Throughout my teaching career, I will need to teach children math skills and concepts to help them advance to the next level. In order to help them master the required standards, I must use different strategies, manipulatives, models and technologies. Scientific articles and studies will also help me develop ways to teach my students. In the following article, I will explain how I would introduce five different math concepts to my students. My first concept is to compare the relative size of decimal places. Students can easily confuse decimals because there are many numbers involved. Students are originally taught that more numbers equal a larger amount. For example, they might think 0.2398476 is greater than 0.72 because it has more digits. To prevent students from being confused and misunderstanding the true amounts, I would teach a strategy called leading number (Cathcart, Pothier, Vance, & Bezuk, 2011, p. 278). Using the first digit strategy eliminates unnecessary numbers, making it easier for students to compare the two fractions. The student would keep the first non-zero number and remove the rest of the numbers or replace them with zero. In our example above, 0.2398476 would become 0.2 and 0.72 would become 0.7. Students would be able to compare 0.2 and 0.7 much more easily. They would use base ten blocks to prove that 0.7 is greater than 0.2 (Cathcart et al., 2011, p. 271). By placing rods and cubes on the base ten block to match the problem we were solving, students could visually see which was larger and which was smaller. For more practice, students can work at the following website: http://www.ezschool.com/Games/CompareDecimals.html. This website offers a game with...... middle of paper ...... agogic content knowledge. As long as I prepare, I know I can teach effectively. References: (Cathcart, WG, Pothier, YM, Vance, JH & Bezuk, SB (2011). Learning Mathematics in Elementary and Middle Schools. (5th ed. ).Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill/Prentice Hall. Myers, P. (May 2007). Future Teachers Discover Mathematical Depth. Gale: http://find.galegroup.com.ezproxy.lib.uwf.edu/gtx/start.do?userGroupName=pens49866 &prodId=ITOFPiccolo, D. (February 2008). the school, 108, 2. p.46(3). Retrieved February 11, 2012 from General OneFile via Gale: http://find.galegroup.com.ezproxy.lib.uwf.edu/gtx/start.do. ?userGroupName=pens49866 &prodId=ITOF