Online Professional Development Sessions

Is this how it’s going to be from now on each summer? Guns, police, death and protests?

Math educators on twitter were searching for a response. Jose Vilson called for integrating issues of equity into standard curricular topics. So did Avery Pickford: “Imagine MP #9: Use mathematical tools to critique social constructs and promote positive change.”

What could this look like? Rethinking Schools has a book. Radical Math has a “Guide for Integrating Issues of Social and Economic Justice into Mathematics Curriculum.” It includes advice, sample problems, and a lengthy table with links to online data resources sorted by mathematical area. For example, under “fractions” they list a link to the site “Cost of War”. They also suggest lessons on AIDS, the lottery, gentrification and factors impacting high school graduation rates.

Scrolling through the guide, I wondered what a version of the guide would look like under other political influences. A statistics lesson on political affiliation and bias in? Using percents to show the failure of the welfare state? If equitable math instruction involves incorporating your politics, does having wrong politics make you a worse math teacher? I worry about this, but that doesn’t mean this project isn’t important and worth pursuing.

Beyond a socially relevant curriculum, there is also the question of policy. Danny Martin questions whether NCTM is truly committed to equity in mathematics. After all, NCTM’s focus (in Principles to Action and other documents) is on excellent teaching, curriculum and resources equitably distributed. This, Martin argues, is a policy that is fundamentally incapable of closing achievement gaps, even if it would lead to absolute gains for all.

I’ve read the NCTM response a few times now, and I can’t make sense of it. It seems to accept Martin’s critique while simultaneously reframing it. (“While we have made progress, we have not made enough progress. We all need to do more.”) In any event, the last lines are the most interesting: “Those interested in collaborating in this work should contact NCTM at change@nctm.org.”

(Thank you to Bryan Meyer, Megan Schmidt and Tracy Zager for sharing many of the links above.)

~by Michael Pershan (@mpershan)

Desmathmistakes Activity

Michael Pershan recently posted about using a math mistake from a 4th grader in a Desmos Activity.  Imagine how potentially powerful this could be for you, your students, and colleagues.

I simply would like to share a half-dozen reasons WHY I like Michael’s Desmos Activity.

1. Error analysis

2. The teacher can capture student thinking from the class

3. Students might be able to help their classmates have a deeper understanding of the [insert math topic] concepts being taught

4. Teachers experience a different way to learn more about the tools and uses of Desmos Activity builder

5. Students experience a different way to learn more about the tools and uses of Desmos Activity builder

6. Imagine teachers quickly putting an activity together with a student mistake from their class and then sharing it with their students and colleagues to analyze.

Great inspiration, Michael. Read more here.

~ by Andrew Stadel @mr_stadel

PCMI (Park City Math Institute) 2016 is in full swing.
Check out the highlights!

Online Professional Development Sessions

Summer Reading to Tide You Over

Reading My Mind

One of my favorite bloggers is Dane Ehlert because when I pull up his blog he has written on a topic I have been pondering for a while. This week, he had a vision for grading, something I’ve been mulling over for a week or so now. As I read this post, I opened myself up and allowed his views to challenge my perspective on grading.

I conclude, hell yeah I am!

Written by Jenise Sexton (@MrsJeniseSexton)

Secondary Number Talks

In Sara Van Der Werf’s latest post she throws down the gauntlet, challenging all secondary math teachers to try out number talks 30 times next school year. Why? Because we as teachers can either continue to lament students’ lack of numeracy skills and point fingers at prior teachers, or we can do something about it. Sara wants us to do something about it!

Thankfully she’s willing to help us out. Her post is a treasure trove of resources – descriptions of how she does number talks, links to books and helpful blog posts, and ideas for connecting number talks to what we’re already covering in class.

Don’t take my word for it. Read her post! She’ll convince you with ducks.

Written by Brian Bushart (@bstockus)

Online Professional Development Sessions

Kicking Summer Off #MTBoS Style!

Summer is great for catching up on your reading. Whether it’s on the beach, on the Eurorail, or on the couch, what’s better than kicking off your summer by rediscovering your favorite blogs?

Discovering some new(ish) ones! Here are some suggestions from around the #MTBoS…

• Recently, Mark Chubb began blogging. Mark has been an active member of the M and T parts of the #MTBoS, but now we welcome him into the BoS! Mark’s most recent post asks one of our favorite questions!
• Kendra Lomax is already pretty famous around the interwebs, but she has also begun blogging in the past year! She’s taking ideas from the #MTBoS and pointing them at our youngest mathematicians!
• Ryan Dent created a fantastic website full of amazing resources, but he’s also posted his first blog post as well!
• You may know Melynee Naegele from her work helping to organize #ElemMathChat, but she has also posted a wonderful reflection about diving head first into the #MTBoS waters!
• Ann Durham, who has participated in and hosted #SwDMathChat also has begun blogging within the past year. Here she writes about the evolution of her PLN. More recently, we have seen #SwDMathChat participant, Karen, who blogs here, dip her toe in the mathematical waters of twitter as well.

