Tag: pedagogy

  • PBL: Project? Problem? Does it matter

    Last week I attended the PBLWorld workshop. It is a 3 day workshop hosted by the Buck Institute for Education (BIE). I am not going to get into what that conference experience was like. It wasn’t good. I would not recommend any math teacher (any teacher of any subject, actually) to ever attend PBLWorld unless…

  • Is math like ice cream?

    To my last post, “No more broccoli ice cream” David Griswold challenged me with a very serious and thoughtful reply. The phrase, “No more broccoli ice cream” came from this meme that I saved. I collect these memes, just because the provide interesting fodder for conversations about math in class. So who is Denise Gaskins?…

  • Socratic Seminars in K&L

    Keeping up the #BlAugust posts! Yay. Weekends are harder to do. Yesterdays post where I questioned my skills and abilities in questioning created two comments. Both of them helped me directly shape the focus of what I am doing in this class. First, @Druinok suggested I get a hold of some of the AVID materials,…

  • An August project – Theory Class design

    Since I committed to BlAugust (see the #MTBoSBlaugust hashtag) and I am in a course design hole developing an Educational Theory course for my program I decided to merge the two ideas together. I think it is important for teachers to regularly revisit the theories we learned in ed courses, because I know that when…

  • My Critical Pedagogy / Theory Journey

    This is a class assignment. Not to blog about it, but to write a paper about it.  The “it” is critical pedagogy/theory. Do you know what that means? I didn’t (and probably still don’t) either. I realize that I acted in ways that inched towards critical pedagogy, but I didn’t understand the theory. When I say,…

  • Where does the joy go?

    As I was observing my students teaching I stood in an elementary school hallway and saw this display. This was on both sides of the hallway, 15 on one wall, 15 on the other. So you don’t have to blow it up to see, I will explain it. Each page says, “Who am I” and…

  • (h,k) form – setting the stage

    I begin the class with a “what do you notice?” “what do you wonder?” session. This is probably the 5th or 6th day of class, and sets the stage for the entire rest of year. What do you notice? What do you wonder? I document all the noticings and wonderings, and then we discuss the…

  • 3 rules – extended & connected

    My last post was about the three rules I use in my classroom. I developed the how and why in that post. In this post, I will explore some detailed “how I use them” in the classroom. I am careful to never say the word “rule” except for these three. We have exponent shortcuts, log…

  • #TMC Reflection – Alg2 Sessions

    At TMC14 (Twitter Math Camp 2014) this year I did not attend many sessions, because I was the co-lead or lead in several blocks of time. It was great, and the comments I received were very complementary. I think the teachers telling me that were just being nice a little bit, but I hope they…

  • 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…