Online Professional Development Sessions

Things to Check Out

Dreambox On My Mind

Recently several members of the #MTBoS have written about games and what they believe makes a good educational math game. Dan Meyer has written/spoken/video-recorded many thoughts on how gaming and apps can be integrated into math class or how math class can be integrated into games and apps or both!

Picking up from where Audrey McLaren left off two weeks ago about Tracy Zager’s popular and controversial post about her criteria for fact-based math apps where she gives two suggestions of games that meet her non-negotiable criteria. They are Dreambox Learning and Bunny Times. Here are Tracy’s twitter thoughts about Dreambox when her daughters began their free-trial at home.

This week Dreambox continued to be on #MTBoS minds. Kent Haines, who also uses Dreambox with his children, wrote an extensive review of his first impressions. Christopher Danielson also recently reproduced how Dreambox communicates with parents.

As a special education teacher I really like Dreambox for two reasons: 1) it was developed in concert with Cathy Fosnot and 2) it is digitally multi-modal (using models, visual representations, and “hands-on” tools to develop conceptual understanding).

However, I am not without constructive criticism. Though Dreambox understands learning is not linear, I do wish they would give teachers more control over which lessons students were assigned because I believe teachers are always better than an algorithm!

Two Truths & One Lie

I don’t have any tattoos.
I played college basketball.
I had dreadlocks in college.

The ice-breaker fun-fact game Two Truths and A Lie can be fun. So when Jon Orr recently posted Better Questions – Two Truths & One Lie, I was instantly hooked. I knew there would be a math spin and sure enough, I wasn’t disappointed. Read the post and have your students play along.

What I love most:

• Minimal teacher prep
• Simple design
• Student creativity
• Error analysis
• Stickies

As with most things, do them in moderation. I wouldn’t recommend you play this game every day, every week.  However, it’s seems like a great way to spice up class (and assessments) at times. I challenge you to try it once this week and report back to Jon Orr and me on Twitter.

*I didn’t play college basketball.

Online Professional Development Sessions

Great Blogging Action

Hot on Twitter

Tessellations seem to have taken over my Twitter feed.  And it seems like there is one person behind the curtain.
 

 

I’m not going to lie, when @samjshah and his awesomeness come across my blog feed I’m guaranteed to spend the next 2 hours lost down a rabbit hole of Dr. Math and Wolfram Alpha, trying to make sense of it all.  Each time I leave with an understanding that’s clear as mud…but I still leave a little smarter than when I entered.  It seems like there’s 25 grade levels between Sam and I, but he makes me want to know what he’s up to so I always read on.
This week Sam shared the beautiful gift he received from the man behind the curtain. If you don’t know about the 4, 5, 20. And the 3, 8, 24. And the 3, 10, 15. And the 4, 5, 20 you need to check this out.  24 hours later I’m still digging.
 
Written by @gfletchy (Graham Fletcher)
 

Online Professional Development Sessions

Care for a Game?

Criteria for Good Games and Apps

This week, one particular post kept flying across my Twitter and Facebook feeds, and I didn’t pay much attention other than to vaguely wonder what a “fact-based app” was. On Friday, someone who is not even a teacher shared it with me, and I finally woke up and paid attention. It was this piece by Tracy Johnston Zager (@tracyzager ): “My Criteria for Fact-Based Apps”.  A fact-based app is typically marketed as fun and engaging games or activities for students to practice math skills at their own pace. I’ve had some experience with some of these apps, and after reading Tracy’s post, I realized what it was that was bothering me about a lot of them. Most of them use the math as a dangling carrot. There is a distinct border between the math and the fun.

Tracy lists her three baseline, non-negotiable criteria for recommending such an app: that there be no time constraint, that there be a conceptual basis for the operations, and that mistakes must be handled productively. Sounds kind of like a good classroom!

Tracy names a few apps that do it well, as well as some that don’t. I’ve always loved Explorelearning’s gizmos, and although they aren’t listed in the post, (which Tracy points out is not exhaustive), I think they would meet the criteria. She also directs readers to teacher.desmos.com (where I’ve been spending a lot of my time lately), for examples of engaging activities in which the math is indistinguishable from the fun (for example, marbleslides). I couldn’t agree more.

Written by Audrey McLaren (@a_mcsquared)

Number Grid Tic-Tac-Toe

Speaking of math games, Joe Schwartz posts an excellent game that he developed for his second grade students: Number Grid Tic-Tac-Toe. In the game, students try to get 4 squares in a row. All they have to do is write in the correct number to take the space! It’s a wonderful way to build fluency with the 100 grid while also giving kids a chance to think strategically about winning the game! The math is embedded deeply in the game, and kids may notice all sorts of patterns within the board that they wouldn’t otherwise notice.

Joe posts about some extensions and wrinkles that you can add to make the game more challenging. I don’t know what Tracy Zager thinks of this math game, but I have a pretty good guess…

Written by Kent Haines (@MrAKHaines)

Five By Five

Recently, I came across Sara VanDerWerf’s (@saravdwerf) post about a game she has been keeping secret for 24 years! I’m not sure why she has chosen now to break her silence, but what’s done is done…unless you work in her district. In which case she is very clear that you are not allowed to use the game if you teach at a school that feeds into hers. (She’s so passionate about it, I felt obligated to share that caveat.)

Sara’s class plays this game only *one* day per school year, the day before winter break. This might give the impression that this is a throwaway game, but in fact there’s some interesting strategy to it. So much so that one reader went so far as to design an Excel spreadsheet to find out how to optimize the score. You can find a link to that spreadsheet in the comments on her post along with a few other reader-recommended games.

Written by Brian Bushart (@bstockus)

Online Professional Development Sessions

Things to Check Out

Teaching Problems & the Problems of Teaching

If getting Dan Meyer’s pot stirrer award wasn’t good enough to get you reading Dylan Kane’s blog then maybe this will be. Dylan has begun to unpack Magdalene Lampert’s Teaching Problems and the Problems of Teaching in a series of posts on his blog. Dylan is going chapter by chapter to dig into the type of ambitious mathematics teaching that Lampert writes about in her book. Dylan starts here, so you might as well, where he describes his background and his goals for reading the book.  

Michael Pershan also investigates Lampert’s book from another angle, that of the teacher/writer.

If you want to know more about Lampert’s ambitious math teaching go to TEDD.org developed by the University of Washington, where Lampert’s ideas are at the forefront of their work.  

All of this has inspired me to do my own investigation of Lampert’s book and look what just came in the mail!

Other Classrooms

Have you ever been in a colleague’s classroom, for whatever reason, even if it was for only 30 seconds? Were you able to notice anything?

Two years ago, my colleague and I made it a habit to visit each other’s classrooms during our prep periods. Besides the #MTBoS, it was the BEST professional development available to me each day. I was able to steal ideas and immediately use them with my students. I share this experience with teachers at conferences and trainings, but never have anything to point them to that might guide, encourage, and support them in this wonderful opportunity. Enter Steve Wyborney.

Steve Wyborney has posted a practical (and concise) series of posts on his blog titled Stepping Into Each Other’s Classrooms.

Steve says it best:

There may be teachers just a few moments down the hallway who are using highly effective strategies that could quickly empower our own instruction and positively impact our students.

I offer 4 challenges and several practical suggestions to turn that nearby opportunity into a powerful possibility.

In addition to the posts, Steve has included “The Animated Learning Walks Series” of videos for you and colleagues to refer to. Check them out and watch how you will take your teaching to a new level of awesome. My favorite is The Teaming Exchange.