Online Professional Development Sessions

It Came From the #MTBoS

Knitting – a Math Teacher Superpower?!?

This article was shared with me by a friend on Facebook – that friend being Scott Delahunt, aka @MorganBallantin. It’s a fascinating read about how math teachers have greatly facilitated the visualization of highly complex shapes by using their knitting needles. An interesting bit of history – Richard Feynman seems to have been the first to notice how knitting can be used to teach math! The article has plenty of links if you want to drill deeper, including this one about an afghan, knit by Pat Ashforth and Steve Plummer, that teaches the multiplication tables – so it’s not just the hyperbolic planes or the Möbius bands that can be rendered with needles. I used to know how to crochet…maybe it’s time to dust those needles off!

Written by Audrey McLaren (@a_mcsquared)

The Secret of the Desmos Activity Builder Guide

If you’ve been nervous about exploring the capabilities of the Desmos Activity Builder, now is the time to jump in. The Activity Builder is a wonderful platform that provides teachers with enormous flexibility, and it can be used from elementary math (plotting fractions on a number line) to calculus (derivatives of a unicycle’s motion).

To help you get started,  Dan Meyer has written a guide to creating great digital activities. Secretly, though, it’s just a great guide for creating activities of any sort. Imagine this post as a summary of Dan’s advice and philosophy over the past 5 years or so. Dan hasn’t given a TED talk in a while, but this post could probably act as his outline.

Written by Kent Haines (@KentHaines)

Online Professional Development Sessions

Great Blogging Action

Cathy Is On Fire

If you’ve never tuned into Cathy Yenca’s blog, carve out a few hours and get plugged in. Recently, she’s been on fire with some great posts, ideas, and a plethora of Desmos activities. Here are two post recaps:

Classroom & Twitter Hodge-Podge

Cathy always expresses her gratitude for the #MTBoS and this post is no exception, ranging from student playlists to Explain Everything to Desmos. As I said, she’s on fire building some amazing Desmos activities. Add this link to your bookmarks and check out her List.ly.

5 Practices in a 1:1 Classroom

Cathy gives us some simple tips on ways to use digital tools and student work to extend the power of NCTM’s 5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematics Discussions. In addition to monitoring student work, Cathy is excited to “see and analyze student work/thinking outside of class.” allowing her to see student mistakes and misconceptions. Even after 15 years of teaching she came across a new mistake. That’s exciting! I highly recommend you check out the rest of her blog post here.

Enjoy!

~by Andrew Stadel (@mr_stadel)

Online Professional Development Sessions

Wanting to do ALL THE {math teacher} THINGS!

Inspiration for the School Year

Here in New York, school doesn’t begin until Thursday (September 8), so I have the advantage of reading about how everyone else begins their school year, making my to-do and to-implement lists ever longer.  As always, there is some tremendous intentional and reflective work going on in the Math Blogosphere.

For example, Anna Blinstein, over at BorshctwithAnna, has written about a Habits of Mind unit that she is doing with her 9th graders – a great use of instructional routines to establish classroom norms and expectations.

In the ‘Make Your Ideal Classroom’ department, John Berray gives step-by-step instructions in turning your classroom tables into whiteboard surfaces!  (I’ve already written my Donorschoose proposal for the supplies.)

 

Tina Cardone rethought her homework strategy for the coming year, and has come up with a plan which provides spiraling practice in one type of assignment, and addresses broader goals of social justice, student voice and critical thinking in another, more-extended type of assignment.  By hooking her students with prompts that are designed to elicit both opinions and mathematical thinking, Tina is creating a space in which students can connect math with real world experiences.

My colleagues in NYC are doing some great pre-year reflecting as well. Matt Baker breaks down his starting routines for the coming year, which are closely aligned to his teaching goals.  These routines include high 5’s and warm-ups designed to help his students take better notes and understand the goal and sequence of lessons.  Brian Palacio, about to begin teaching at a new school, takes a major look in the teaching mirror, looking both forward and back. It’s a great piece, one that led me to reflect on my own career.

