Private Universe Project-Workshop 4:Workshop 4. Thinking Like a Mathematician

This video was really interesting to me for many reasons. It started off with a teacher introducing the Towers of Hanoi. It proved that you can teach children to learn to problem solve on their own by just giving them the opportunity to explore. I really enjoyed watching them figure out the patterns and how many years it would take to move a hundred disks. This allowed the students to gradually work up to the skill the teacher wants them to succeed at. Part II of the video was a high school math teacher. This teacher’s goal was to teach the students how to think independently. It reminded me of when I was in elementary school and my math teacher would just sit and do problems over and over. After reviewing the concept she would make us go up to the board and each student was required to do a problem on. If we get this problem wrong she would yell and embarrass us in front of our peers. Students would be afraid to be called up to the board. Instead of encouraging us to think on our own her focus was to teach to the books. If this student gave us the opportunity to think on our own like the teacher in the video we would have felt confident to go to the board. I really appreciated the fact that this teacher had an environment conducive to learning from one another.