Imperfect and Unfinished
Activity: Which Passion Describes You Best? Teaching is an expression of identity and a craft of passion. We teach who we are. Let’s take a few minutes and think more deeply about why we are passionate about the work we do. Read the “Passion Profiles” below. As you read, make notes and underline language … 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
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
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
Imagine a football team operating like a faculty at a school site. Players (teachers) gather at the beginning of the season (school year) for some team-building and some pep talk (fall PD) about goals and visions for improvement from their coach (principal). The players then study a playbook (curriculum) and some plays (instructional strategies) and … Continue Reading
I worked with a team of amazing 2nd grade teachers this week as a part of an ongoing lesson study. They were in the latter chapters of their curriculum where the Measurement and Data content is often stuffed away as an afterthought because they aren’t “Focus Standards.” And it’s a drag too because there’s so … Continue Reading
