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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)

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Things to Check Out

Dreambox On My Mind

Recently several members of the #MTBoS have written about games and what they believe makes a good educational math game. Dan Meyer has written/spoken/video-recorded many thoughts on how gaming and apps can be integrated into math class or how math class can be integrated into games and apps or both!

Picking up from where Audrey McLaren left off two weeks ago about Tracy Zager’s popular and controversial post about her criteria for fact-based math apps where she gives two suggestions of games that meet her non-negotiable criteria. They are Dreambox Learning and Bunny Times. Here are Tracy’s twitter thoughts about Dreambox when her daughters began their free-trial at home.

This week Dreambox continued to be on #MTBoS minds. Kent Haines, who also uses Dreambox with his children, wrote an extensive review of his first impressions. Christopher Danielson also recently reproduced how Dreambox communicates with parents.

As a special education teacher I really like Dreambox for two reasons: 1) it was developed in concert with Cathy Fosnot and 2) it is digitally multi-modal (using models, visual representations, and “hands-on” tools to develop conceptual understanding).

However, I am not without constructive criticism. Though Dreambox understands learning is not linear, I do wish they would give teachers more control over which lessons students were assigned because I believe teachers are always better than an algorithm!

Two Truths & One Lie

I don’t have any tattoos.
I played college basketball.
I had dreadlocks in college.

The ice-breaker fun-fact game Two Truths and A Lie can be fun. So when Jon Orr recently posted Better Questions – Two Truths & One Lie, I was instantly hooked. I knew there would be a math spin and sure enough, I wasn’t disappointed. Read the post and have your students play along.

What I love most:

• Minimal teacher prep
• Simple design
• Student creativity
• Error analysis
• Stickies

As with most things, do them in moderation. I wouldn’t recommend you play this game every day, every week.  However, it’s seems like a great way to spice up class (and assessments) at times. I challenge you to try it once this week and report back to Jon Orr and me on Twitter.

*I didn’t play college basketball.

Online Professional Development Sessions

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Hot on Twitter

Tessellations seem to have taken over my Twitter feed.  And it seems like there is one person behind the curtain.
 

 

I’m not going to lie, when @samjshah and his awesomeness come across my blog feed I’m guaranteed to spend the next 2 hours lost down a rabbit hole of Dr. Math and Wolfram Alpha, trying to make sense of it all.  Each time I leave with an understanding that’s clear as mud…but I still leave a little smarter than when I entered.  It seems like there’s 25 grade levels between Sam and I, but he makes me want to know what he’s up to so I always read on.
This week Sam shared the beautiful gift he received from the man behind the curtain. If you don’t know about the 4, 5, 20. And the 3, 8, 24. And the 3, 10, 15. And the 4, 5, 20 you need to check this out.  24 hours later I’m still digging.
 
Written by @gfletchy (Graham Fletcher)
 

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Care for a Game?

Criteria for Good Games and Apps

This week, one particular post kept flying across my Twitter and Facebook feeds, and I didn’t pay much attention other than to vaguely wonder what a “fact-based app” was. On Friday, someone who is not even a teacher shared it with me, and I finally woke up and paid attention. It was this piece by Tracy Johnston Zager (@tracyzager ): “My Criteria for Fact-Based Apps”.  A fact-based app is typically marketed as fun and engaging games or activities for students to practice math skills at their own pace. I’ve had some experience with some of these apps, and after reading Tracy’s post, I realized what it was that was bothering me about a lot of them. Most of them use the math as a dangling carrot. There is a distinct border between the math and the fun.

Tracy lists her three baseline, non-negotiable criteria for recommending such an app: that there be no time constraint, that there be a conceptual basis for the operations, and that mistakes must be handled productively. Sounds kind of like a good classroom!

Tracy names a few apps that do it well, as well as some that don’t. I’ve always loved Explorelearning’s gizmos, and although they aren’t listed in the post, (which Tracy points out is not exhaustive), I think they would meet the criteria. She also directs readers to teacher.desmos.com (where I’ve been spending a lot of my time lately), for examples of engaging activities in which the math is indistinguishable from the fun (for example, marbleslides). I couldn’t agree more.

Written by Audrey McLaren (@a_mcsquared)

Number Grid Tic-Tac-Toe

Speaking of math games, Joe Schwartz posts an excellent game that he developed for his second grade students: Number Grid Tic-Tac-Toe. In the game, students try to get 4 squares in a row. All they have to do is write in the correct number to take the space! It’s a wonderful way to build fluency with the 100 grid while also giving kids a chance to think strategically about winning the game! The math is embedded deeply in the game, and kids may notice all sorts of patterns within the board that they wouldn’t otherwise notice.

