Teaching Math from a Constructivist viewpoint

That is one of the classes I'm taking this semester, and it's a doozy. It's required because my certification will allow me to teach as a regular Primary teacher as well as an English teacher. Anyway, the class is 7 credits (the normal amount for a semester-long course is 4.5) and it is a huge amount of work. For one thing, outside of the class syllabus, we also have to master (be able to do and explain) everything in the Primary math curriculum, and while obviously it's not as complicated as higher level math, it has also been a loooong time since I've had to do any of this. Long division is a distant memory (and here they do it differently than I was taught...) and a whole bunch of other stuff will require a lot of brushing up on.

And of course, math from a Constructivist standpoint is a lot more complicated, because not only do you have to be able to do the stuff, you have to have a much deeper level of understanding as to how and why things are done the way they are done. Still, it is interesting. I was working with Pedro this morning on operations with "decenas y unidades" (basically, tens place and ones place) and we were using Legos to do it, which was fun.

Anyway, I will finish student teaching very soon, so hopefully then I will be able to dedicate more time to the numerous assignments of my classes this semester, and to Dani as he is becoming more and more mobile!