Two math and social justice notes:  Do you follow Jessica Hagy’s blog Indexed?  You probably should, for her wonderful graphs, like this:

And you might want to read Cathy O’Neil’s (mathbabe.org) book, Weapons of Math Destruction, about the mathematical models by which financial decisions are made and personal futures controlled.   Evelyn Lamb reviewed this important book here.

Written by Wendy Menard (@wmukluk)

Finding Your Teacher Mojo

We’re off to a pretty good school year, MTBoS. Take a look at some of the excellent things going on in so many different classrooms.

#MTBoSBlaugust came to a close last week, but not before at least one more inspiring blog post. Elissa Miller’s post Guys I’m Killing it talks about how in the few weeks back at school, she’s confident she’s got her “teacher mojo back.”

Matt Vaudrey has his “teacher mojo working,” and he’s been beginning each post about the topic with the opening line “Dear Claire,…”. Each is a letter to Claire Verti, whose classes he is covering until she returns from maternity leave. The posts are full of Matt’s enthusiasm and insight as he returns from being a coach/author to teaching. The most recent post Visual Patterns – 2 describes some teacher “Trolling,” while referencing Fawn Nguyen’s fantastic First Two Days post.

If you aren’t yet convinced that this is off to a great start, check out Brian Bushart’s post More Than Words. The post begins by discussing Tracy Zager’s post How Not To Start Math Class in The Fall which talks about how a mandated test set a bad tone for the year. Later in the post, Brian describes how a group of elementary teachers in his district who worked on math in the summer have begun their year blogging about the start to their school year. Their uplifting first posts are listed in the post’s last paragraph and are sure excite you about this school year’s potential.



Written by Carl Oliver (@carloliwitter)

Online Professional Development Sessions

It Came From the #MTBoS

Math On-A-Stick!

This week I will be glued to Twitter, watching what happens every day at Math On-A-Stick. Started last year by Christopher Danielson (@Trianglemancsd), Math on a Stick is a free exhibit at the Minnesota State Fair where kids can play and explore math in a way that few of them have ever done before. This includes tesselating turtles, Truchet tiles, pattern machines, egg sorts, and The Number Game. You can get a sense for the exhibit by seeing this short video.

Adding to the fun, Ilana Horn (@ilana_horn) and Melissa Grisalfi will be there doing research on how kids interact with math in this setting! Ilana wrote a quick summary of the project on her blog, and there is more to follow as her team examines the data they’ve collected.

Written by Kent Haines (@KentHaines)

When in Doubt, Listen to Fawn 

Rather you are entering your first week of school or fourth like me, these are definitely ideas you should use to challenge your current perspective and make the proper adjustments to make this year better than last.

Written by Jenise Sexton (@MrsJeniseSexton)

The Match Game

This show used to be on tv when I was a kid, and what’s happening these days in the #mtbos reminds me of it.

I’ve been saying for a long time that this is truly an exciting time to be a teacher, but my reason for feeling that way has shifted a bit. It used to be because of all the new tools like GeoGebra and Desmos, which we can match up with specific concepts. But now these tools are being matched with instructional practices to exponentially crank things up. For example, Michael Pershan (@mpershan) wrote about using Desmos Activity Builder to Talk About Student Work,  Amy McNabb (@amcnabb3) tweeted how she is using the new Desmos card sort to make “Always, Sometimes, Never” activities. This summer, at TMC16, during David Wees’s (@davidwees) TMC16 session on Contemplate then Calculate, Alex Overwijk (@alexoverwijk) observed that it would be a perfect routine to introduce Fawn Nguyen’s Visual Patterns. Finally John Golden (@mathhombre) tweeted a link to this video about Joshua Kwon’s students, who are coding in math class, which he introduces to them with a Desmos activity.

Gene Rayburn would be proud!

Written by Audrey McLaren (@a_mcsquared)

Online Professional Development Sessions

It Came From the #MTBoS

Start Off the Year Right!

As we inch closer and closer to the first day of school, so much is starting to come out about how to spend the first days. It seems that people generally feel the same way about starting the year out right:

• Establishing norms is important for setting the tone of your year together

• Kids need to experience the norms to really understand them and feel their need

• Norms take purposeful and consistent implementation to last

• Proper implementation takes time, but that time is worth it in the long run

I encourage you to look for posts out there to fine tune your week 1 tasks. A great place to start, which is cited by so many as inspiration, is with Jo Boaler’s Week of Inspirational Math and her norms at YouCubed. Laura Wagenman has a great post found here chock-full of links to activities and tasks which align with Jo Boaler’s norms. I really liked how Mark Chubb posted on these same norms here, and at the end he gave some really good suggestions for the types of tasks to be looking for to establish these norms.

