Let's Talk Numbers!

Included this week: This week’s Global Math webinar details and some highlights from the MTBoS

This Week at Global Math…

Introduction to Number Talks Grades K to 12
Common Core Content Standards and Practice Standards require many, but not all, teachers to change the way they are teaching. Math classrooms, in general, should not look like the math classrooms of fifty years ago (or even 20 years ago). Number Talks can facilitate these changes and can make teachers and students excited about the changes. A Number Talk is a purposeful whole class activity the goals of which are to build mental math and computational strategies, to develop the Mathematical Practices (for teachers and students) and to deepen understanding of mathematics. In other words, to develop number sense. This session will explain the who, what, where, why and how of Number Talks. We’ll look at the differences in primary, elementary, middle, and high school Number Talks. And we’ll try to do a Number Talk ‘on the air’!!!

Presented by Michael Pershan and Hedge. To RSVP, click here.

Last week’s recording on Social Dynamics and Math Discussions can be viewed here.

A Week for Zombies, Introductions, and Debate

Why am I hoarding zombie pens? Growth mindset! Let me explain:

This week, it’s not so much math that’s been on my radar, but “growth mindset”, of course as it applies to math. At our first staff meeting this year, we watched this inspiring talk by Eduardo Briceño. What he said that keeps resonating for me is how the idea of effort is a negative thing to someone with a fixed mindset, but a positive thing to someone with a growth mindset. This is a huge issue for math education. After all, how many of our students think of effort as punishment for not getting something right away? I’m pretty sure that just changing that one perception would be huge. And the difference can be simply about the words we use, like for example, putting the word “yet” after “I don’t understand.” I’m not a touchy-feely person, though, so before you roll your eyes and move on, here’s a great article by Jackie Gerstein about whether or not this is just another fad. I figure it’s worth a shot, for myself and for my kids. I’m going to walk the walk and talk the talk, starting with this zombie problem from TedEd. Which I haven’t solved. Yet.

written by Audrey McLaren (@a_mcsquared)

Introducing Katie Breedlove

Most times, when teachers feel they don’t have anything to offer or say within a blog post, their posts are often profound. After speaking with my friend @Katiebreedlove, I immediately logged on to read what was her second blog post (I think ever), Perseverance. In our conversation she expressed she wanted to blog more but felt as though she didn’t have enough to say. If this post is saying “nothing”, I cannot imagine what saying “something” looks like.

She tackled a hard topic, perseverance. We strive as teachers to get our students to push past quick results in times where quick results are what matter. I dare say there are teachers out there who are afraid of taking a chance and persevering through the hard change. With such a fixed mindset, teachers prevent their students from solving problems, make sense of them and seeing things through to a solution. Katie provides her view of this within her “elevator speech” in which she expresses what she wants for her students, perseverance. Keep writing my friend and welcome to #mtbos!

written by Jenise Sexton (@MrsJeniseSexton)

Should teachers pay teachers?

An effusive New York Times article about the website Teachers Pay Teachers set math Twitter abuzz this weekend. Larry Ferlazzo, Glenn Waddell, and others took issue with the positive portrayal of a site that they claim is not representative of the broader teacher sharing economy. After all, the MTBoS is full of rich activities and lessons that are typically available for free. So is TPT a valuable resource for overworked educators or a mechanism for enabling and profiting from teachers’ laziest impulses? Join the debate on Twitter!

written by Kent Haines (@MrAKHaines)

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