Online Professional Development Sessions

Something to Read on Those Long Winter Nights

A Notable Progression

Whenever I write for GMD, I try to do so from a middle school perspective.  This week, the elementary teacher in me screamed at The Progression of Multiplication written by @gfletchy.  Not only does it give a quick but powerful view of multiplication from 2nd to 5th grade for elementary teachers, but I feel it will be as equally helpful to my middle school friends.  6th grade teachers need to know from where students’ understanding comes.  6th and 7th grade teachers alike will find a method for simplifying and factoring expressions within the strategies discussed within 3rd and 4th grades.  8th and 9th grade teachers can glean ideas for teaching the multiplication of binomials and polynomials from a conceptual perspective.  So much to learn here.

Written by Jenise Sexton (@MrsJeniseSexton)

The Most Wonderful Time of the Career
 

It’s the most wonderful time of the year – or at least the most wonderful time to be a math teacher. There are some really smart people out there creating truly great tools for math teachers. The tools I’m writing about this week came to us from Desmos and GeoGebra.

This week, Christmas came early, thanks to Desmos. They released their new delight, their new game-changer, and it was literally a delightful game called Marbleslides. It’s easy to deploy to your students, it’s easy for them to jump right into it, it’s addictive, and it’s chock full of math goodness. It’s as if a really cool video game married the Desmos activity builder. You can read about it here, or you can just search #marbleslides on Twitter.  Or just sign up at teacher.desmos.com, and play it yourself!

A couple of weeks ago, GeoGebra released their newest feature – GeoGebra Groups. As if GeoGebra hadn’t already transformed my life enough, they’ve now made it really easy to combine many media, like for example a GeoGebra or a video, with a task, send it to all your students with one click, see their work, and have a discussion about it with them all in the same space. You can read more about it here.  All my students are now signed up, and I can’t wait to use it in the New Year.

Written by Audrey McLaren (@a_mcsquared)

Count With Me
 

This week Joe Schwartz (@JSchwartz10A) shared the story of Alex, a 1st grader who is having some issues with counting. Is Alex counting 14 or 100 dogs? He thinks it’s both! Read Joe’s excellent blog post to hear more of Alex’s story.
Oh, and this is one time where you totally should check out the comments. No, seriously! Counting is something we might take for granted as adults, but it’s quite the complex and multi-faceted skill for young children to grapple with. The #MTBoS community came out in force to offer their thoughts and support.

Check out Joe’s post and the fantastic conversation in the comments at his blog.

Written by Brian Bushart (@bstockus)

The Global Math Department is looking for individuals who are interested in planning the Tuesday night webinars hosted on Big Marker. GMD bookers contact potential speakers regarding speaking opportunities, and provide them with details on planning sessions. If you are interested in being more involved with the Global Math Department, contact Heather at heather.m.kohn@gmail.com or Dylan at dkane47@gmail.com.