Online Professional Development Sessions

A Window Into Our Worlds

What’s Happening in Your Classroom?

One of the many things I love about #mtbos is the sharing of instructional strategies and activities happening within classrooms. In @powersfulmath’s recent post, Classroom Happenings 1/25, she shared two problem solving tasks she has used with her students. Each come from the paid subscription site Mathalicious. Through her collaboration with her colleague, Brooke provides two interactive Algebra 1 activities relating to polynomials. You can also check out activities for 7th grade math in Brooke’s post Classroom Happening 1/18.

It is my belief peering into the classroom of others helps us to grow. Quite often it isn’t convenient to go and observe what others are doing in their classrooms. This makes blogging critical to the professional growth of others. Understanding this idea prompted me to develop a blog specific to my school, Math at Grace Snell. Within it, I highlight those instructional strategies others could benefit from adopting. Equipped with images and narrative, my hope is teachers become inspired to try some of what they read.

Written by Jenise Sexton (@MrsJeniseSexton)

Explore MTBoS Blogging Initiative: Week Three

The Explore MTBoS Blogging Initiative has been a wealth of excellent writing from math teachers at all levels from elementary to college. The initiative just wrapped up its third week, which was about asking better questions. There were some excellent posts from dozens of teachers, which are easily browsed in the comments section to Explore MTBoS’s post about Week 3.

Heather Kohn provides a great, easily-implemented tip for improving questions in her Algebra classroom. She asked her students to find similarities and differences between a system of equations and a system of inequalities, but she wasn’t getting the sort of engagement or responses that she wanted.

So she made the activity into a debate. Instead of asking her kids to find differences, she asked them to find the biggest difference between the systems. Likewise, she asked the students to find the biggest similarity. Suddenly her room came alive with debate as students argued about which similarity or difference was the most significant.
It’s a simple change that maintains the integrity of the activity while providing a more compelling hook for students. And it’s just one of the many great posts happening because of the Explore MTBoS Blogging Initiative. Check it out.

Written by Kent Haines (@MrAKHaines)

Other Highlights from the Explore MTBoS Blogging Initiative

The #mtbos blogging initiative is producing some wonderful posts. Kent’s article about Heather Kohn’s better questions made me go back to find this one by Jennifer Fairbanks’ (@HHSmith) about a better question for solving quadratic equations. She gives her students 3 quadratic equations to solve, along with 3 choices of methods to use, but they can’t use the same method on more than one equation. They have to think before they squander that quadratic formula. What a great way to foster critical thinking!

The Day in the Life theme was fascinating, and inspiring, although tiring to imagine how busy these educators are on a daily basis. This one is from Mark Sanford (@hfxmark), a math teacher, whose day started at 5:30 am and ended at 10 pm. Of course, like many teachers, the actual classroom time only accounts for a  fraction of his day. Jennifer Vadnais’ post is from the perspective of an instructional coach, (@RilesBlue) whose busy day includes dashing from one school to another. Different jobs, but equally demanding, and both are awesome educators, of children and grownups.

Written by Audrey McLaren (@a_mcsquared)