November 24, 2015

Happy Thanksgiving!

Edited By Ashli Black @mythagon

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Online Professional Development Sessions

Happy Thanksgiving week to all from the GMD Newsletter teams!

No meeting this week, so why not check out a recording from the archives of one you might have missed?

Last week, Anna Weltman presented Seeing Stars: Using Art to Spark Investigation in Math Class. Check out the recording here.

Things to Check Out

Remote Conferencing: Be Less Jealous!

This year at NCTM Regionals it seemed that #MTBoS was taking over…

regionals q.JPG

However, I was assured that it may just be my twitter lens and that #MTBoS still has a lot of work left to do…

For those of us who couldn’t make it to NCTM: Nashville this year, where the #MTBoS take-over was burgeoning, a new resource was provided by some valiant #MTBoS-ers, like Mike Flynn and Pam Wilson…

Periscope is an app that allows users to live stream video and save it for up to 24 hours. So if you miss a session or aren’t at the conference at all, Periscope can provide an opportunity to engage in a new way. The only thing is the 24 hour window, to which Mike and Pam have sought an answer. Katch will store user’s live-streamed videos seemingly indefinitely.

Nashville Opening Keynote with Andrew Stadel, Graham Fletcher, Laila Nur, Cathy Yenca, and Robert Kaplinsky

Finally, here is an open google doc started by Michael Pershan including his (and many other’s) thoughts about the NCTM conference experience. This maybe yet another way for those not at a certain conference to engage with those were there.

written by Andrew Gael (@bkdidact)

Quack and Count

I remember Graham Fletcher recently shared at Twitter Math Camp how interesting a conversation can be that revolves around students understanding (or misunderstanding) the equal sign. That’s why Marilyn Burns’ post, The Equal Sign: What It Really Means, caught my eye. The post is an excerpt from her fourth edition of About Teaching Mathematics., where she uses the children’s book, Quack and Count by Keith Baker.

My favorite part is Marilyn saying, “The equal sign, however, is a relational symbol, not an operation symbol.”

Read more. It’s a quack read. How do your students understand the equal sign?

written by Andrew Stadel (@mr_stadel)

It seems only appropriate during Thanksgiving week to talk about One Good Thing. If you’ve not seen this site before or if it’s been a while since you checked it out, head on over and scroll through some posts for thoughtful reflections on teaching days, humorous anecdotes from the classrooms, and tales from grading purgatory.
Have a story to share? Head to the About page to contribute!

written by Ashli Black (@mythagon)

Global Math Department Needs Your Help!

The Global Math Department is looking for individuals who are interested in planning the Tuesday night webinars hosted on Big Marker. GMD bookers contact potential speakers regarding speaking opportunities, and provide them with details on planning sessions. If you are interested in being more involved with the Global Math Department, contact Heather at heather.m.kohn@gmail.com or Dylan at dkane47@gmail.com.

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November 17, 2015

Learning from Sea to Shining Sea

Edited By Carl Oliver @carloliwitter

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This week, Anna Weltman will be presenting Seeing Stars: Using Art to Spark Investigation in Math Class. Join Anna, author of “This is Not a Math Book,” to investigate activities from her book focusing on number theory from a geometric perspective. We’ll brainstorm strategies to get kids investigating– posing questions, developing hypotheses, experimenting, and evaluating results– and see how approaching math through art can help. Join us tonight at 9 EST here.

Last week we were lucky to have Glenn Waddell presenting High Fives and Trust: Why Relationships Must Come First. This discussion about the importance of classroom climate led to a great discussion about how to create a great environment for learning. When discussing Rigor, Relevance, and Relationships, the Relationships must come first! To view the recording click here.

Great Blogging Action

Planning Number Talks

Jumping into number talks has been one of the most exciting adventures I have put myself and my students through. Though, if you’re like me and totally new to this whole thing, you probably are constantly asking yourself, am I doing this right? I have been! All the time! I’ve been reading various number talk books, but my biggest resource (as always) comes from the #MTBoS community. I have been lurking a great deal on Kristin Gray’s (@mathminds) blog. She recently shared some plans for a dot image numbertalk that her team had developed for 3rd grade. While the dot images were rich themselves (which are also appropriate for middle school students!), what drew me most to her post was the planning and reflecting piece which can’t be found in any book. Her consideration of the goal, anticipated responses, her further questions, and then modification of the dot images demonstrates the thought process required to plan and modify number strings to meet the specific goal. If you’re implementing number talks or thinking about implementing them, don’t forget to check out her entire post to see the planning process as well as some rich dot images to share with your students!

