed November 9, 2019. https://www.mff.cuni.cz/veda/konference/wds/proc/pdf12/WDS12_112_m8_Vojkuvkova.pdf

Over the last two weeks in class, we have begun discussing lesson planning in math and how it should look. I am looking forward to working through and completing our lesson plan assignment because I feel like it is the next step that I need to take in order to become an effective math teacher. I think it is crucially important for a math teacher to practice and implement universal design. This way all the learners in a class’ needs can be addressed and everyone can be on the same path of learning. The needs for every math problem and lesson that we discussed align very well with the universal framework. We discussed how a lesson needs variable entry points for learners of all abilities, a low floor and high ceiling so it meets students where they are and offers room for growth, and a lesson much be engaging for all students. I am excited to implement each of these into my own lesson plans!

Margaret Flood. Universal Design for Learning. wtc.ie. Accessed November 9, 2019. https://www.wtc.ie/cpd-courses/post-primary-courses/1109-post-primary-universal-design-for-learning-udl.html

Thanks for reading! See you next week!