Imperfect and Unfinished
My Dilemma I had an experience last week that has me in a professional dilemma, and I’m looking for your input. My dilemma may be emotionally charged to you; it is to me, but I assure you that I want to seek a positive outcome for everyone involved (the student, teacher, parent, and me) in … Continue Reading
Welcome back math geeks! I want to share with you a video that shows the raw power of using Clothesline Math in your classroom to promote student to student discourse. I share this video because I want you to see how clothesline activities generate student to student discourse and promote student thinking and math development. And I … Continue Reading
Check out this video from Andrew Stadel. What do you notice? What do you wonder? http://101qs-media.s3.amazonaws.com/videos/1772-black-box2–act-1.mp4 (Click here if viewing on your phone) I conducted a lesson study about fractions with some 5th grade teachers. We used Andrew’s elegantly simple lesson called Black Box 2 to get students talking about adding fractions with unlike denominators. This … Continue Reading
I had the opportunity to give a talk at CMC-South in the fall of 2017 about my work conducting lesson studies. About 40 inspiring educators showed up to geek out with me and learn about ways to generate teacher buy-in so that teacher learning made during lesson study leads to lasting professional growth. This post … Continue Reading
Welcome back math geeks! I love teaching young students about data and statistics. And I enjoy finding ways to make data and statistics matter more to young students. But I’m troubled by two curriculum practices about how we teach students to think about data and statistics, especially at the K-6 level. This post is Part … Continue Reading
Hello math geeks! Welcome back! I’ve been an advocate for using dot images and visuals as problems for number talks in the elementary classroom. (You can find a great bank of visuals here.) I’ve also been an advocate for using Desmos as an instructional tool for letting student thinking drive the classroom discourse. Traditionally, Desmos … Continue Reading
I conducted a lesson study with some elementary teachers. We used Dan Meyer’s engaging lesson called Sugar Packets to get students talking about an interesting problem, sharing their thinking, showing what they know about division strategies. Dan has the lesson listed as 6th grade ratio and proportional reasoning activity, but we found this problem to be … Continue Reading
For the past few weeks, I’ve had the fun opportunity to write for the Global Math Department newsletter. Haven’t heard of the Global Math Department? It’s great tool to find out what’s going on in the online math world about math teaching and watch professional development webinars. Check the site out here and read about some … Continue Reading
Welcome back math geeks! I love teaching young students about data and statistics. And I enjoy finding ways to make data and statistics matter more to young students. But I’m troubled by two curriculum practices about how we teach students to think about data and statistics, especially at the K-6 level. In this post, I’ll … Continue Reading
A Story A friend and I were reflecting over a beer one evening at Twitter Math Camp in July about how to get more elementary teachers to attend this amazing conference. (Click here to know more!) He’s an inspirational colleague with a background in special education at the elementary and middle school level. We were talking … Continue Reading
