Educators demonstrate a broad knowledge base and an understanding of the areas they teach.

I was very lucky to have a coaching teacher for both my 490 and 491 practicums who was passionate about numeracy.  While I was going through school, I was also very passionate about numeracy.  I loved puzzles and solving problems, I even loved showing my work!!  When my coaching teacher suggested that I teach a math unit on Algebra, I jumped at the opportunity.   I love Algebra!  She suggested using a resource called From Patterns to Algebra Book Lessons for Exploring Linear Relationships by Catherine D. Bruce and Ruth Beatty.  The book is broken down into about 20 lessons that have the students start with playing an input/output game so they can see the relationship between numbers and has them finish by seeing the relationship between numbers, equations and line graphs.  Almost every lesson uses manipulatives so that the students can see concretely the relationships through patterns.  To effectively teach this unit, I needed to have a strong sense of numeracy myself.  I also needed to have a strong math vocabulary to be able to effectively explain some of the concepts in several ways.  For the longest time during this unit, the students thought we were simply playing and couldn’t figure out why they did not have to do work.  It was very gratifying to mark their final assessment and see a solid level of understanding from almost all students.