Many of set goals for our students but shouldn’t we encourage students to set their own goals for their math learning as well? Here are some ways to support students in the process of setting and revisiting goals in the math classroom. Continue reading 180 Ideas: #13 Students’ Goals
It may seem obvious, but we really should do the problems we assign before we assign them to students. Continue reading 180 Ideas: #12 Do the Problems
Introducing a new mini-series on notes and the mathematics classroom. In this series I’ll do a deep dive into answering, but why though?!? in reference to note taking. Continue reading Notes: But Why Though?!?
Where have all the mathematical representations gone? In this post, I write about some questions and thoughts regarding student and teacher records of practice. Continue reading 180 Ideas: #11 Leave Something Behind
Start the year out right by developing and sharing norms with your students. Continue reading 180 Ideas #6: Norms
As a teacher, sometimes I was pretty good at showing students lots of different ways to solve a problem. I often wasn’t so good at asking them to make sense of when to use these strategies, hence Idea #4: Choose your own strategy. Once students have developed some understanding of different ways to approach a … Continue reading 180 Ideas: #4 Choose your own Strategy
When I was a new teacher I planned my year out with the help of my district and textbook pacing guides. I knew I needed to get through X number of chapters in X weeks. I typically started by mapping out how far I needed to get through by midterm, then I put in the … Continue reading 180 Ideas: #1 The Flex Day
I taught high school mathematics in Orlando, Florida. My first day in the classroom was literally my first day in the classroom. I had earned a B.S. in mathematics with a minor in anthropology at the University of Florida. As a first generation college student, I knew I should go to college, but I wasn’t … Continue reading 180 Ideas: The Premise
Recently, I’ve noticed that we are in the midst of a purposeless, clutter epidemic. It’s hard to trace the start of this epidemic. Perhaps it can be traced back to the rise of Pinterest and easy access to classroom inspiration. In any case, many classrooms are just filled with visual clutter that has little to … Continue reading The Purposeful Classroom
Something I’ve been thinking about is the way we teach students to solve systems of linear equations using substitution. Consider for example the following system of linear equations: y = 3x + 4 and 2y – 3x = 16. Many textbooks would suggest the way forward is to solve one of the equations for a … Continue reading Solve for y and substitute?