Joe posts about some extensions and wrinkles that you can add to make the game more challenging. I don’t know what Tracy Zager thinks of this math game, but I have a pretty good guess…

Written by Kent Haines (@MrAKHaines)

Five By Five

Recently, I came across Sara VanDerWerf’s (@saravdwerf) post about a game she has been keeping secret for 24 years! I’m not sure why she has chosen now to break her silence, but what’s done is done…unless you work in her district. In which case she is very clear that you are not allowed to use the game if you teach at a school that feeds into hers. (She’s so passionate about it, I felt obligated to share that caveat.)

Sara’s class plays this game only *one* day per school year, the day before winter break. This might give the impression that this is a throwaway game, but in fact there’s some interesting strategy to it. So much so that one reader went so far as to design an Excel spreadsheet to find out how to optimize the score. You can find a link to that spreadsheet in the comments on her post along with a few other reader-recommended games.

Written by Brian Bushart (@bstockus)

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Things to Check Out

Teaching Problems & the Problems of Teaching

If getting Dan Meyer’s pot stirrer award wasn’t good enough to get you reading Dylan Kane’s blog then maybe this will be. Dylan has begun to unpack Magdalene Lampert’s Teaching Problems and the Problems of Teaching in a series of posts on his blog. Dylan is going chapter by chapter to dig into the type of ambitious mathematics teaching that Lampert writes about in her book. Dylan starts here, so you might as well, where he describes his background and his goals for reading the book.  

Michael Pershan also investigates Lampert’s book from another angle, that of the teacher/writer.

If you want to know more about Lampert’s ambitious math teaching go to TEDD.org developed by the University of Washington, where Lampert’s ideas are at the forefront of their work.  

All of this has inspired me to do my own investigation of Lampert’s book and look what just came in the mail!

Other Classrooms

Have you ever been in a colleague’s classroom, for whatever reason, even if it was for only 30 seconds? Were you able to notice anything?

Two years ago, my colleague and I made it a habit to visit each other’s classrooms during our prep periods. Besides the #MTBoS, it was the BEST professional development available to me each day. I was able to steal ideas and immediately use them with my students. I share this experience with teachers at conferences and trainings, but never have anything to point them to that might guide, encourage, and support them in this wonderful opportunity. Enter Steve Wyborney.

Steve Wyborney has posted a practical (and concise) series of posts on his blog titled Stepping Into Each Other’s Classrooms.

Steve says it best:

There may be teachers just a few moments down the hallway who are using highly effective strategies that could quickly empower our own instruction and positively impact our students.

I offer 4 challenges and several practical suggestions to turn that nearby opportunity into a powerful possibility.

In addition to the posts, Steve has included “The Animated Learning Walks Series” of videos for you and colleagues to refer to. Check them out and watch how you will take your teaching to a new level of awesome. My favorite is The Teaming Exchange.
 

Online Professional Development Sessions

2015 Year in Review

And for a preview of next week’s talk ‘PCMI: The Experience’, try to work through problems 2-8 of this problem set. Don’t forget to read the directions!

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.

Online Professional Development Sessions

Things to Check Out

The Hour of Math…wait, Code! The Hour of Code!

Last week was marked on the educational calendar as computer science week. If you are not hip to coding in the classroom please go now to code.org, but then come back!

Now that you’re an expert at coding in the classroom you may be wondering, “What if I don’t have 30 devices for each student to become the next Mark Zuckerberg?” Well, they’ve thought of that too. Thinkersmith in partnership with code.org has devises a litany of “unplugged” coding activities for the device-less to also become programming wizards.  

Also Brian Aspinall has posted numerous activities to his blog about “unplugged” coding, here and here. Luckily for us coding shouldn’t just be limited to just one week during the school year. Code.org has a beyond the hour of code, which consists of courses and activities meant for what they refer to as ages 8-108.

For you geometry teachers, code.org also has something called Artist, where students explore geometry through coding.

Happy Coding!

Exploring the MathTwitterBlogosphere

In January, Jon Orr will be a mentor to help support math teachers new to this online community known as the Math Twitter Blogosphere. In his recent blog post, Jon says,

Following this weird #MTBOS hashtag on twitter has changed my teaching practice in so many ways. The people are amazing and always willing to share a lesson or strategy…

His post shares a glimpse of why he’s excited to mentor other teachers and how his collaboration with other teachers has benefited his students and teaching. Whether you’re looking for a New Year’s resolution or a way to deposit some good karma coins in your math teacher bank, join this initiative as a mentor or someone to be mentored.

Why say no, when it will feel so good to say yes? Exploring the MathTwitterBlogosphere.

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.