_____________________

While lucky folk are attending various NCTM Regional events this month, closer to home (my home, that is) I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the first workshop in a 3-part series entitled Hands-On Mathematical Construction taught by George Hart through Math for America. George Hart is identified by Wikipedia as “an American Geometer” (did you know Wikipedia has a list of geometers?); he is actually a research professor in the engineering school at Stony Brook University and a freelance mathematical sculptor/designer. And he’s Vi Hart’s dad.

In this first meeting, which was simulcast to teachers across New York State, we built a truncated icosahedron out of CDs and zip ties. But we participants weren’t just told what to do; we first learned how to draw 2 dimensional representations of these 3 dimensional objects, and transform our drawings into plans for the construction of our group sculpture. George Hart dynamically led us through some of the geometry behind the construction we were making; he is admittedly not a teacher of school-age children, but his ideas and enthusiasm easily opened the door for us to consider how this type of activity might be used in a range of classrooms. He and his team are putting together a detailed lesson plan for use by teachers, and he is open to feed back about implementing this type of project in schools.

I can’t wait for the next session, when we will be doing paper constructions, and plan to spend some time digging through his website. Check it out!

– Wendy Menard

@wmukluk

Hot on Twitter: Fall Conference Season Winds Down

‏@maxmathforum

Read @Veganmathbeagle on online community, face to face conferences, & the awesomeness of the MN #NCTMregionals: http://mathybeagle.com/2015/11/15/regional-reflection-releasing-my-grip/ …

‏@crstn85

#MTBoS Mentor sign up is open ’til Dec 1! We’re expecting an influx of newbies from #NCTMregionals, will you mentor? https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1mGmrdXK1hDM9wkJYokd-WzC9rEhFWkYdWPOoAYh1LLQ/viewform …

This week marks a tremendous moment in the evolution of the MathTwitterBlogosphere. Sadly, I wasn’t a part of the #MTBoS in its infancy years but it stems from some amazing people that we all are continuously proud to call our colleagues. This week, we (the collective #MathTwitterBlogospehere) are keynoting at the NCTM Regional in Nashville. If there were ever a micro-TMC this would be it. Check out the online conference planner because you’re bound to see a friend or two. On Wednesday night Mike Flynn is planning to periscope the opening session.

A special shoutout goes to Robert Kaplinsky for being the brainchild behind this NCTM opportunity. He’s opened the door for us to share with the world what WE all do…each and every day. Robert is one of the most inclusive people out there and if you haven’t met him… start here.

All of us are smarter than one of us. We hope to represent you well.

Written by @gfletchy (Graham Fletcher)

Global Math Department Needs Your Help!

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November 10, 2015

Global Math Department Requests the Highest of Fives and Your Attendance Tonight

Edited By Brian Bushart @bstockus

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High Fives and Trust: Why Relationships Must Come First
Join Glenn Waddell for a discussion about high fives and classroom climate builders. When discussing Rigor, Relevance, and Relationships, the Relationships must come first!

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

Last week at Global Math Michael Pershan presented on being your own source of professional development.

Click here to watch the recording.

But Wait! There’s More!

Just in Time For Midterms

human bingo.JPG

In most systems, student understanding is monitored through the implementation of pretests, midterms or interims, and finals. Some systems apply a bit of pressure upon teachers to meet an arbitrary deadline to have taught a certain set of standards. Others use it to monitor growth of understanding.

Whatever pressures applied within your system, I’m sure you could use some great review activities. This post provides a kinesthetic review requiring students to take ownership of their claims. In the Human Bingo Review Activity, Eric Biederbeck explains how students complete a bingo board by having classmates and the teacher sign off indicating they know the answers to given problems. In order for anyone to win bingo, everyone who signed the problems in the row identified must prove they actually know the correct answer. Perfect for those middle schoolers who like to try and beat the system.

Another activity which is great for the class that is talkative and needs movement for engagement is discussed in this post. With this adaptable matching game, students solve multiple problems and they must find someone in the class who has the same answer as them.

