Online Professional Development Sessions

The #MTBoS Never Sleeps

The SMPs in Geometry

I agree with Mike! Graham Fletcher has taken his SMP lens to the realm of elementary geometry! Recently, Graham shared a post about Geometric Subitzing Cards. In the past he has also created great geometric and measurement 3-act tasks like The Big Pad, Packing Sugar, and Piles of Tiles. Now he’s done it again!

Graham developed a geometry task he’s calling Geo-Dotting. The TL:DR is it is an open-ended task that allows students to discover and explore the properties of shapes. Students get an image like the one below. They use it to create shapes by connecting the dots, and then they discuss the properties with classmates. Each image has different pathways and highlights Graham’s personal commitment to the integration of mathematical practices in his, and most importantly, children’s work.

Written by Andrew Gael (@bkdidact)

My Mind is on Special Education

This week I had the privilege of speaking with two special education teachers about their feelings of hopelessness and sadness with a system they feel is failing students with disabilities.  In their words, they are expected to hold their students to the same standards as their regular education counterparts and are discouraged from doing what they deem necessary to meet their students where they are.  For some time now it has been my belief that special education teachers should be allowed autonomy for meeting students’ needs and helping them progress towards the grade level standards.  Unfortunately, at least at my school, teachers feel pigeon-holed by grade level standards and revert to teaching from the textbook and teaching by telling.  Without the proper resources and mindset, it’s easy to give into assumptions about the learning capabilities of students with disabilities.

That’s what makes this presentation by Andrew Gael and friends so amazing.  It challenges you to consider both your assumptions and mindset about student learning.  Within this presentation various strategies are shared from real classrooms with real students. (I stress this because these aren’t hypothetical ideas.)  I can only imagine how engaged teachers were as they watched this presentation, as reading through the slides made me want to scream, “Students with disabilities can do math!”  

This post and this post by @Mathtechy explain how she has applied her learning from the book From Patterns to Algebra in her special education classroom.  These posts provide even more evidence about the effects of resources and mindset on student success.  From these posts it is safe to say her classroom does not reflect the “one inch deep, one inch wide” dilemma discussed in this post by @bkdidact.  It is also backed up by this article from TERC.

Those two special education teachers and I ended our conversation with this statement, “Be sad, but not hopeless.  Use the sadness to be the change you want to see.”  To engage in the discuss about supporting students with disabilities, noin #SwDMathChat every 2nd and 4th Thursday at 9pm.

Written by Jenise Sexton (@MrsJeniseSexton)

On Twitter, It’s Gift-Giving Season All Year

I’d say “Christmas came early for math teachers this week” but let’s face it, Twitter is a non-stop sharing palooza for teachers.

This isn’t about a blog post, but a GeoGebra book created by the stunningly prolific Tim Brzezinski (@dynamic_math). This book contains discovery-based learning activities, both his own creations and that of the ultimate GeoGebrainiacs: Jennifer Silverman (@jensilvermath) , Steve Phelps (@giohio), and Dr. Ted Coe (@drtedcoe).  It’s organized by CCSS. Just go. It’s amazing, and Tim promises there’s one on the way for functions.

I’d also like to share this post by Manan Shah (@shahlock), which is a continuation from my last post 3 weeks ago, about students developing and using their own formulas.  I love the idea of “breaking” formulas to scrutinize them. And I’d never heard of the butterfly method!

Written by Audrey McLaren (@a_mcsquared)