This Week at the Global Math Department / Global Math Department

Edited By Chase Orton @mathgeek76

Online Professional Development Sessions

True Talk with the Gurus of Open Up Resources 6-8 Math
Presented by Sara Vaughn, Martin Joyce, Morgan Stipe, and Jen Arberg

Implementing a new curriculum is never easy – especially when it involves completely changing your teaching methods and philosophy. Each of these “Gurus” experienced such change when they adopted the problem based Open Up Resources 6–8 Math Curriculum. Learn from their classroom and district successes and challenges and get a glimpse of what makes a problem based curriculum engaging and challenging for all learners including Students with Disabilities and English Language Learners.

Join @Vaughn_trapped, @martinsean, @mrsstipemath, and @jenarberg and leave with ready to use instructional strategies you can implement in your classroom tomorrow using this free and open curriculum.

To join this meeting when it starts at 9pm Eastern (or RSVP if it’s before 9pm), click here.

Did you miss last week’s webinar? Click here to watch “Catalyzing Change in High School Mathematics.”

The #MTBoS Never Sleeps

[Editor’s Note: I invited Amber and Howie to put an ear to the ground of the #MTBoS world and report out on some interesting conversations that are happening. Here’s what they found. We share these conversations because we think they matter, and we think you do too. So we invite you to click on the threads, read more, and participate however you feel inspired! Happy geeking out! And Happy New Year!]

Navigating Through Twitter

I saw this tweet from Tim Bennett about how we can all use social media more efficiently as teachers to find what we need. Our time is precious. When you’re looking for ways to be better at teaching a certain topic, it can be frustrating having to sift through posts that talk about building relationships with students. I really liked Kate Nowak’s tweet showing that it’s not all about relationships:

It is important to grow both in student-to-teacher connections as well as being able to build great, engaging lessons for our students. Unfortunately, sometimes my Twitter feed feels a bit lopsided on this matter. If you feel like Tim, or you want to help people like him, here are some of my suggestions:

Follow hashtags such as #geomchat, #alg1chat, and #statschat to find more content-specific advice. [Editor’s Note: Here are more hashtags.]
Just like Natalie Perez says, simply ask! The Twitter community is more than happy to help. Just like we cannot read our students’ minds, we cannot help other teachers if we don’t know what they are looking for.
Meg Craig suggests following some blogs that include lesson plans. I personally love Sarah Carter’s (@mathequalslove) blog.

Finding the information we need on Twitter may feel like finding a needle in a haystack, but it doesn’t have to be. Remember that we are all here to help each other in many capacities; all we have to do is ask.

Howie Hua
@howie_hua

Thoughts On Grading

Howie Hua (@howie_hua) posed this question to Twitter and got a great response.

The response was quite diverse often steering Howie away from grading using points. Kevin Santry (@MrSantry) talked of using a rubric instead of percentages or points.

I can tell from his responses that Howie has been considering using Standards Based Grading (SBG) in the future. I wonder if this exam and response from the student will be the push to move him in that direction.

This was an interesting response from Scott Figgins (@scott_figgins) that really talks to the purpose of grading.

Grading is such a hot topic and I love that Twitter is a great way to hear from so many points of views. Read through the entire thread of Howie’s post here.

Amber Thienel
@amberthienel