This Week at the Global Math Department / Global Math Department

Edited By Chase Orton @mathgeek76

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Online Professional Development Sessions

Fractions Forever — A Rational Aproach
Presented by Margie Pligge and Nancy Mueller

Don’t wait until your fraction unit to introduce fraction problems. We will use a framework to explore problems and number choices that help students make sense of fraction operations. Attendees will experience math talks, look at student work, and leave with specific grade level guidelines to teach fractions forever.

To join this meeting tonight 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 “Building a Badging System: Let Your Students See Math In Action.”

The #MTBoS Never Sleeps

Drop Everything and Math

I saw this tweet from my friend Alecia Ford (@AleciaHiggFord) talking about how Madison Knowe (@knowemath) had a list of questions in her classroom and the last question was “What would the math equivalent of drop everything and read time look like?”

This has been a question on my mind a lot this year as we implemented “silent sustained reading” (SSR) time in my school. I was a little jealous and have been considering ways that we could potentially help students have this same relationship with math. So I posed the question back to Alecia. This was her response:

Then Madison weighed in with the ways she has been trying to incorporate it more in her own classroom with this tweet:

I love the idea of a “math play toolbox” and having games and puzzles as well as math books. And then Joel (@joelbezaire) offered up a newsletter from Kent Haines (@KentHaines) and a few games (Cat Stack and Manifolds) to pick up as a starting point.

How about y’all? What strategies have you tried to be able to have “drop everything and math” time as part of your school day? How do your students respond to this idea?

Amber Thienel
@amberthienel

[Editor’s Note: If you want to read more on the phrase “drop everything and math,” check out this Tracy Zager’s (@TracyZager) post.]

A New Form of Flashcards

Tired of traditional flashcards? Me too! That’s why I was excited to see Berkeley Everett’s (@BerkeleyEverett) Math Flips resource. Rather than having a question on one side and the solution on the other like a traditional flashcard, Math Flips have an exercise on one side and a related exercise example on the other. For example:

Berkeley’s purpose for this is to promote relational understanding rather than answer-getting. I love this progression of questions:

He credits other math educators including Chrissy Newell, who created a number talk with two related problems and the question sequence “How many? How do you know?” and “How many NOW? How do you know?”, Annie Fetter and Joe Schwartz, who say “Ask about ideas, not answers,” and the amazing number sense routines shared by Steve Wyborney (www.stevewyborney.com). He invites YOU to send ideas/feedback to Berkeley (email or Twitter) or make your own.