Tag: Reasoning & Sense Making

  • 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…

  • Polynomials in Alg 2

    I haven’t posted in a while, mainly because I am just so happy with how my classes are going. I will focus on Alg 2 here, because these awesome learners are just knocking my socks off. I am in the polynomial unit, knee deep in graphing, and increasing, decreasing, relative mins, relative max’s, absolute mins,…

  • Making Connections Everyday

    I have had this long term struggle going on in my head this year that we really don’t do a good job making connections between material in our classes, and that lack of connection is one reason why “transfer” (ala. Grant Wiggins and Understanding by Design) doesn’t occur as  frequently as I would like. Well,…

  • My thoughts on #TMC12 & overcoming myself

    I am rather late to the gate with these thoughts, in large part because I drove (well, rode my motorcycle) to St. Louis from Reno, which took 4 days to get home. More on that in a different post when I do the math from the trip video. If you ask one of the teachers…

  • CCSS, homework, and a change in how I teach

    One of the struggles I have as department chair is coming up with what we should be doing in our PLC time. I decided that we needed to start examining the CCSS much closer, and really start implementing things this year that we are going to be asked to implement next year. Why? Because if…

  • Binomial probability w scantrons in hand

    My last post was about an idea to use old scantrons as a visual aid to build knowledge of the binomial probability formula before the learners actually were introduced to the formula. Short post: it worked, I think. Long post: I passed out the scantrons, which immediately brought forth a groan. We just had the…

  • PLC Values and my personal T.P.O.V.

    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:…

  • My first Anyqs posting–From Montana

    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?…

  • Pulling the NCTM’s Reasoning and Sense Making together

    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…

  • Beth Chance, Henry Kranendonk, and an overwhelming task in stats

    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…