Welcome to the Teaching Math online course for grades 3-5. This course will introduce you to the five process standards developed by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM, 2000): Communication, Problem Solving, Reasoning and Proof, Representation, and Connections. These process standards complement the mathematical content standards from NCTM. When both are used effectively in the classroom, students gain a fuller sense of what mathematics is, and have a greater opportunity for achieving understanding of its concepts.

For teachers, this course will help bring alive the process standards in the classroom. They are ideas that can be of direct help to you, showing ways to expand your practice, and, in turn, helping your students better understand mathematics. In a larger sense, these standards promote habits of mathematical thinking that are useful to teachers and students in any mathematical context.

In this session we will explain how to take this course, introduce the standards, introduce the course structure and format, provide the syllabus for the course, and ask you to make some reflections on the standards in a pretest that you will return to on completion of the course.

"Effective teaching involves observing students, listening carefully to their ideas and explanations, having mathematical goals, and using the information to make instructional decisions. Teachers who employ such practices motivate students to engage in mathematical thinking and reasoning and provide learning opportunities that challenge students at all levels of understanding. Effective teaching requires continuing efforts to learn and improve" (NCTM, 2000, p. 19)

This session will do the following:

• Explain how to take the course
• Introduce the NCTM Principles and Standards for School Mathematics
• Introduce the course structure and goals
• Present the syllabus for the course
• Present a pretest on the course concepts for review at the end of the session.

  How to Take This Course