Category: math
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Post-It Problem: Grades 2-3
If imitation is the purest form of flattery, then Graham should be pretty darned flattered. I imitated (read: stole) his The Big Pad problem for slightly younger grades. Graham’s task necessitates fractions, which was a bit further down the line for my intended audience, roughly grades two or three. In this task, the giant Post-It is 15…
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Math and the Message
“This isn’t right,” she says. “This can’t be right. All my friends got Math 7.” My soon-to-be 6th Grade daughter is near trembling as she held her the schedule for the upcoming school year. She compares her paper with friends who were both part of her peer group as well has having the last name L through S. This…
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The Home Stretch
Teaching in Texas, there was always this weird interim period between the end of standardized exams and final exams around this time of year. Usually this time spanned for about three weeks or so, during which disengagement was rampant. On top of this calendar quirk was the general end-of-school jitters, a mix of euphoria and…
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A presentation format for deeper student questioning and universal engagement
(Editor’s note: this post is part of my not-necessarily math related posts. I spend a good portion of time in non-math classes these days. And thank goodness, because it exposes me to practices that I wouldn’t otherwise have experienced.) I had the pleasure of sitting in on some student presentations on a recent site visit to…
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On sequestering math
I struggle with how “special” we treat math in schools. It’s not uncommon for math teachers and departments to run professional development apart from all other subjects. Or use different classroom norms. Or instruct entirely differently. Or blog or tweet exclusively about math. Math teachers have their own software, their own language, different and separate…
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Global Math Department 12/15/15 – Designing Systems of Teacher Learning around Student Work
I’m chatting with the Global Math Department on 12/15/15 about using student work as the driver of teacher learning. Consider this post a repository for pertinent links, my slide deck, and a comment section for further conversation. GMD_LASW Link to working google doc for the session: [Global Math Department 12/15] LISTEN: Podcast in which we with…
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Shuttling vs. Driving to the Airport
A quick Would You Rather today. I was inspired by a teacher asking students to model airport parking as a means to get at linear equations. I thought I’d frame it similarly, but using the WYR format, because I like the WYR format. I live a good distance away from a major airport, and I…
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Complaining about what students don’t know vs. learning how to teach that stuff yourself
It’s a lot easier to complain that students don’t know, say, their multiplication tables than to actually teach multiplication. Setting aside the oft problematic mindset of a teacher complaining about what “these kids” don’t know for the time being, consider actually teaching to the gaps you feel are present. Let’s be clear: not a single…
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Lectures, various types
“I lecture, but I do it in a dynamic, interactive way!” Teachers are sometimes justifiably defensive about their lectures. In many circles, lectures are a four-letter word. This flies against not only hundreds of years of pedagogical practice, but cuts against the teacher-as-expert model of instruction. Of course, there are good reasons for that too.…
emergent math 