Getting to know your students
The first days of school are great for getting first impressions of your new students. Collecting information from students is interesting and fun when they are given open ended sentences …
Solving with Multiple Methods
If you are familiar with the Common Core Progressions documents, you may recognize the name Bill McCallum. He is a Common Core Standards author as well as an author of …
Dividing Fractions for Understanding
Student understanding of dividing with fractions is usually regulated to something to the effect of, “You need to flip the fraction and you need to multiply.” As a teacher, I …
13 rules that expire in Math!
Have you ever heard someone say, “When you multiply, your product is always greater than your factors”, “When you divide, your quotient is always less than your dividend and divisor.” …
How Does Teacher Language Affect Student Learning?
Quick, but interesting read on how our descriptions and language used to describe student learning and goals could potentially affect student learning. For instance, when we describe a certain skill …
Putting the ‘Fun’ Back into Functions
Functions can be overwhelming with all of the f’s, x’s, and f(x)’s. But in reality, functions are quite easy to understand once you know how they work. So what is …
The Year Game
It’s January, and the beginning of a new calendar year. The NCTM Math Forum annually holds a contest for students to determine if they can use the digits in the …
Hack Your Teaching
Do your students look like they are filming a “mannequin challenge” when it comes to math interaction and discourse? Research has shown that children engaged and interacting with deep, purposeful …
Practice Evaluating Expressions with Battling Robots!
Nora Oswald has created a cool Battling Robots game in which students draw cards to create robots with different battling powers combining expressions. Students must create a powerful robot, roll …
Preparing for FSA – Content Complexities
The Florida Standards Assessment for mathematics is months away, but the preparation can never begin too early. You may be aware of Dr. Norman Webb’s model for Depth of Knowledge …
No Homework? How else can I support my child’s learning?
Want to connect to your children’s learning experiences at school but they currently don’t have any homework? Check out this post from Edutopia, giving parents 15 alternative questions for deeper …
Putting the C and R back into exponents.
We are all aware of the CRA model of providing students experiences with mathematics content. In terms of exponents, students very rarely experience the “C” (concrete) or the “R” (representational) …
Stop creating a word wall for your students!
How effective is it to have a list of math words on the wall? Who decides what words to place on the wall and who puts them up on display? …
Promoting Precise Mathematical Language
Why teach math vocabulary? The Standards for Mathematics emphasize that mathematically proficient students communicate precisely to others; however, the language of mathematics can often be confusing. Lack of knowledge of …
How do we find and fill the holes? – A Mathematics Learning Trajectory Tool
While the Mathematics Florida Standards (MAFS) were designed to incorporate the 3 major shifts of focus, coherence and rigor, it can be easy to get so focused on a grade …