Calculator Case Study

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6. How would you convince a fellow teacher that using calculators could be helpful when learning mathematics? As stated by the text, many teachers do not see the importance or value of using calculators in the classroom. Many teachers feel that students’ understanding of basic mathematical skills would suffer with the use of calculators, and personally I have shared these similar feelings about the use of calculators. But the textbook gives several positive rationales for the use of calculators in the classroom. I would use explain these rationales and research to my co-worker who may be hesitate to use calculators in the classroom. One rationale stated in the textbook is that research has proven that the use of calculators does not interfere …show more content…

What factors affect successful problem solving, and what problem-solving strategy might be effective to help students become better math problem solvers? Students with learning disabilities often struggle with problem solving. Many special needs students have difficulty with reading, and thus cannot understand the traditional word problem. Students with learning disabilities often have difficulty the logical reasoning as well. “It is also common that their mathematics education has focused primarily on operations and not on understanding the reasons for operations or even a thorough understanding of the numbers that are involved in operations”, (Sharon Vaughn, 2015, p. 387). The textbook gives several suggestions on effective problem-solving strategies, such as teaching the “big idea”. This means teaching students the big idea or principle, thus aiding the students in applying these big ideas or principles to subordinate concepts. One way that I try to teach the “big idea” in my classroom is to provide real-life examples for students to problem solve. Another teacher strategy that aids in students understand of problem solving is sameness analysis. “The idea is to connect math concepts so that students see the ways in which aspects of mathematical problem solving are the same”, (Sharon Vaughn, 2015, p. 387). Sameness analysis, is one of the strategies that I used often when I taught fourth grade. I always felt that students gained a better understanding word problems, when they could identify the type of word problem they were trying to

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