Category: Questioning

  • How another country teaches the Quadratic Formula

    One of the most enjoyable thing I have done over my career is work with teachers from other countries. The university is a host site for the Fulbright Teacher Excellence and Achievement program which brings teachers from other countries to the US, where they spend six weeks in classrooms and university classes. As a teacher,…

  • Semester reflections

    It is crazy, but I have not blogged once during this semester. My last post was a forward looking statement on class closures that I wanted to do. The good news is, I did it. Every single day, I had an alarm set, and I did the class closure. You can find my form here:…

  • #Made4MathMonday – Math practices poster and more

    I made something! I haven’t been very ‘makey’ lately. Focusing a lot on teaching college students, observing college students in the classroom, and then observing more. But, we got a new classroom on campus at the beginning of the semester, and we needed decorations. I looked all over for some good, high quality posters of…

  • Changing math preservice teachers’ minds

    Math majors who are interested in teaching are the toughest group of learners. They really are. They are in a mixed science / math class, so they band together. They reinforce each other’s beliefs that the way they have been taught math is a great way, because they have been successful in learning math that…

  • No more broccoli flavored ice cream

    The struggle to understand why we teach K-12 mathematics in the order we do, and the content we do is real. I have wondered about this for a long time, and really have never found a good answer. I threw out the idea of teaching y=mx+b as the only way to write lines (even though…

  • Growth mindset in my classroom

    I have been thinking a lot about growth mindset lately (really, what teacher is not.) But I have really been trying to come up with positive, constructive ways to model and use it in the classroom as a way to change the learners beliefs. One way I came up with using it is to have…

  • A philosophy of teaching math

    This post is really for a friend of mine who is very much math aware and capable, but does not teach math. He has twin sons who are absolutely amazeballs smart, and through talking with him one day I espoused my approach to algebra. He was intrigued and wanted more info. This is my attempt…

  • My Class Noticed & Wondered

    So the other day I am giving my Algebra 2 STEM learners (this is our Honors designation” the big picture of Algebra 2. You know, so they know where they are at and where the class is going. This is what I had written on the right of the screen.   After writing this down,…

  • #5pracs Chapter 3 discussion 24 June

    This is the most recent 5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematics Discussions by Margaret Smith and Mary Kay Stein. Great conversation and discussion all around. Some of us are going to try to come up with a task from Algebra 2 to try to create a conversation around. Next conversation is Monday, 1 July.  …

  • Chapter 2 of “5 Practices”

    The book is 5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematics Discussions (B&N, Amazon) and the conversations was held on 6 June 2013. Next discussion on Chapter 3 will be on 13 June, 6pm pacific time, 9pm eastern time. [View the story "Chap 2 of 5 Practices" on Storify]