What does a 79% mean? This post questions what exactly does a percentage grade tell us, and if we might be mixing units.
Academic Safety for Pre-Service Teachers and Other Reflections from the Semester
This has been a unique semester in that I took two courses and taught a course. The course I taught is a one-hour seminar course, “Math for Elementary Teachers,” not to be confused with their “actual” math course, nor their math teaching methods course. This course is a small part of pre-service teachers’ (PSTs) teacher … Continue reading Academic Safety for Pre-Service Teachers and Other Reflections from the Semester
Musings on Mathematical Creativity
This semester I had to write a literature review of a topic of our choice. Last year I focused on assessment, which will be my dissertation topic. I wanted to try something a little more “lighthearted” this year, so I went with Mathematical Creativity. I’m not going to reproduce my paper here, but I did … Continue reading Musings on Mathematical Creativity
A Premature Address to the Teaching Class of 2024 and 2025
I’ll be teaching a course for future elementary teachers this Fall (2021) at the University of Wyoming. It’s a freshman course, so most students will be coming off of their high school experience from the past two years. As such, I’d like to give an address to them and all college students, current and future, … Continue reading A Premature Address to the Teaching Class of 2024 and 2025
Part 6: Scoring with Humility
This is the sixth and final installment of a mini-series on rubric design and use. Be sure to check out the other posts as well as the initial post. Your grades are qualitative data, not quantitative data. Whether you’re using a rubric on a complex task, or assigning a number out of 100 from a … Continue reading Part 6: Scoring with Humility
Part 5: Teaching with a rubric and teaching the rubric
This is Part 5 of a mini-series on rubrics. Be sure to check out the other parts as well as the intro post. Now we can have some fun. Creating a rubric is indeed hard work. Common indicators help streamline the process, but it still takes time to create and score them. But now that … Continue reading Part 5: Teaching with a rubric and teaching the rubric
Part 4: Scores, scoring, grades, and grading
This is Part 4 of a mini-series on a rubric masterclass. Be sure to check out the Intro post and subsequent posts. Before we get to it today, I want to offer a bit of a warning: this piece of rubric-land gets very sticky, very fast. It represents the tension between our aspirations as growth-minded educators and … Continue reading Part 4: Scores, scoring, grades, and grading
Part 3: Defining Proficiency & Moving Outward
This is Part 3 of a mini-series on a rubric masterclass. Be sure to check out the Intro post and subsequent posts. Once we’ve identified our specific and common outcomes, we need to identify specific markers that will indicate where students are on the spectrum of proficiency. In fact, that’s where we get our next little bit … Continue reading Part 3: Defining Proficiency & Moving Outward
Part 2: Establishing Common and Specific Outcomes
This is Part 2 of a mini-series on a rubric masterclass. Be sure to check out the Intro post and subsequent posts. We've spent the last 5+ years in the math education community advocating for teachers and students to have a growth mindset. We tell students that they can and, in fact, do continue to … Continue reading Part 2: Establishing Common and Specific Outcomes
A Rubric Masterclass Part 1: Selecting Rubric Worthy Tasks
This is Part 1 of a mini-series on rubrics. Be sure to check out the Intro post and subsequent posts. It took me a while to figure out the whole rubric game. I'll admit, I was relatively anti-rubric in the middle of my career. Maybe that's because I wasn't shown how to construct one. Maybe … Continue reading A Rubric Masterclass Part 1: Selecting Rubric Worthy Tasks
emergent math 