Online Professional Development Sessions

It Came From the #MTBoS

Math On-A-Stick!

This week I will be glued to Twitter, watching what happens every day at Math On-A-Stick. Started last year by Christopher Danielson (@Trianglemancsd), Math on a Stick is a free exhibit at the Minnesota State Fair where kids can play and explore math in a way that few of them have ever done before. This includes tesselating turtles, Truchet tiles, pattern machines, egg sorts, and The Number Game. You can get a sense for the exhibit by seeing this short video.

Adding to the fun, Ilana Horn (@ilana_horn) and Melissa Grisalfi will be there doing research on how kids interact with math in this setting! Ilana wrote a quick summary of the project on her blog, and there is more to follow as her team examines the data they’ve collected.

Written by Kent Haines (@KentHaines)

When in Doubt, Listen to Fawn 

Rather you are entering your first week of school or fourth like me, these are definitely ideas you should use to challenge your current perspective and make the proper adjustments to make this year better than last.

Written by Jenise Sexton (@MrsJeniseSexton)

The Match Game

This show used to be on tv when I was a kid, and what’s happening these days in the #mtbos reminds me of it.

I’ve been saying for a long time that this is truly an exciting time to be a teacher, but my reason for feeling that way has shifted a bit. It used to be because of all the new tools like GeoGebra and Desmos, which we can match up with specific concepts. But now these tools are being matched with instructional practices to exponentially crank things up. For example, Michael Pershan (@mpershan) wrote about using Desmos Activity Builder to Talk About Student Work,  Amy McNabb (@amcnabb3) tweeted how she is using the new Desmos card sort to make “Always, Sometimes, Never” activities. This summer, at TMC16, during David Wees’s (@davidwees) TMC16 session on Contemplate then Calculate, Alex Overwijk (@alexoverwijk) observed that it would be a perfect routine to introduce Fawn Nguyen’s Visual Patterns. Finally John Golden (@mathhombre) tweeted a link to this video about Joshua Kwon’s students, who are coding in math class, which he introduces to them with a Desmos activity.

Gene Rayburn would be proud!

Written by Audrey McLaren (@a_mcsquared)

Online Professional Development Sessions

It Came From the #MTBoS

Start Off the Year Right!

As we inch closer and closer to the first day of school, so much is starting to come out about how to spend the first days. It seems that people generally feel the same way about starting the year out right:

• Establishing norms is important for setting the tone of your year together

• Kids need to experience the norms to really understand them and feel their need

• Norms take purposeful and consistent implementation to last

• Proper implementation takes time, but that time is worth it in the long run

I encourage you to look for posts out there to fine tune your week 1 tasks. A great place to start, which is cited by so many as inspiration, is with Jo Boaler’s Week of Inspirational Math and her norms at YouCubed. Laura Wagenman has a great post found here chock-full of links to activities and tasks which align with Jo Boaler’s norms. I really liked how Mark Chubb posted on these same norms here, and at the end he gave some really good suggestions for the types of tasks to be looking for to establish these norms.

Sara VanDerWerf shared last winter a really awesome task called 100 Numbers that really gets groups looking exactly how you want them to look, complete with a suggested norms checklist for students. Sarah Carter posted about the Broken Circles task which really elicits student need of each other as well, complete with a reflection at the end.

However you do it, start things out right and keep spreading the messages to kids that math is awesome and accessible to everyone!

Written by Matthew Engle (@pickpocketsbme)

Supporting Parents, Supporting Children 

I want to assume that everyone reading this newsletter is already familiar with the website Talking Math With Your Kids. If not, score one for me for introducing it to you! Go, check it out right now! The purpose of the site is to help parents find answers to the question, “We know we need to read with our children every day, but what should we do for math?” In addition to the site, there’s even a hashtag on Twitter – #tmwyk – where parents tweet out snippets as they talk math with their kids.

I’m excited to share this week that there’s now another great resource for supporting parents in supporting their children’s mathematical development: Table Talk Math.

John Stevens has created a weekly newsletter that provides mathematical prompts for families to discuss around the dinner table. So far the newsletter has shared examples of Which One Doesn’t Belong and Would You Rather…?

Be sure to share the link with parents so they can sign up to receive the newsletter. You should sign up for it, too! That way you can talk to parents about what kinds of conversations it sparks at the dinner table.

Written by Brian Bushart (@bstockus)

#ObserveMe

Last week, Robert Kaplinsky blogged about his concern that lack of collaboration amongst teachers at school sites is looking more like teachers being “independent contractors than colleagues.” Read more about what we can do about this concern.

Inspired by a tweet from Heather Kohn, Robert is encouraging us to open our classrooms so others may come observe our teaching and offer us constructive feedback targeted at improvement. Join the craze! It’s far better than any Pokémon game could ever dream about.

Robert’s Call to Action:

Post a sign to let others know they are welcome in your classroom. Here’s a template you can use and below is what it looks like.

Robert is posting your tweets and images about it on his blog, so be sure to let Robert know via Twitter and the #ObserveMe conversation.

Written by Andrew Stadel (@mr_stadel)

Online Professional Development Sessions

Getting back into the swing of things…

PD that doesn’t suck

If you’re looking for some awesome professional development that builds a community culture, then Brian Bushart and Regina Payne got your back.  

In its second year of implementation the Math Rocks Cohort are back at it again as they look harness the power of the MTBoS within their district.  Your can read Brian’s reflections here and here.

From creating blogs and Twitter accounts, to exploring Estimation180 and Which One Doesn’t Belong, right down to the implementation of Number Talks, the teachers of Round Rock ISD will be ready to hit the ground running when class fires back up.

