As a teacher there are so many concepts you teach to students that become part of your instant-recall information bank. A lot of these are not concepts that most adults use in their daily lives. For example, fractions. We all use them when we shop to calculate 1/3-off sales and when we share anything from pie to cookies. But we rarely think about the reasoning behind fractions and why they are the way they are. Apparently most adults don't use the terms numerator and denominator in their daily conversations.
When working on planning math lessons this week, I was surprised the LK didn't remember the terms numerator and denominator, and why they work the way they do. Then I realized that musicians don't often use the why, they just read time signatures.
It is becoming apparent to me how much trivia is collected in the head of a teacher after a few years. Facts on the habitats of hundreds of animals, math addition, subtraction, multiplication, division facts, how to make four kinds of graphs by hand, a plethora of ways to figure out a word you don't know when reading, and so on. And that is just the 'content' related trivia. Then there are the social skills, and the problem solving strategies, and the 'teacher tricks'... the list is endless.
Perhaps this collection of seemingly unimportant trivia is the key to good teaching. A bank of background knowledge and resources that help us finds ways to support our students and make connections between what they already know and new ideas. I wonder if this encyclopedia in our heads is more valuable even than all the textbooks that fill our classrooms.
Just as a note... there are likely to be many 'professional' reflection posts this year as much of my time is now spent working in my own classroom or supporting LK in his. Too much school. (I can't believe I just said that!)
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Words like numerator and denominator plague me. I know they are packed with meaning but I spend as much time trying to remember which is the top number and which is the bottom as actually trying to use them for anything.
My downfall in math came early with "place value". Grade 3 and we are studying place value. The 1 in 100 is in the 100's place. After that I get lost. I know what 121,793 represents but don't ask me to "name" the number. I will read it out as a series of individual digits. It was the first time I ever had to take a note home to my parents and they were baffled why I didn't understand place value. And yes, I still cross out digits and "carry the one" when I subtract! But I can subtract!
VS
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