Arbitrary vs Necessary

 I found this article very interesting and informative. While reading this article, I reflected largely on my own time in school and thought about what I have seen so far on practicum. Now having a better understanding of the difference between arbitrary and necessary, I will make a point to take these ideas into account when lesson and unit planning. While lesson planning, I will try to make an effort where possible and when time allows for it to provide a very brief history or reasoning behind the naming of something or the reason things are organized in a particular way. As well, I will focus on the idea Hewitt presented, of the importance of building mathematical awareness skills in students, so they can base their actions off awareness not memorization, throughout my lessons and units. One way I can do this while lesson planning is creating tasks which students complete which can help them build their awareness and use their awareness to understand the necessary information, as Hewitt described. As well, I will include time for explanations of the material that students are being informed of and taught by me. Hopefully this will allow students to act on their awareness to gain understanding, and focus less on memorization. Overall this will affect the way I plan by making time for explanations, creating tasks to allow students to access their awareness, while also trying to approach arbitrary information with examples and background.