Global Math: Of Problems and Strings







Global Math: Of Problems and Strings



Edited By Brian Bushart @bstockus

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Online Professional Development Sessions

Problem Strings: A Lesson Structure for All Students
Presented by Pam Harris (@pwharris)

A problem string is a powerful lesson format where all students learn, have access to the problems, and are challenged. The success hinges on the order, the discussion, and the teacher modeling student strategies to build connections. In this webinar, you’ll experience strings of problems such as solving proportions, decimal operations, and solving equations.

To join the meeting when it starts at 9pm Eastern (or RSVP if it’s before 9pm), click here.

Last week at Global Math Jenise Sexton shared about implementing effective mathematics instruction by first meeting the emotional needs of our students.

Check out the recording here if you missed the presentation.

Mining the MTBoS: Literacy Connections, Perseverance, and Visual Patterns

Literacy and Math

 

https://sites.google.com/site/literacymath/literature-strategies/-concept-of-a-definition-map

At our school, we are working to create a culture of reading. Our data shows our students’ lexile scores are lower than the average middle schooler, promoting our administration to develop a plan of action. Part of the plan is to incorporate literacy standards within every content area including mathematics. This could be a difficult task but these bloggers are on to something.

Within her Chipmunk Error Analysis post, blogger Rachel lays out how she is able to get her sixth graders to give a lot of thought into the mathematical mistakes of others. It appears within her post, Rachel purposefully creates problems showing the errors of 3 students with famous chipmunk names. Purposeful as she wants her students to consider the use of various strategies. What I love about her blog is her coverage of multiple error analysis based on concept, reminds a bit of Math Mistakes.

On Math Equals Love, there’s a means for having students analyze their own errors. With the reflection sheet posted on the blog, students identify their own errors and develop a corrected solution prior to completing a retest. Consider the evidence they must gather from the text, which is their own work. They also must support their claims of error with reasons as they develop the new solution.

Bringing technology into the error analysis action, the post from Tech Adventures in Middle School Math Class discusses the use of an iPad to help with the analysis. Through the use of an iPad, students are able to upload their error analysis, similar to how Andrew Stadel set up the activity within this post, and complete related practice activities.

Written by Jenise Sexton (@MrsJeniseSexton)

Perseverance

 

Perseverance is my theme this week. What we do when things don’t work out so well – which happens pretty much every day in this line of work.

My friend John Golden (@mathhombre) wrote this post about his struggles with one particular class, which include not being able to get them to talk to each other. Talk about a problem with which I, and I’m sure many of us, are familiar. John is persevering by changing things up in order to accommodate these students’ challenges, but at the same time nudge them out of their comfort zones. Scaffolded worksheets and math writing are the strategies he describes in this post. I love his assertion that he is “teaching the students in front of me, rather than some fantasy class.”

Jennifer Vadnais (@RilesBlue) persevered with a “Desmos Activity Builder that flopped”. In this post, she outlines two attempts, in two different classrooms, to teach the same lesson using a Desmos Activity. In both cases, the activity started off well, but then lost steam at about the same place. Jennifer redesigned it so that the activity was integrated with vertical white boards, in fact, she switched things around so that the Desmos activity slides played a supporting role to the VWBs. She accommodated not only her students, but the teacher who, with good reason, was keen on using these boards.

Written by Audrey McLaren (@a_mcsquared)

Feedback Around Visual Patterns

 

Visual Patterns have been a mainstay of the MTBoS for years now. Fawn Nguyen’s site is an excellent resource for teachers interested in using these fun, simple patterns to foster creative math thinking.

Michael Pershan recently posted an essay he wrote about the ways that students think about visual patterns, and the ways that teachers can provide feedback to help them move between various modes of thinking. Michael mentions at the outset of his introduction that this is an unfinished work, but there is still plenty of thought-provoking commentary about the strengths and weaknesses of visual patterns as a math task. If you teach with visual patterns, do yourself a favor and check out this essay.

Written by Kent Haines (@MrAKHaines)

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Missives from the Online World

Edited By Ashli Black @mythagon
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Learn how to implement effective mathematics instruction by first meeting the emotional needs of our students at tonight’s Global Math presented by Jenise Sexton.

The conference starts at 9pm Eastern/6pm Pacific. Click here to join!

Last week at Global Math, Robert Berry presented on #blackkidsdomath. Click here to listen to stories of Black boys who are successful with school mathematics with a focus on the experiences that shaped these boys’ interwoven identities, especially their mathematics identity.

Things to Check Out

Recommended Reading

Dan Meyer may be the most famous math teacher in America, but the reason why he’s important to us is his commitment to the #MTBoS. In a recent post Dan queries, how do you make a MTBoS?

