This Week: Refining, Global Math Project, and Math Interactions and Routines

Edited By Sahar Khatri @MyMathscape

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Online Professional Development Sessions

Integrating Computational Thinking into the Math Classroom: In this webinar, participants will begin to understand and identify ways in which computational thinking can be incorporated into the math classroom through the context of coding. A wide range of examples and evidence-based practices will be shared. Math topics will include geometry, patterning and plotting points on the Cartesian Plane. Coding tools will include Scratch, ScratchJr, Python, Sphero and Arduino. Participants will be inspired to explore ways in which they can use computational thinking to inform their own pedagogical practices, enrich their lessons and enhance student understanding of math ideas. RSVP and join us at 9 PM EST.

Highlight from last week: Diving into the Desmos Dashboard
Presented by Adam Poetzel. The teacher dashboard that accompanies all Desmos activities is a flexible tool that can be used to monitor student progress, facilitate class discussions, and highlight student responses. In this webinar, participants will experience different features of the dashboard while discussing pedagogical options available to promote student engagement in mathematical thinking. This session is geared towards teachers in grades 5-12 who are beginner to intermediate users of Desmos activities, but all are welcome to tune in to the recording here.

Great Blogging Action

Four Phases

Jonathan Claydon reflected on the evolution of a lesson/activity over Four Phases. Read his entire post here.

Phase 1: Experiment	Phase 2: Refine

Phase 3: Redeploy	Phase 4: Keep or Scrap

Jonathan’s post reminds us that a teacher’s job is never complete because we’re constantly desiring to be better teachers, finding ways to provide our students with richer learning experiences than before. He says, “Each year I picked a small aspect to change. I focused.”

Remaining focused and picking small aspects to change is part of a system Jonathan has developed for long-term growth and success. Learning is a journey for teachers because we are students of teaching.

I challenge you to reflect on your lessons and activities for the remainder of the school year so that you may continue to grow and benefit from the art of refinement.

~by Andrew Stadel (@mr_stadel)

I’m hoping you’ve all had the chance to experience the Hour of Code. This has been a movement that has exploded all across the world in an effort to expose as many as people as possible to coding. They’ve been reaching tens of millions of people in 180+ countries.

Now it’s time for us to join in on bringing fun math to people on a global scale! Math is incredibly beautiful and fun to do, and everybody should have the chance to experience this. The Global Math Project has been working hard on getting ready for the first annual Global Math Week in October of 2017, which is aimed at bringing engaging mathematics to the world!

Visit the website to get a sneak peek at the piece of mathematics that will be highlighted this year and keep a lookout for the sign up soon on the website. I would encourage anybody who has this same passion to be involved by getting your school to participate and reaching out to your circle to get others to participate as well.

Hope to see you participate!

~ by Matthew Engle (@pickpocketbme)

Recently, Brain Bushart reminded us that one of the most important aspects of anything implemented with students is how they interact with it. “And then I thought of my daughter and all of the experiences we have daily with math. I realized that DreamBox might be better than nearly every other edtech program for practicing specific skills and working through a coherent progression of ideas, but it’s not the kind of math I want my 5 year old daughter to experience. I don’t want her worrying about whether a computer is telling her her answers are correct or whether she’s taking too long to come up with them or whether she’s finding them in the most efficient way possible.” Even fans of Dreambox (myself included) can get behind this line of thinking when it comes to feedback and mathematical mindsets.

On another note, Jana Sanchez begins her blogging experience by talking about one of her favorite math routines, Which One Doesn’t Belong. She begins by pointing out something that should resonate with any elementary school teacher, “A colleague pointed out that we spend a lot of time at elementary, typically, creating a literacy-rich environment but not very much time making it a numeracy-rich one.”

Finally, David Wees is continuing his work to spread the instructional routine gospel! He is offering two courses on instructional routines. If you can, I recommend learning about how to implement these instructional routines. Instructional routines are not only good for general education students, but have been shown to be a positive experience for students with disabilities as well.

~by Andrew Gael (@bkdidact)

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