3. Postdoctoral Program - MSRI

Evaluation #6
1. What were the benefits of attending this type of institute?
I think that this institute helped me to build a stronger foundation in math. It also
made me question many ideas that I knew as ’fact’. By questioning these facts and proving
how/why they work, I feel more comfortable going to a deeper level with students. This
institute also really made me think about the way I explain things and how I could make
them more precise. I think that this will be a great benefit to my classroom because it
will make my teaching clearer/more understandable for my students.
2. What improvements do you suggest? Please be specific.
I would like to see more activities/discussion especially during the first week there is
a lot of information being given and it is hard to process all of it without having a chance
to work with it or talk about it.
3. What would you like to see happen during the Saturday sessions? How
would you like them organized? Please be specific. Consider format, topics,
etc.
I would like to see the Saturday sessions deal with implementation of these ideas into
our classrooms. May be everyone could bring in lessons that they have taught using ’Wu’
math to share. I think it would also be helpful to have time to discuss successes/failures
when using this in our classrooms.
4. What are you going to implement/change in your classroom because of
what have you learned in this institute?
In my classroom I am going to change my approach for teaching fractions. A lot of
students already come to 6th grade with a fear of fractions and I think that approaching
fractions as numbers will help ease some of that fear. I also really like the model that
was used for teaching multiplication of fractions and think it will be a good model to use
with the students to teach them why they can just multiply across.
5. Are you planning to work with colleagues in your school who have not
attended the institute? What are your specific plans to implement this?
Several teachers at our school have attended Wu and we have talked about strategies
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