teaching math for the first time.?

"Any other suggestions"

here is mine: take a look at DY/Dans blog. lots of interesting suggestions about inquiry. specificlaly take a look at his design concepts:

http://blog.mrmeyer.com/?cat=54

good luck!

My high school math teacher used to let us play Jeopardy the week before a quiz or test. It was so much fun and everyone participated. We only had 3 buzzers, but we did it in teams. He'd always make one section "corny math jokes" where he'd have jokes such as... Why was the math student's exam wet when the teacher returned it? Because it was below C-level...

He'd also make sure that he was available a couple times during the day so students could ask him questions when they were having a hard time. On Monday, he'd give a sheet with vocabulary words on it and a list of what we'd be doing throughout the week. He'd have us fill out the terms and then introduce the concept. Tuesday and Wednesdy, we'd work on problems that involved the introduced concept. Thursday, we'd play a game of Jeopardy. On Friday, we'd take a quiz on it. If we hadn't learned the material by Friday, he'd make an appointment with the group of kids who received below an 85 to give them extra help.

Just make sure you're available to help students when they need it. That's really the best thing any teacher can do.

What my geometry teacher did last year was give us a sheet at the beginning of the unit with vocabulary and theorems and postures that had a place for a definition which was usually already there to Dave class time and a box for examples that we would fill out during class as e went over everything. Sometimes e would give us extra words to define for homework. At the beginning of class he would make sure we did our homework then go over each problem. Then he would go over the classwork from last making sure we understood everything. Classwork was due at the end of the week and we usually had a quiz a week or so. Also for the sheet I mentioned earlier we went through it throughout the unit by going over the vocab as we were going to learn it that day. Plus everyone loved him cause we could have our phone out for calculators and he would always joke with us. Good luck sorry for making it so long

Please don't make your class monotone and boring...try having your students participate in class, cue them and wait for an answer and if not answer it yourself. Please be open for questions of all levels of stupidity, even if the student wants to make sure he is getting what you're saying, be really nice and encouraging about it...I love teachers who let me participate and don't look at me like a bother...I had this teacher who, no matter how annoying the question or how many times she had to re-explain, she never sounded annoyed, and that served for me to have a great foundation for the rest of college math. Be encouraging when your students ask the right questions and they get it.

It's also great for you to do the example first, do a couple of examples, then try to do another example with your students, and then give them some time to work another similar example on their own.

Teach a new concept. Do an example for them. Give them time to practice it in class on their own.