Among the great links Dan includes in his post is Raymond Johnson’s This Week in Math Ed, which besides the current publication you’re reading, is as Dan says, “the most valuable post of whatever week it’s published.” Another link in Dan’s post is Twitter Math Camp. If you haven’t seen the recently published program, check it out! I’m especially happy with all of the sessions representing the needs of students with disabilities!

One of the triumphs of Dan’s blog is that the comment section is not the wasteland that most internet comments tend to be. Many members of the #MTBoS added what makes it valuable to them in the comments, so this is also a highly recommended read!

written by Andrew Gael (@bkdidact)

Look for and Make Use of Structure

Jennifer Wilson instantly hooked me with finding the area of these quadrilaterals.

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Jennifer recently offered three wonderful posts on the importance of “Look for and make use of structure.” The posts include some wonderful mathematical thinking and work from both students and teachers, stressing the importance of mathematical flexibility. Read more here:

My favorite quote from Jennifer after working with teachers one day was, “Everyone learned at least one new way to look at the figure from others in the room.”

In order to better teach our students, I think it’s extremely valuable we teachers strengthen our mathematical flexibility by learning new ways to understand mathematics. However, I believe it’s important we are mindful that students do not necessarily need to be taught every single way we know. By knowing more than one way to understand mathematics, teachers can be better prepared to support the necessary differentiation in their math classrooms.

What are your thoughts? Tweet me.

written by Andrew Stadel (@mr_stadel)

 

The Coherence Map
Making Heather‘s list of Favorite Tweets, the Coherence Map from the good folk over at Student Achievement Partners is worth checking out for anyone looking to better understand the CCSS as a coherent, connected whole.The Map spans K-8 and you can follow with a few clicks how a standard in a specific grade develops from earlier grades as well as follow where a standard goes in later grades. Many of the standards are illustrated with tasks, excerpts from the Progressions Documents, and more! I’ll keep this article short so you can go click on a grade and do some exploring of this useful interactive website.

written by Ashli Black (@mythagon)

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This week, #blackkidsdomath with Robert Berry







This week, #blackkidsdomath with Robert Berry



Edited By Carl Oliver @carloliwitter

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This week, we are lucky to have Robert Berry joining us. Robert will be presenting #blackkidsdomath. Hear stories of Black boys who are successful with school mathematics. Focus on the experiences that shaped these boys’ interwoven identities, especially their mathematics identity. We will focus on items related to identity and agency and discussing teaching practices that can be used by teachers of Black learners to cultivate their identities as capable of participating in, and being doers of, mathematics. Join us tonight at 9 EST here.

Last week Denis Sheeran presented Google Apps for Education in the Math Classroom. Some schools have gone Google Classroom, some use chromebooks, and others are just starting to think about their tech future. No matter where you are in the process, you can access GAFE and begin to move math class to a mix of traditional and digital environments for students. To view the recording click here.

Great Blogging Action

Connecting Knowledge and Building Problem Solving Ability 
David Wees’s latest post, “Teaching Problems or Teaching Mathematics” echoes the struggle I have with teaching my students. On one hand, it’s really easy to teach students strategies that would help students solve specific kinds of problems, but on the other hand does that really help students in the long run? Is that really problem solving? According to David, if teaching math is just about how to solve specific kinds of problems using prescribed strategies, we deprive students of making connections between concepts. As a result “a relatively unorganized and over-whelming set of problem-solving schema for students” is created. He offers some reflective questions to ask students that facilitate making connections:
  • How is what we learned today related to what we learned yesterday? 
  • How is this problem we solved today like the problems we solved last week? 
  • What did we learn today that we can probably generalize and use to solve other problems?
After reading David’s post I went exploring on MTBoS to read further about making connections. My quest led me to Dylan Kane’s blog, where he has a series of posts on problem solving. Specifically his post, Problem Solving: Classroom Application has left me so much to think about, but a major take away that echoes David’s post is to explicitly make connections when students fail to make it on their own. Allowing students to struggle blindly isn’t helpful for them as problem solvers since it creates “scattered and disconnected bits of knowledge.” 
 
Written By Sahar Khatri (@khatrimath)

Counting Along with Kristen Grey
If you’ve been following Kristin Grey over the past year then you’re well aware that she’s made the transition form 5thgrade teacher to math coach.  What’s been great for us as subscribers to her blog, is watching her share the mathematical goodness throughout her school.  
Kristin recently came to terms that she’s obsessed with counting and we’re all benefitting from her addiction.  If you’re a k-2 teacher, or a parent of a primary student, you’ll definitely leave a little smarter after checking out her recent posts on counting found here and here
As an added bonus, Kristin recently twitted about the free resources she collected on her Pintrest page.

