Keeping It Real (World) at Global Math Department

Edited By Brian Bushart @bstockus

Forward

Online Professional Development Sessions

Bringing the World Outside School Into Your Math Classroom
Presented by Shelby Aaberg (@ShelbyAaberg)

Everyone’s got problems (of the math variety), especially people outside your school. Whether it’s an oil storage tank in an auto shop, a mailbox on a mail carrier’s route, or raising public awareness about rabies-infected skunks, seeing the math in the world is easy. Turning that math into a lesson or an activity for students is the tricky part. We will see examples of engaging math problems from the community. We will discuss a teacher’s considerations when deciding how to incorporate problems from the world outside school and some of the challenges teachers may encounter when collaborating with people outside the education world.

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

Last week at Global Math Jessica Balli shared about using peer feedback to increase student understanding.

Check out the recording here if you missed the presentation.

Looking at the Past, Present, and Future

Simply the Best (of Last Year)

Tina Cardone and Ilana Horn have done yeoman’s work by compiling the best posts of 2015 from around the Math Twitter Blogosphere (#MTBoS). Their new book, The Best of the Math Teacher Blogs 2015, is now available! In it, you will find many of Global Math Department’s favorite presenters and contributors, as well as new faces that you might not have heard from before.

Additionally, all profits from this book go toward scholarships to help teachers attend Twitter Math Camp in the summer. If you want to support this community while getting a compilation of its best work, this is your chance. Check it out.

(Full disclosure, one of my blog posts is included in this book. But I would be a full-throated supporter of the book regardless, just because I think it’s a great resource for our community.)

Written by Kent Haines (@MrAKHaines)

Current Events

On my radar this week: Keeping organized, and getting ready for end-of-year exams. Cathy Yenca’s post about how she uses googledocs to keep valuable resources organized. It fits with something I once heard an organizational guru say: “Organization is really about retrieval.” Amen to that.

In my province, there has been some discussion lately about how to best use tools like GeoGebra and Desmos in an exam setting. This article about Geogebra exam mode explains how access to the internet and other types of software are restricted and monitored during an exam. I haven’t yet given any kind of test other than paper-and-pencil, but this offers an interesting alternative.

Written by Audrey McLaren (@a_mcsquared)

Thinking Ahead

I’m already thinking of next year. This year at school we have focused on implementing formative assessment lessons with fidelity. While this instructional practice has infiltrated the day-to-day instruction of some teachers, others are not quite comfortable doing it without a prepared script. This may ring true for you as well. For many teachers, comfort may come from Dan Ehlert’s post 5 Practices: Stacking Cups.

Within the post, Dane provides a strategic approach to implementing problem-based learning, which begins with a book. I love the excerpts from the book infused into the post as they are aligned with Dane’s thought process. It may be helpful for the reader to follow in the footsteps of this blogger and implement the same or a similar 3-act or problem-based task.

Written by Jenise Sexton (@MrsJeniseSexton)

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