Post 10: Personal Learning Path Reflection

 For my final blog post, I wanted to take some time to reflect upon my personal learning path. I started off this semester feeling extremely uncomfortable with teaching fractions and understanding different mathematical concepts involving fractions. In school, I never felt like I could quite grasp fractions and I also had some not-so-great experiences with a teacher mocking our intelligence as a class because we were having trouble understanding fractions. Even when I stepped into my student teaching classroom and found out the class was learning about fractions, I got really nervous. But now, I feel very confident in my abilities to understand and teach about fractions. After watching my cooperating teacher teach it to the class, having opportunities to teach students and review in small groups, and through this course and my research, I am very proud to say fractions now come easy to me (at least fractions at a 4th-grade level). I've learned how to find the GCF and LCM, how to compare fractions (which one is greater), how to write equivalent fractions and show that on a number line, how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide fractions, how to convert improper fractions and mixed numbers, how to read fractions and data on a line plot, and how to use fractions to find out angle measurements. All just within a few weeks! I honestly never would have thought I would gain this much knowledge and confidence with something I felt so lost on just a few weeks prior. I'm honestly so glad to have gained this knowledge not only for myself but for students I will end up teaching. Hooray for fractions! 

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