Online Professional Development Sessions

The #MTBoS Never Sleeps

The Value of Feedback

So much goes into providing students with meaningful feedback. But how much do we as teachers work to receive meaningful feedback from our students. I can honestly say it’s rare that I think about receiving feedback on how I can be a better teacher from my students. I’ve asked for feedback about lessons and activities. I’ve even gone as far as asking for feedback on instructional strategies.

Lisa Bejarano has thought of something many of us have not. In her original post, “End of School Year Survey”, the Crazy Math Teacher Lady embedded an extensive survey for students to complete. The survey was filled with comments about Mrs. B. It shows the level of ownership she takes over her teaching. It shows her value in reflecting.

And because she has updated the survey, it just reinforced the notion that amazing teachers are always reflective. As you view her survey, you may find yourself somewhere on this spectrum, far left- “why would I do that?” and far right- “dammit I’m doing that!”

Written by Jenise Sexton (@MrsJeniseSexton)

A Most Wonderful Time to be a Math Teacher

I’ll say it again – this is the most exciting time to be a math teacher, thanks to the combination of GeoGebra, Desmos, and Twitter. Someone creates, then shares on Twitter, then others run with the ball. Or with the “amazeball” as it turns out! Here’s what I mean:

Vincent Pantaloni (@panlepan) created these instructions on how to create an animated gif of a GeoGebra and here is a collection of his GeoGebra gifs on Twitter. I then saw some gifs made by Tim Brezinski (@dynamic_math) and Steve Phelps (@giohio).  

Next I see crossover between GeoGebra and Desmos. Steve Phelps (@giohio) is a GeoGebrainiac who has now made his “first marbleslide activity with @Desmos. Plinko!?! I can’t wait to see how else Steve will use Desmos.

Speaking of GeoGebrainiacs, and people who are fluent in both GeoGebra and Desmos, Andrew Knauft (@aknauft) heard my call for help on Twitter about making a Desmos activity on vectors, and made this. Now I get to figure out how to make a marbleslide game using his vectors!

Hope I don’t drop the amazeball!

Written by Audrey McLaren (@a_mcsquared)

Join Our Team!

The @GlobalMathDept is looking for volunteers to help create great online PD for math teachers. We’re currently seeking hosts, bookers, and writers for the 2017-18 school year. Check out this flyer for more details about each volunteer opportunity.

Ready to sign up? Fill out this form to let us know which position(s) you’d like to volunteer for.

Online Professional Development Sessions

Research-based Strategies that Build Procedural Fluency: Procedural fluency is more than knowing facts and performing algorithms well! Recent research provides excellent insights into what we can do in our teaching to build procedural fluency (and conceptual understanding). This hour will focus on these instructional strategies, tools, and ideas. Presented by Jenny Bay-Williams. RSVP and join us by clicking here. 9 PM EST!

Last week: Making the Most of Mistakes
Presented by Peg Cagle (@pegcagle)

We need to do more than normalize errors in our classrooms – we need to leverage them! Examine ways to capitalize on student mistakes to drive instruction, deepen homework and frame quizzes/tests as assessments of and as learning, leading to greater student agency and lower risk aversion. To listen to the recording, click here.

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Have A Piece of Desmos

Last week, Desmos released an activity to help support Geometry teachers. The Sector Area activity focuses on the sector area of a circle, starting with student intuition and working its way to students making generalizations about sector area in circles. Brilliant!

If this is a sample of what’s to come from Desmos regarding more geometry focused activities, I’m super excited. In case you might have missed it, they currently have a beta geometry tool for all of us to try out and provide feedback on.

Euclid’s Head Scratcher

Fawn found another head scratcher for us. And in typical fashion, she tested it out on her students and reports back to us to delight in. She found Euclid’s Algorithm and presented various stages to her students so they could look for patterns and structure. Students made beautiful conjectures and demonstrated high engagement and interest. Bookmark this post. I’m sure you’ll return to it many times, just like I have done so.

~by Andrew Stadel (@mr_stadel)

Online Professional Development Sessions

Last week at Global Math Steve Wyborney shared ways to promote mathematical discourse using animated illustrations.  Click here to check out his session.

Word From the #MTBoS

No one reading this is perfect, we all know that. At the same time, it is easy for us to mask our flaws when we are around other professionals. I certainly feel this way, and I was reminded of it when I was reading Annie Perkins post #Lessonfail and Self Doubt. Annie tells a full story of a conversation that began in the chat room of Tracy Zager’s Global Math Department talk, #lessonclose. This would go on to make the full rounds on the #MTBoS as it spilled over into a Twitter conversation, and then became a blog post, to which others replied with their own blog posts.

