Am I Smarter than a 5th Grader?

Over the course of today I have been looking at possible math lesson plans for my group to teach. I have been also thinking about what tomorrow, my first day of clinical placement in first grade, will be like. Last week Friday we talked about the state standards for math, and this discussion made me very nervous. I am very nervous and anxious for the time that I will be teaching math in my clinical placement as well as in my future student teaching, and teaching positions. I am extremely nervous because I am not sure I know math content all that well. I am not confident in my abilities to teach math well. After reviewing the standards it scares me to think how smart my students will be, and many of things they will be studying I have no memory of learning and if I did learn, I am not sure I could explain why the math works. Math is something that I have always struggled with. I have taken the math courses at UW-O, and learned and explained how the math worked, but I am not positive I could explain what I learned to someone else. My math skills have improved greatly overtime. My skills have improved the most by tutoring students in the classrooms I have been in. In fact, a few months ago I took the Praxis II and did the entire math section by hand (because I forgot my calculator!) and still passed. A few years ago I can almost say for certain that I would not have been able to pass that test by only using hand calculations. What makes me most nervous is when students will be asked to explore why something works the way it does it math. This portion of math makes me the most nervous, because what if while the students are exploring they discover something that I am not aware of that is correct, or vice versa that it is incorrect. I know that I need to continue to increase my knowledge in mathematics and through more knowledge I will gain more confidence to teach math.

One way I think I could improve my math skills and become more familiar with what students know is to use the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics website. The website contains great resources and even sample problems that students will see.

National Council of Teachers of Mathematics