Portfolio

You've read many cases, watched video, and discussed problems and solution strategies about the base ten system. For your writing prompt:
1) What ideas about numbers and the base ten system have ben highlighted fotr you by these readings, videos, discussions, and activities?
2) What questions do you have?

We've spent a lot of time talking about teaching students the base ten system of numbers and one thing still perplexes me--I never learned about it in elementary school!
It was not until I was taking TE 201 at MSU my Freshman year that I even heard of the term "base ten system" and learned how systems would be different if the base number was different, two or five for example.
So, when we're teaching our students about the system of numbers we just teach them how to count and manipulate number to perform the tasks we are given--but we never really say "This is the base ten system". Or should we? I guess this is a question that I still have, even though I have a gut instict about the answer.
And that is simple--if we try and teach our students so much and expect them to remember all kinds of unrelated things, they will develop a negative attitude of learning as it becomes a difficult task for them. When we make things too complex we are really making them even more abstract for our students and eventually we may burn them out. So, having said that, I feel that if we are going to introduce our students, explicitly, to systems, such as the base ten system, we must make it relevant to them.
In fact, all teaching should be relevant to our students and we need to be tuned into their interests so we can make learning exciting and valuable for them. This is not a theory only to be applied to math; instead, it is simply effective teaching.