Written by Graham Fletcher (@gfletchy)

#MTBoSBlaugust Rolls On

August is halfway done but plenty of great bloggers are far from finished with their contributions to this month’s writing challenge. Mark Chubb described how finishing the lesson well can provide new learning opportunities in the post Never Skip the Closing Of The Lesson. In this post Mark uses a Marilyn Burns problem (pictured above) to highlight 3 different steps of closing a lesson well. He goes on to provide more information, driving home the point that “Closing a lesson takes time, but skipping the close is the biggest waste of time!”

Over at Math Equals Love, Sarah describes the group game “Guess My Rule.” After reading Elizabeth Cohen’s Designing Groupwork: Strategies for the Heterogeneous Classroom, Sarah was inspired to create this game and to implement it alongside two other games in the first week of school. To learn more, check out the post Guess My Rule.

Lastly, Casey has essentially turned her blog into an acrostic poem. Her latest post focuses on the letter E and has focused on the environment of her classroom. Check out the post to see pictures of her classroom including her “#MTBoS Wall.”

Written by Carl Oliver (@carloliwitter)

Join in the Fun!

It’s not too late to start participating in #MTBoSBlaugust ((MTBoS + Blog + August). The only challenge is to blog more than you normally would–whether that’s one post a week or one post a day!  Sign up and find some great prompts here!

If a blog post seems like too much (due to end-of-summer-laziness or back-to-school-craziness), you can still contribute by writing some encouraging comments on the participating blogs or tweeting out some of your favorite posts! 

Written by Meg Craig (@mathymeg07)

Online Professional Development Sessions

And now for more good stuff…

Extending Our Reach

Sara Van Der Werf has written a beautiful essay about losing a former student to suicide and how we, as teachers, have both an opportunity and a responsibility to reach out and provide comfort to those members of our school communities who experience loss.

To summarize Sara’s advice: go with your gut, and don’t worry so much about what you say to people who are grieving. Just try to say something, because something is better than nothing.

As many teachers prepare to begin the school year anew, it’s important to keep in mind the many ways in which our jobs extend far beyond the content we teach and into the lives of the young people we work with.

Written by Kent Haines (@KentHaines)

Contributions

It’s already three weeks since TMC16, and many, many blogposts have been created since then, but I want to take you back to the astonishingly rich blogging that was achieved every single day of the conference, including Desmos Day, by Greg Taylor (@mathtans). If you weren’t at TMC16, reading his posts will make you feel like you were. If you were at TMC16, reading these posts will make you feel like you were MORE there. And by the way, in one post, Greg asks himself what he contributes to the MTBoS. I can answer that! Just take a look at the sheer quantity and quality of his writing, starting with these puppies:

Descon

Entry 1

Entry 2

Entry 3

Entry 4

After TMC

This is just the tip of the iceberg – Greg actually wrote more posts than those I’ve listed, the links to which are embedded in his daily posts. They go into more detail about specific sessions. Normally, when I write for this newsletter, I put some kind of summary about the post(s) in my article, but there’s just so much here, summarizing would take up a few newsletters. Enjoy – I know I did!

Written by Audrey McLaren (@a_mcsquared)

A Post About Posts, About Posts, About Posts

Mike Wiernicki literally created a black hole of blog posts. As he discussed his work with Blogarithm, he opened the #MTBoS up to multiple blog posts to satisfy anyone’s math palate. His Blogarithm post began with a brief discussion of a 6th grade lesson on building fluency in multiplication using the Pythagoras Square. Then he encouraged us to look at recently added posts to NCTM’s Blogarithm. Much to my surprise, there were many, many posts to choose from.

Rethinking the Gradual Release of Responsibility Model by Tim McCaffrey provides a perspective of many math and science teachers – start with an investigation. Gradual release has become a bit of an education catch phrase. Often those who implement this model try to remain true to the flow laid out within the book written by Fisher and Frey: I do, We do, You do.  McCaffrey’s post provides practical ways to keep inquiry within the math lesson and establish a student-centered environment. He follows this up with Reel ’Em In and discusses an eighth grade lesson using the reverse model of “I do, we do, you do.” He aimed to paint a clear picture, and I think he accomplished that.

Matt Kitchen answers the age old question “When Am I Ever Going to Use This?” with his social emotional response to students’ frustration. Most think we should just explain to students how the math concept we are teaching connects to something we do in real life. Kitchen shows there’s a time and a place. Once we help students process their frustrations, we can have discussions with them as discussed in Show Students the Real Purpose of Math.

I could go on and on, because as I said, it is a black hole.  Go get lost, friends. 🙂

Written by Jenise Sexton (@MrsJeniseSexton)

Online Professional Development Sessions

Great Blogging Action

Hi, I’m Not Good at Math

As the beginning of the school year rapidly approaches (or some have already started), I can’t help but be reminded of meeting students for the first time who say something like,

I’m not good at math.

Or eventually, I’ll meet parents of my students and hear comments like,

Billy was good at math until last year.

or

Susie has always struggled at math.

My worst response was something like, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

My best response was maybe something like, “Tell me more about that.”

If you’re anything like me and have the tendency to lock up at these situations, I believe it is in everyone’s best interest to read (and follow the links at) Christopher Danielson’s recent post titled, On Helping Children to Love Math

I look at it as a chance for us to reflect on our beliefs and rehearse some responses to positively message the importance of mathematical thinking and education. Don’t skip his Hot Chocolate conversation and the simple example we can give parents to practice with their children.

~by Andrew Stadel (@mr_stadel)