This Week at The Global Math Department / Global Math Department

Edited By Casey McCormick @cmmteach

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Online Professional Development Sessions

Changing the Whole: Exploring Number Relationships Through Shapes

Presented by Molly Rawding

Students benefit from hands-on tasks exploring number, area, and fractional relationships when the value of the whole changes. We’ll explore different ways to provide opportunities for students to make connections and develop number sense.

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

Last week Amanda McGarry presented the webinar, ” Foster Student Engagement and Exploration with Interactive Simulations.” If you missed it, make sure to catch the recording!Don’t forget – recordings for all previously held webinars can be found here.

The #MTBoS Never Sleeps

Hook – Line – Sinker

John Rowe has recently release a free eBook titled, Hook Line Sinker.

This book is a collection of problems, lessons and activities for mathematics teachers organized by topic. Many of these are links to activities described or created by #MTBoS teachers. John sequenced these activities into three categories:

Hook – Introductory activities that might generate interest in the topic, don’t rely on prerequisite knowledge and help to “create the headache” or a need for the skills introduced
Line – Activities to build on students existing knowledge.
Sinker – Activities to help consolidate learning and make connections to other topics.

Amie Albrecht suggested on Twitter that the Hook-Line-Sinker categories map nicely onto the first three levels of Depth of Knowledge with Recall and Reproduction (DOK1), Skills and Concepts (DOK2) and Strategic Thinking (DOK3).

The book also contains some links to some great online resources and problem banks.

You can get John’s free eBook at http://mrrowe.com/book or download it from Books at https://itunes.apple.com/au/book/hook-line-sinker/id1452938209

Written by Erick Lee (@TheErickLee)

A Rabbit Hole Worth Falling Into… TWICE

Do you want students to have meaningful math talk more often. If so, follow this rabbit hole:

Cathy Yenca’s recent blog post “Using Apple Classroom for “Stand & Talks” is Cathy’s personal testimony for using Sara VanDerWerf’s “Stand & Talks.”

A few soundbites (I mean textbites) from Cathy’s post:

The vocabulary I heard was impressive!
I have found that using a “Stand & Talk” before a Desmos Activity can be highly effective!
During the share-out phase, students not only CORRECTLY matched the graphs, but ALSO entertained the idea of what the graphs might mean if the descriptions beside each graph DID represent the graph.
So silly and fun!

Follow the rabbit hole, people. Go!

Written by Andrew Stadel (@mr_stadel)

Learning About Teaching

February has been difficult, for a number of reasons, in a number of ways. The stress of our profession is a real one, and mathematics is no exception. Tweets about leaving teaching, searching for meaning, and avoiding burnout are not uncommon. Some are brave enough to blog about it as Lybrya Kebreab has done. She was courageous enough to pursue her passion, share her learning with us through her blog, and also share her uncertainty as she navigates her current transition.

However, what is admirable to me is that while in her transition, she is still pushing herself to learn how to teach mathematics well. It is her passion. It is her life.

In her latest piece, Lybrya discusses teaching a lesson on functions as delineated in Making Sense of Mathematics Teaching: High School, from #DNAMath. Students are to decide which population has the greatest growth from four functions, which she brilliantly turned into a WODB activity that allowed students to display their wealth of knowledge.

After the first class period of the two-period lesson, she challenged them to reflect on their learning, and charted the results.

Lybrya closes her blog humbly, asking readers for feedback on her lesson. She is someone who truly humanizes her lessons, attending to students’ identities and agency. Her blog is highly recommended.

Written by Marian Dingle (@DingleTeach)