This Week: Take Care of Yourself and Lots of Creativity!!!

Edited By Sahar Khatri @khatrimath

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Online Professional Development Sessions

Many teachers would agree that math games and puzzles are engaging, but how can we increase their potential to deepen conceptual understanding, as well as fluency? As we explore games and puzzles, we will consider how simple changes to basic games structures, questions, assessment, and management strategies can transform the use of familiar games and puzzles in our classrooms. Join us tonight at 9 PM (EST) and Unleash the Power of Math Games and Puzzles, K-5. RSVP here.

Highlights from last week: Children have an over-reliance on counting, they lack number sense, and the manipulatives we use in the early grades actually hinder students’ abilities to progress to more advanced addition strategies. This session discussed why these three ideas keep kids from being fluent with their addition facts AND what we can do in the classroom to help.Check out the recording by clicking here .

Great Blogging Action

4 Ways to Leave School at School

Image result for balance work and life

Do you have this problem like I do where you know so many things that you’d like to be doing that would be amazing for student learning? We need to remember sometimes that it’s important to strive for the ideal and realize that though we may never reach it we can always be growing towards it. Otherwise if we aren’t careful we’ll burn out.

Zach Cresswell reminds us of the importance of having a life outside of school in his recent post 4 Ways to Leave School at School. He gives great suggestions for some easy things that we can all be doing to allow us the recovery time we all need. That’s not to say that those of us crazy people who spend our spare time reading things like the GMD Newsletter can’t do that, though! That’s fun, not work, right?

He gives practical suggestions for:

Before you leave work
On the way home
Embracing the moment
Understanding that you can’t fix everything

~ by Matthew Engle (@pickpocketbme)

The 1-2-3-4-5 Punch

“I think I have the best of both worlds here can pack a powerful 1-2-3-4-5 punch!”

Jon Orr used student-centered Pentomino activities that deliver critical thinking, manipulation with numbers, algebraic thinking, and lots of creativity. No matter how you slice it, this post will take your algebraic expressions and equations unit to a whole new level or two or three… Go check it out!