If these activities do not fit your teaching style, take a moment to watch the GMD professional learning session as outlined in this post. “Review Activities That Don’t Suck” is worth the time of preparing your students for midterms and for finals.

Written by Jenise Sexton (@MrsJeniseSexton)

There’s Got To Be An Easier Way!

Julie Reulbach has a great lesson for introducing logarithms, but her blog post is worth reading regardless of what level of math you teach. Nestled in this simple blog post is a vital pedagogical idea, which is that students need to need a tool before you introduce them to it.

Julie asks her students to determine how many hours it will take for their whole school to be infested with zombies if the number of zombies triples every hour. Of course, the student body isn’t a perfect power of three, so the students are stuck guessing and checking as they get infinitesimally close to the correct number of hours. At one point, one of her students even shouts “There’s got to be an easier way!” as if he is a frustrated housewife in the black-and-white segment of an infomercial. By the time she introduces logarithms, students are primed to understand and value their purpose.

Check out her post, and all her other great lessons, at her blog .

Written by Kent Haines (@MrAKHaines)

Once Upon a Timeline…

Coding, explaining, storytelling, and my continued fascination with the Desmos Activity Builder occupied my mind during the last couple of weeks. Andy Schwen (@mrschwen) gets his students to write code in order to deepen their understanding of math concepts, not unlike the reason I get my own students to create their own geogebras and desmos’s. His post about that is from May, but for some reason, I only saw it this week. This week, Kalid Azad published another gem of a post at his Betterexplained website, this time about making sense of trig identities. Admittedly, it involves math that my students are not familiar with, complex numbers, but it’s still a beautiful visual and verbal work of art. I found another post about the Desmos Activity Builder, this one from Cathy Yenca (@mathycathy). And the storytelling? Well, in my last newsletter contribution, I started a list of blogposts about the activity builder. I wanted to share ideas and reflections on best practices. Since then I decided to keep adding to that list chronologically, because that way I get to watch how the tool and the community are transforming each other symbiotically. I’m keeping that list on this page if you’re interested, or if you’d like to add to it, just tweet me at @a_mcsquared.

Written by Audrey McLaren (@a_mcsquared)

Global Math Department Needs Your Help!

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November 3, 2015

Candy Fun, MTBoS Love, and a Building Community

Edited By Carl Oliver @carloliwitter

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This week, join Michael Pershan to dive into the topic Be Your Own Professional Development:

How do we become better at teaching math? Conventional answers point to quality training and departmental collaboration, but not all teachers have access to these opportunities. What can be done to improve practice on our own initiative? In this session I’ll share stories and thoughts on what can break the cycle of same-old teaching.

Click here to join the conference or rsvp your spot ahead of time!

Last week, Amy Lucenta and Grace Kelemanik presented the session On-Ramps to Mathematical Thinking for Students with Learning Disabilities Through the Standards for Mathematical Practice.

Check out the recording here.

Things to Check Out

#tmwyk, Halloween Edition

I will be writing a blog post soon about why I think Counting Collections is one of the best mathematical instructional routines there is, but for now we can just enjoy math teachers leveraging a holiday that encourages their own kids to engage with math in order to eat candy, lots of candy! Check out more Halloween math fun on the #tmwyk hashtag.

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written by Andrew Gael (@bkdidact)

MTBoS Love

Elementary teacher Jamie Duncan says the following about teaching math these days, “It’s what I look forward to most and I have a hard time not doing math all day.”

Jamie didn’t always feel so ecstatic about teaching math. At one point, she classified math as “something to get through.”

Do you know what helped ignite this passion for math? You and the rest of the #MTBoS.

Take three minutes to read her post and check out all the great things her students are doing in math with measurement and more! Another #MTBoS success story!

written by Andrew Stadel (@mr_stadel)

If you’ve not had a chance to check out Desmos’ Activity Builder, now is the time to give it a look. Don’t quite have the time to make your own during the busy school year? Then check out the curation efforts of the Desmos team highlighted in this recent post on some transformation activities. Transformations were one of my favorite things to play with in class so I can’t wait to dive into all of these!

written by Ashli Black (@mythagon)

Global Math Department Needs Your Help!

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