Written by Graham Fletcher (@gfletchy)

Hot on Twitter: Pasta Triangles

What do you notice? What do you wonder? What do you want for dinner now that I’ve used all the pasta? #MTBoS

#WhyITeach
Friday morning, making my way to work in the snow, a post from Anne Schwartz (@sophgermain) popped up in my feeder – “Why I am not quitting teaching“. Never one to mince words, Anne reminds us that many of the aspects of the job that make it a struggle are part of its definition.  We all need to support one another through the inevitable difficulties – why many of us blog and tweet – but we also need to remember that teaching can be tough because, to paraphrase, that is what we signed up for.  Go read it.  Maybe twice.  Later the same day, Glenn Waddell wrote a reflective response; his professional path has taken him out of the classroom, but ultimately, he finds he is still true to the job.  Glenn titled his post with a hashtag –  #WhyITeach – could be the start of something.  Maybe we can all be tweeting and blogging about this.

 
Continuing in the reflective vein, Jim Doherty shared a quote about inquiry on the part of students and teachers in his post Modeling Good Behavior.  Inquiry (or enquiry as John Mason wrote in the original source of the quote) is not only a strategy for teaching, it is what the real world requires of us in order to solve problems in work and life.
 
Lots of food for thought this week – 
 
Written by Wendy Menard (@wmukluk)

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Punxsutawney Phil predicts 6 more weeks of Global Math







Punxsutawney Phil predicts 6 more weeks of Global Math



Edited By Brian Bushart @bstockus

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Google Apps for Education in the Math Classroom
Presented by Denis Sheeran (@MathDenisNJ)

Some schools have gone Google Classroom, some use Chromebooks, and others are just starting to think about their tech future. No matter where you are in the process, you can access GAFE and begin to move math class to a mix of traditional and digital environments for students. We’ll talk about helpful Google Apps for math that you can begin applying ASAP.

To join the meeting when it starts at 9pm Eastern (or RSVP if it’s before 9pm), click here.

Last week at Global Math we learned about how we can use direct measurement videos to help students learn to make mathematical models.

Click here for details.

A Window Into Our Worlds

What’s Happening in Your Classroom?

IMG_4757.JPG

One of the many things I love about #mtbos is the sharing of instructional strategies and activities happening within classrooms. In @powersfulmath’s recent post, Classroom Happenings 1/25, she shared two problem solving tasks she has used with her students. Each come from the paid subscription site Mathalicious. Through her collaboration with her colleague, Brooke provides two interactive Algebra 1 activities relating to polynomials. You can also check out activities for 7th grade math in Brooke’s post Classroom Happening 1/18.

It is my belief peering into the classroom of others helps us to grow. Quite often it isn’t convenient to go and observe what others are doing in their classrooms. This makes blogging critical to the professional growth of others. Understanding this idea prompted me to develop a blog specific to my school, Math at Grace Snell. Within it, I highlight those instructional strategies others could benefit from adopting. Equipped with images and narrative, my hope is teachers become inspired to try some of what they read.

Written by Jenise Sexton (@MrsJeniseSexton)

Explore MTBoS Blogging Initiative: Week Three

The Explore MTBoS Blogging Initiative has been a wealth of excellent writing from math teachers at all levels from elementary to college. The initiative just wrapped up its third week, which was about asking better questions. There were some excellent posts from dozens of teachers, which are easily browsed in the comments section to Explore MTBoS’s post about Week 3.

Heather Kohn provides a great, easily-implemented tip for improving questions in her Algebra classroom. She asked her students to find similarities and differences between a system of equations and a system of inequalities, but she wasn’t getting the sort of engagement or responses that she wanted.

So she made the activity into a debate. Instead of asking her kids to find differences, she asked them to find the biggest difference between the systems. Likewise, she asked the students to find the biggest similarity. Suddenly her room came alive with debate as students argued about which similarity or difference was the most significant.
It’s a simple change that maintains the integrity of the activity while providing a more compelling hook for students. And it’s just one of the many great posts happening because of the Explore MTBoS Blogging Initiative. Check it out.

Written by Kent Haines (@MrAKHaines)

Other Highlights from the Explore MTBoS Blogging Initiative

The #mtbos blogging initiative is producing some wonderful posts. Kent’s article about Heather Kohn’s better questions made me go back to find this one by Jennifer Fairbanks’ (@HHSmith) about a better question for solving quadratic equations. She gives her students 3 quadratic equations to solve, along with 3 choices of methods to use, but they can’t use the same method on more than one equation. They have to think before they squander that quadratic formula. What a great way to foster critical thinking!

The Day in the Life theme was fascinating, and inspiring, although tiring to imagine how busy these educators are on a daily basis. This one is from Mark Sanford (@hfxmark), a math teacher, whose day started at 5:30 am and ended at 10 pm. Of course, like many teachers, the actual classroom time only accounts for a  fraction of his day. Jennifer Vadnais’ post is from the perspective of an instructional coach, (@RilesBlue) whose busy day includes dashing from one school to another. Different jobs, but equally demanding, and both are awesome educators, of children and grownups.

Written by Audrey McLaren (@a_mcsquared)

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