• Finally, Amie Albrecht, who started her blog here, and Sarah Caban, who is now blogging here, got the Zager stamp of approval for their new forays into the blogging world!

So this summer, kick back, relax, and enjoy these new(ish) voices in the world of blogging!

~by Andrew Gael (@bkdidact)

Online Professional Development Sessions

Great Blogging Action

Hot on Twitter: Make it Rain!!!

Get Excited for the 2016 Math Photo Challenge

If you were looking for a place to post your math related photos, wait no further! This summer (or winter depending on what hemispher you live in), you can join the hundreds of other participants in the #mathphoto16 challenge. These photos were some of the ones that line up with this weeks theme #symmetry. 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, and looking at twitter is not your bag, you can also see photos on flickr and wordpress.com. Happy snapping!

-Carl Oliver (@carloliwitter)

Online Professional Development Sessions

And now for more good stuff…

Summer Planning

Down in the Peach State, we have the pleasure of getting out of school before Memorial Day (sorry to those of you still fighting the good fight). Couple that with the benefits of working at a Title 1 school, you have summer planning. How can we increase collaboration?  What activities will be most effective for our students?

Can you guess what created the most heated and extended conversation? Warm ups! I wish I’d seen Fawn’s post about warm ups when we were meeting. In this post Fawn shares how she makes warm ups meaningful and extends beyond the usual skill practice. She has the luxury of using Google Classroom, but this approach could be used with any learning management system.

I’m definitely adding this to my must-try list for next school year, as well as extending my use of notice and wonder taking suggestions from here.

Written by Jenise Sexton (@MrsJeniseSexton)

Projectile Project by Kim R

I continue to be fascinated at the learning potential of creating digital things so that they behave a certain way. @mathhombre shared this tumblr post by, as near as I can tell, “Smoot”. Or gingercatsneeze, not sure. Simply fascinating read about how animating an object under force lead the animator to understand force on another level. There couldn’t be a more delightful merging of art and science.

Which leads me to coding, currently on my summer learning list, specifically how to incorporate it into my classes, and this article by Idit Harel (@idit). Which at first I thought would discourage me but actually did the opposite – it made me feel that I was on the right track.

Finally, this post by José Picardo is about a study done by West Point about the impact of technology in student learning, which concludes that it has either no impact or a negative one – IF – done without purposeful guidance by a teacher. No surprise there. What I liked most about the article was the way he uses analogies of language fluency acquisition to using edtech to its potential. Typos notwithstanding, it’s a superbly well-written and finely layered piece.

Written by Audrey McLaren (@a_mcsquared)

Online Professional Development Sessions

#MTBoSYearbook

Anne Schwartz reminds us that Twitter Math Camp is right around the corner with her post about creating a #MTBoSYearbook.

Her rules are simple:

1. Tweet with #MTBoSYearbook

2. Include your name, a picture of yourself, and your quote

3. Yes Elizabeth it has to be your face and not a monkey

4. You can include other people but be sure to tag them so they can override

5. The deadline is Next Friday June 3

Here is Anne’s model post:

That deadline is approaching fast, so get your entries in!

~by Andrew Gael (@bkdidact)

#MTBoSYearbook: Here are some already posted…

Cuz Fawn Says It’s Cool

My buddy, JR Ginex-Orinion, texted me the other day asking:

So naturally, I went to their site and clicked around. Pretty cool.

Today, I saw Fawn’s post about dudamath.com and I thought,

“Well… if Fawn thinks it’s cool, then we probably all should think it’s cool.”

So here is my end-of-the-year rhyme:

When you’re done with school,

Kick your feet up at the pool,

With dudamath.com as your tool

Cuz Fawn says it’s cool.

~ by Andrew Stadel (@mr_stadel)

Online Professional Development Sessions

Great Blogging Action

Hot on Twitter: Make it Rain!!!

Reflecting on the 2015 Summer Math Photo Challenge

The Summer math photo challenge was a highlight of last summer for many people. These photos were a few of hundreds taken by math teachers across the country who posted them to Twitter under the hashtag #mathphoto15, and were then archived on the challenge’s Flickr page. Participants were challenged to post pictures that matches a particular theme, which was posted on the summer math photo challenge website.  Some of the challenges included lines, arrays, circles, and more.