Sara VanDerWerf shared last winter a really awesome task called 100 Numbers that really gets groups looking exactly how you want them to look, complete with a suggested norms checklist for students. Sarah Carter posted about the Broken Circles task which really elicits student need of each other as well, complete with a reflection at the end.

However you do it, start things out right and keep spreading the messages to kids that math is awesome and accessible to everyone!

Written by Matthew Engle (@pickpocketsbme)

Supporting Parents, Supporting Children 

I want to assume that everyone reading this newsletter is already familiar with the website Talking Math With Your Kids. If not, score one for me for introducing it to you! Go, check it out right now! The purpose of the site is to help parents find answers to the question, “We know we need to read with our children every day, but what should we do for math?” In addition to the site, there’s even a hashtag on Twitter – #tmwyk – where parents tweet out snippets as they talk math with their kids.

I’m excited to share this week that there’s now another great resource for supporting parents in supporting their children’s mathematical development: Table Talk Math.

John Stevens has created a weekly newsletter that provides mathematical prompts for families to discuss around the dinner table. So far the newsletter has shared examples of Which One Doesn’t Belong and Would You Rather…?

Be sure to share the link with parents so they can sign up to receive the newsletter. You should sign up for it, too! That way you can talk to parents about what kinds of conversations it sparks at the dinner table.

Written by Brian Bushart (@bstockus)

#ObserveMe

Last week, Robert Kaplinsky blogged about his concern that lack of collaboration amongst teachers at school sites is looking more like teachers being “independent contractors than colleagues.” Read more about what we can do about this concern.

Inspired by a tweet from Heather Kohn, Robert is encouraging us to open our classrooms so others may come observe our teaching and offer us constructive feedback targeted at improvement. Join the craze! It’s far better than any Pokémon game could ever dream about.

Robert’s Call to Action:

Post a sign to let others know they are welcome in your classroom. Here’s a template you can use and below is what it looks like.

Robert is posting your tweets and images about it on his blog, so be sure to let Robert know via Twitter and the #ObserveMe conversation.

Written by Andrew Stadel (@mr_stadel)

Online Professional Development Sessions

Getting back into the swing of things…

PD that doesn’t suck

If you’re looking for some awesome professional development that builds a community culture, then Brian Bushart and Regina Payne got your back.  

In its second year of implementation the Math Rocks Cohort are back at it again as they look harness the power of the MTBoS within their district.  Your can read Brian’s reflections here and here.

From creating blogs and Twitter accounts, to exploring Estimation180 and Which One Doesn’t Belong, right down to the implementation of Number Talks, the teachers of Round Rock ISD will be ready to hit the ground running when class fires back up.

Written by Graham Fletcher (@gfletchy)

#MTBoSBlaugust Rolls On

August is halfway done but plenty of great bloggers are far from finished with their contributions to this month’s writing challenge. Mark Chubb described how finishing the lesson well can provide new learning opportunities in the post Never Skip the Closing Of The Lesson. In this post Mark uses a Marilyn Burns problem (pictured above) to highlight 3 different steps of closing a lesson well. He goes on to provide more information, driving home the point that “Closing a lesson takes time, but skipping the close is the biggest waste of time!”

Over at Math Equals Love, Sarah describes the group game “Guess My Rule.” After reading Elizabeth Cohen’s Designing Groupwork: Strategies for the Heterogeneous Classroom, Sarah was inspired to create this game and to implement it alongside two other games in the first week of school. To learn more, check out the post Guess My Rule.

Lastly, Casey has essentially turned her blog into an acrostic poem. Her latest post focuses on the letter E and has focused on the environment of her classroom. Check out the post to see pictures of her classroom including her “#MTBoS Wall.”

Written by Carl Oliver (@carloliwitter)

Join in the Fun!

