Danica Thomsen-Harnick (she/her)
OCT, BA (Hons.) & BEd (Primary/Junior/Intermediate/Senior)

OCT STANDARDS OF PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE:

PROFESSIONAL KNOWLEDGE

 

"Members strive to be current in their professional knowledge and recognize its relationship to practice. They understand and reflect on student development, learning theory, pedagogy, curriculum, ethics, educational research and related policies and legislation to inform professional judgment in practice." -OCT

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I have demonstrated my professional knowledge through my participation in my Teaching Mathematics course, in which I developed a Concrete Materials Booklet, which I continue to use today. In this booklet, I described concrete materials that can be used to teach mathematics and included different strategies for their use, as well as sample problems.

 

This booklet shows my professional knowledge in that I used a wide variety of sources to create a useful document that would help me to teach and evaluate the curriculum expectations in accordance with Ministry of Education guidelines and recommendations. I understand the value of using concrete materials in the classroom for improving student understanding of mathematical concepts, and I follow current best practice with the guidance of Marian Small's book Making Math Meaningful: A Guide for Canadian Students.

 

From my experience teaching both primary and junior mathematics, using concrete materials has greatly enhanced student understanding, and my professional knowledge in current mathematics teaching methods has enhanced my own teaching ability. My students appreciated my math lessons, and one student said: "Miss Thomsen, I learned because you knew what you were talking about!"