Dave Hewitt reflection

 It was interesting to watch how Dave Hewitt fostered student engagement in the video. He mentioned wanting students to be in control and he achieved this by having them answer questions about something being right and decentralizing himself. I love the idea of having students check if something is right by using problem-solving skills. I do think smaller groups are better because some might be lost but can just go along with what the collective is saying. This was a great example of how math knowledge is accessible and intrinsic. Students went from counting to the beginning of multi-step algebra! 

I enjoyed the fraction activity and I think it would work very well in a classroom. It encourages mathematical thinking and problem-solving. I appreciate how his method is very visual and how he introduces problems in context and increases difficulty slowly as to scaffold the understanding. I'm not sure how he created the fractions problem, perhaps by trial and error and working backwards from a solution? Teacher-created math problems can be great, especially when the teacher has thought through exactly what knowledge is needed and knows that students are ready for that particular problem. Sometimes textbook questions don't work for our classes because they are so general. 

Hewitt's methods remind me of the Thinking Classroom (Peter Liljedahl) because it is focused on student innovation and students being in control of their learning. He doesn't take the role of having all the knowledge but rather has students figure things out. I want to teach like this.