It’s not too late to start participating in #MTBoSBlaugust ((MTBoS + Blog + August). The only challenge is to blog more than you normally would–whether that’s one post a week or one post a day!  Sign up and find some great prompts here!

If a blog post seems like too much (due to end-of-summer-laziness or back-to-school-craziness), you can still contribute by writing some encouraging comments on the participating blogs or tweeting out some of your favorite posts! 

Written by Meg Craig (@mathymeg07)

Online Professional Development Sessions

And now for more good stuff…

Extending Our Reach

Sara Van Der Werf has written a beautiful essay about losing a former student to suicide and how we, as teachers, have both an opportunity and a responsibility to reach out and provide comfort to those members of our school communities who experience loss.

To summarize Sara’s advice: go with your gut, and don’t worry so much about what you say to people who are grieving. Just try to say something, because something is better than nothing.

As many teachers prepare to begin the school year anew, it’s important to keep in mind the many ways in which our jobs extend far beyond the content we teach and into the lives of the young people we work with.

Written by Kent Haines (@KentHaines)

Contributions

It’s already three weeks since TMC16, and many, many blogposts have been created since then, but I want to take you back to the astonishingly rich blogging that was achieved every single day of the conference, including Desmos Day, by Greg Taylor (@mathtans). If you weren’t at TMC16, reading his posts will make you feel like you were. If you were at TMC16, reading these posts will make you feel like you were MORE there. And by the way, in one post, Greg asks himself what he contributes to the MTBoS. I can answer that! Just take a look at the sheer quantity and quality of his writing, starting with these puppies:

Descon

Entry 1

Entry 2

Entry 3

Entry 4

After TMC

This is just the tip of the iceberg – Greg actually wrote more posts than those I’ve listed, the links to which are embedded in his daily posts. They go into more detail about specific sessions. Normally, when I write for this newsletter, I put some kind of summary about the post(s) in my article, but there’s just so much here, summarizing would take up a few newsletters. Enjoy – I know I did!

Written by Audrey McLaren (@a_mcsquared)

A Post About Posts, About Posts, About Posts

Mike Wiernicki literally created a black hole of blog posts. As he discussed his work with Blogarithm, he opened the #MTBoS up to multiple blog posts to satisfy anyone’s math palate. His Blogarithm post began with a brief discussion of a 6th grade lesson on building fluency in multiplication using the Pythagoras Square. Then he encouraged us to look at recently added posts to NCTM’s Blogarithm. Much to my surprise, there were many, many posts to choose from.

Rethinking the Gradual Release of Responsibility Model by Tim McCaffrey provides a perspective of many math and science teachers – start with an investigation. Gradual release has become a bit of an education catch phrase. Often those who implement this model try to remain true to the flow laid out within the book written by Fisher and Frey: I do, We do, You do.  McCaffrey’s post provides practical ways to keep inquiry within the math lesson and establish a student-centered environment. He follows this up with Reel ’Em In and discusses an eighth grade lesson using the reverse model of “I do, we do, you do.” He aimed to paint a clear picture, and I think he accomplished that.

Matt Kitchen answers the age old question “When Am I Ever Going to Use This?” with his social emotional response to students’ frustration. Most think we should just explain to students how the math concept we are teaching connects to something we do in real life. Kitchen shows there’s a time and a place. Once we help students process their frustrations, we can have discussions with them as discussed in Show Students the Real Purpose of Math.

I could go on and on, because as I said, it is a black hole.  Go get lost, friends. 🙂

Written by Jenise Sexton (@MrsJeniseSexton)

Online Professional Development Sessions

Great Blogging Action

Hi, I’m Not Good at Math

As the beginning of the school year rapidly approaches (or some have already started), I can’t help but be reminded of meeting students for the first time who say something like,

I’m not good at math.

Or eventually, I’ll meet parents of my students and hear comments like,

Billy was good at math until last year.

or

Susie has always struggled at math.

My worst response was something like, “I’m sorry to hear that.”

My best response was maybe something like, “Tell me more about that.”