The challenges and the entirety of the project was the brain child of Malke Rosenfeld who is ready to pass the torch on to a new person who is ready to spearhead #mathphoto16. If that person is you, reach out to her on Twitter (@mathinyourfeet), and let me know as well!

-Carl Oliver (@carloliwitter)

Online Professional Development Sessions

And now for more good stuff…

Discovering…

This week, an important and fascinating chat happened on twitter, and I only happened upon it late. From the snippets of #MTBoS reactions, I could tell this was a hot talk, which is why I spent some time afterward looking for posts about it. A conversation between James Tanton and Andrew Hacker was live-tweeted using the hashtag #MoMathEdTalk, on the topic of the future of math education. The talk was happening at an event called Course Corrections, sponsored by the Museum of Math. Hacker was arguing that too much math is taught in high schools, most of which damages students’ chances of graduating, and isn’t needed anyway. Tanton’s thesis was that we need to continue teaching math, but with joy. There will be a video of the talk released soon, apparently, but in the meantime, check out the #momathedtalk stream (which I didn’t even know was a thing), and here are two reaction posts from Wendy Menard and  Patrick Honner.

Written by Audrey McLaren (@a_mcsquared)

Diamonds Are Forever

Tracy Zager wrote a delightful post this week about helping kids develop mathematical vocabulary. She takes us through a delightful lesson where she lets a group of first graders debate and dispute the meaning of such terms as “diamond’ and “straight,” both of which are used somewhat differently within math classes and in the rest of the world.

Which of these shapes are diamonds? We played around with the word and I learned a lot about their thinking. Mario looked unsettled and said, “Now I’m not so sure what a diamond is.” He turned to me and asked, “What’s a diamond? Which one is right?”

I said, “I don’t know. It’s up to you.”

The kids gasped.

If I excerpt anymore, I’ll just excerpt the whole thing. Just go read it.

Written by Kent Haines (@KentHaines)

Rethinking Systems Teaching

I’m wrapping up a two week teaching experience with students who struggled all year in math class with a teacher who struggled more than they. My expectation was for students to have engaging practice opportunities prior to taking the Unit 9 Systems of Equations common assessment. With the opportunity of teaching one course of Introduction to Algebra/Coordinate Algebra next year, I’m thinking of ways to increase student understanding of solving systems.

Using a context to introduce the concept will prove helpful. Systems and Oreos presents a context using Oreos. Yes, Oreos! An instant hook! Oreos and comics possibly as incorporated in this post. Organizing the information once derived will help students in different ways. Beautiful Math discussed beautiful ways to make this happen within your classroom. Check out the way she used post-it notes to show the substitution strategy algebraically. Manipulatives will aid in students visualizing the quantities within the problems/equations. See if you can make sense of these visual representations.

And round it out with some practice through the use of technology.

Written by Jenise Sexton (@MrsJeniseSexton)

Online Professional Development Sessions

Flashback: Throw Back Tuesday #TBT

Flashback: A Mathematical Exploration with Mysterious Manipulatives

This week Jamie Duncan tweeted about having purchased one of my favorite mathematical manipulatives for her classroom.

The reason why I love cuisenaire rods is, that not only are they a mathematical manipulative, but they have inherent algebraic properties. Quantity and number comparisons are a natural fit, whether talking whole numbers or fractions. There is seemingly no structure to these mysterious manipulatives until you discover their fundamental pattern. The white is a unit and so on.

This reminded me of one of my favorite blog posts by Simon Gregg about the Hundred Face Activity. First dig out your cuisenaire rods, do Simon’s (and Malke’s) activity, and then tweet about it under #HundredFaceChallenge!

My other challenge for you is to grab your favorite mathematical manipulatives and as the year winds down, find or create a fun and mathematically challenging activity for your students to do with them! And then let us know about it! Have fun and do some math!

~by Andrew Gael (@bkdidact)

Flashback: A Joe Schwartz Scissors Classic

A great post is timeless, whether posted recently or last year. Last week, Joe Schwartz tweeted one of his blog posts from last year, titled The Standard Formerly Known As 4.2.3D.2.a

Joe does a beautiful job exposing student weaknesses with measuring objects to the nearest quarter inch. Poor kids!

Wanna know why? They’re using that confounded ruler with inches and quarter inches!

So in true Joe fashion, he got out his scissors and started cutting square inches and strips of quarter inches. That’s right. Now measure that key and pencil kids! Read his post.

 

My challenge to you this week: make something in your math class more tangible and meaningful with your scissors this week. Tweet me about it.

~ by Andrew Stadel (@mr_stadel)

Online Professional Development Sessions

Great Blogging Action

Hot on Twitter: #MTBoS30 Takes Flight Across The Blogosphere