Yea, that’s right. I just had 2 classes in a row teach themselves and others how to complete the square with circles and ellipses. How did I accomplish this miracle, because I really do consider it to be a miracle. In my Advanced Algebra Class we have the following problem called, creatively enough, The [...]
One thing that I have struggled with is to make review meaningful for AP Stats. I absolutely hate the “here is the review, the test will be similar” wink wink, where all you do is change some numbers and voila, there is the actual exam. That doesn’t seem honest to me, when I am supposed [...]
After spending a hectic week planning and organizing for the department, I finally got to work on my classroom in a serious way on Friday and Saturday. It all came together and my classroom is ready. So in the spirit of sharing, here is what my classroom looks like to the learners entering my room [...]
I was not familiar with the acronym T.P.O.V. either until a couple of weeks ago when I was introduced to it at the NCTM’s Reasoning and Sense Making Institute. It was the presentation by Timothy Kanold that introduced the phrase, “Teachable Point of View”, and he brings it up in his book in Chapter 1: [...]
In Montana, there is a town called Haugan on I-90 near the Idaho border with an interesting building. As you approach, you see signs like this every couple of miles. [click on the pictures for a higher res image] Outside, the place looks like any tourist trap. Do they really have 50,000 silver dollars inside? [...]
This will be the last post I make on the specific topic of the 3 days spent in Orlando at the Reasoning and Sense Making Institute. I will expect that I make many more posts on things I do in the classroom that are based on the ideas I have learned, however. A collection of [...]
At the NCTM Reasoning & Sense Making Institute, I attended the session given by Beth Chance and Henry Kranendonk, two of the three authors of the Reasoning and Sense Making in Statistics and Probability book. I have that book on my bookshelf at school, and I have looked at it, but have not tried any [...]
Viva Hathaway was the third session on Saturday, and I looked forward to her presentation with great gusto. I attended a short session she gave at the NCTM Conference in Salt Lake City in 2009, and walked away from her session with a brain exploding with ideas. In fact, on her site, she still has [...]
I have to say I almost left Mr. Godbold’s presentation. It started off on a odd note, where he told us what he wanted to go over, then said we couldn’t do all of it, but we would be lucky if we did half, and then repeated himself for about 10 minutes. He looked and [...]
Timothy Kanold was the Superintendent of Adlai Stevenson High School District in Illinois. This school is a huge success story, because it went from bottom of the bottom to top of the top. They did this through a strong commitment to PLC’s and communication. Now Mr. Kanold did not spend a second on his Keynote [...]