Some of the notable posts that followed were from Ilona Vashchyshyn, Annie Forest, and Madison Knowe. One thing Madison speaks about is the need to use her blog as a place to show off all sides of her professional life, not just the highlight reel. “From here on, this blog is not a place to show off myself, it’s a place to be known in all my professional shortcomings and inquires.” While it may be hard to imagine yourself wanting to write about your own #lessonfail, perhaps it is worth it to think that teachers who are in the place that Annie was are hoping for “..a bit more of, “I’ve been there, too.”

Written by Carl Oliver (@carloliwitter)

It’s the end of the year, and many of us are reflecting on the year – things we wish we had done better, or looking forward, things we want to do next year.  For many of us, myself included, this process may involve (in part) some metaphorical (I hope!) self-flagellation.  But people are writing hopefully about these practices, and in the interest of letting yourself off the hook just a bit, and having a more balanced perspective towards your future school years, here are a few good reads.
 
In Things We’re Going to Need You To Stop Saying, part 5 the Curmudgeon (self-names) debunks several blanket statements that may fit into 140 characters (ahem), statements that are ultimately harmful to good teaching.  Examples include:
If your exam questions only use integers then they aren’t Real World^(tm) Questions.
If your exam questions require a calculator, then you’re asking the wrong questions.
 
Curmudgeon points out that the learning curve requires questions with all types of input, which anyone who has designed a lesson with scaffolding well knows.
 

Telanna, over at Chasing Number Sense jumped feet first into a fray of student feedback.  Responding to a call to action from in a course with Kaneka Turner, Telanna collected data from 50 3rd graders on their experiences in math class and their perceptions of themselves as math students.  

THEN, she worked with them to dig a little deeper into that data in order to gain insight into her practice in the classroom.  Talk about facing oneself as a teacher fearlessly!  I love the way she ended her post:  “I am glad I did not just end my year with the assumption that I know what is going on through my students’ heads as they enter and leave my math classes. I still wonder what I did wrong, what I need to change next year so that my students have this realization about the nature of math as a subject earlier than May.”
 

I think Don Steward gets written about in this newsletter at least every quarter; I myself have contributed several posts about his website.  Is there no end to the man’s brilliance?  This came up in my feed this morning:
                                    
Of course, this exercise came with well-scaffolded examples of increasing difficulty, and it’s a great Open Middle type of problem.  Thanks, Don!
 

Food for thought:  an article in the Atlantic at the end of April, How Does Race Affect a Student’s Math Education? discusses the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) ways in which ‘whiteness’ influences the way students of color, and particularly black students, are taught math.  It’s an interesting and important read, as is the paper it references “A Framework for Understanding Whiteness in Mathematics Education”.  We’ve got the whole summer to reflect on how we can transform our classrooms into equitable spaces.

Cheers –
Wendy Menard
@wmukluk

Written by Graham Fletcher (@gfletchy)

Online Professional Development Sessions

The #MTBoS Never Sleeps

The Math Missus and More!

I just found out, via Jocelyn Dagenais (@jocedage) about a wonderful new Canadian series on the CBCNL YouTube channel, called “The Math Missus”. Catchy title, no? It deals with the myth that there is such a thing as a “math person” – that you’ve either got it or you don’t. I still struggle with the question myself, even as a math teacher, so it helps to hear from the experts. Bonus that they’re from my country of Canada!

John Golden (@mathhombre) shared this post by Harry O’Malley (@harrytomalley) about how simulations are a better way to represent data than traditional graphs. It seems related to (but I’m not sure) my recent thoughts about how I can get my students to model a function’s rate of change as opposed to the shape of its curve. At any rate, it really struck a note.

I once wrote a post on my own blog about being an explainaholic. Michael Pershan’s post about going beyond the beyond in our explanations (@mpershan) offered me some some intervention – specifically how to get better at explaining. And of course, Michael explains explaining very well!

Written by Audrey McLaren (@a_mcsquared)

Online Professional Development Sessions

#LessonClose: Math coach Tracy Zager sees a pattern in lessons: teachers often put far more energy into planning and implementing the open of the lesson than they do for the close. The open is essential for engagement, motivation, and access, but the close is where students have the opportunity to take a broader perspective on their learning, make new connections, cement understanding, and generate new questions. In this session, we’ll explore different purposes, techniques, and formats for lesson closes. We’ll also discuss different strategies for dealing with the main obstacle to thoughtful closes: limited time.9 PM EST!

Last week we took a break. Make sure to join us for the webinar tonight.

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4 Students, 1 Question, 1 Wish

A recent blog post by Joe Schwartz reminds me how important it is to both learn about and care for our students as much as possible. In his post, 4 Students, 1 Question, 1 Wish, Joe details his teaching relationship with 4 students, their personality traits, and their math thinking around one single question.

Imagine knowing as much as Joe about all of our students so we can teach to the student. Imagine writing a blog post about 4 of your students each week detailing your experience and journey both of you are on. Imagine finding out as much as possible about four of your students and then being able to teach them math better as result. I find Joe’s post inspiring, refreshing, and encouraging. Thanks Joe!

~by Andrew Stadel (@mr_stadel)