If you’re anything like me and have the tendency to lock up at these situations, I believe it is in everyone’s best interest to read (and follow the links at) Christopher Danielson’s recent post titled, On Helping Children to Love Math

I look at it as a chance for us to reflect on our beliefs and rehearse some responses to positively message the importance of mathematical thinking and education. Don’t skip his Hot Chocolate conversation and the simple example we can give parents to practice with their children.

~by Andrew Stadel (@mr_stadel)

Online Professional Development Sessions

Great Blogging Action

Hot on Twitter: Back to School Sale Price Comparisons

Other goings on around the Blogosphere

In between escaping the recent heat wave, and travelling with the family, I’ve taken some time to read some of the new blog posts written by new bloggers following TMC. Collectively these blogs are great for people sitting on the fence about blogging, both new and old. 

Annie Perkins has received positive praise for Well, That Escalated Quickly. In this piece Annie manages to describe the myriad complexities of teaching in the space between zero and one. 

Hannah Mesick cannon-balled into the blogging world  with her post Jumping In. Mesick cites the amazing Brene Brown’s book Daring Greatly, and then proceeds to do just that while describing the vulnerability required to join the MTBoS conversation.

Lastly, you should check out the post From a MTBoS Stalker by Greta Lynn. At TMC this year Greta heard the quote “there are no rockstar teachers” and took it to heart, realizing that the people who start blogging are just trying to learn like everyone else. This post describes the reasons why she blogs, and how it will help her journey as a teacher.

Additionally, Julie Reulbach is looking for Algebra 2 teachers to sign up for #alg2chat before the new year starts. She is motivated to make the hashtag more useful for everyone. If you or anyone you know teaches Algebra 2, visit and sign up on the google form.

If you are out and about this summer, maybe you want to participate in the #mathphoto16 challenge. Below are photos were some of the ones that line up with this weeks theme #shapes. If you have an interesting photo please post it to twitter with the #mathphoto16 hashtag. If you want to scroll through and see all of the previous photos, follow @mathphoto16 on twitter. If looking at twitter isn’t your bag, you can also see photos on flickr and wordpress.com. Happy snapping!

-Carl Oliver (@carloliwitter)

• #mathphoto16 #shapes in Amsterdam https://t.co/i503N6xefU – @debboden
• #shapes #mathphoto16 Hey, somebody had to do it… https://t.co/GwExIA4oaP – @jillenelouise
• #shapes #mathphoto16 “@henryseg: A driveway in Heidelberg, Germany. https://t.co/zryjx4JoBq” – @TheErickLee

Online Professional Development Sessions

Math Camping in Minneapolis

Dammit, I Want In!

This weekend marks #TMC16 held in Minneapolis, MN. I’ve reviewed the program and looked at numerous posts on Twitter and have decided, “Dammit, I want in!” I no longer want to learn vicariously through the posts of the loyal #MTBoS, although the posts have been enlightening.  

Thanks @jreulbach for this collection of notes.

From posts like these:

I’m going to begin “stacking my chips” to be present for Twitter Math Camp 2017.  I’m sure I’m not the only one looking forward to the blog posts which will come out of this year’s #TMC16.

Written by Jenise Sexton (@MrsJeniseSexton)

Twitter Math Camp – The Video Experience

Not everyone can be at Twitter Math Camp, but that doesn’t mean you have to miss out on everything that’s going on! Glenn Waddell has you covered on his YouTube channel (Thank you, Glenn!) where he has been sharing videos of the My Favorites sessions as well as the powerful keynotes from Jose Vilson, Tracy Zager, and our very own Global Math Co-Chair Dylan Kane. There’s even a musical number from Gregory Taylor that is not to be missed.

By the time this newsletter finds its way to your inbox, we’ll likely know the location and dates of TMC17. If you’d like to join in the fun in person next summer, get that on your calendar now! Also, be sure to follow @TMathC so you don’t miss announcements about speaker proposals and registration dates.

Written by Brian Bushart (@bstockus)

This Game is A-Maze-ing

This week the math puzzle app Sumaze made the rounds on Twitter. It’s a maze game that incorporates all sorts of mathematical concepts into each level’s solution. And best of all, it’s free! Download the app for iOS or Android.

If you like the game, the sequel was just released. It uses fractions, decimals, and percentages and can be a great challenge for older kids or adults.

Written by Kent Haines (@KentHaines)