When I tell people that joy is at the heart of my math classroom, they sometimes give me a puzzled look. Math and joy aren’t often words we hear in the same sentence. But when I read through my students’ reflections this semester, one word kept coming up over and over again: joy.
In my never ending quest to create a better math program that helps more kids learn more math I created the Animal Emoji system at the end of last year. Now that we have completed a quarter of the new school year I thought that it was a good time to assess how it’s going
Conundrums: Non Curricular Bell Work Are you ready to start your class with Bell Work that activates student thinking, builds connections and student confidence? Then give these a try! Assign them through Google Classroom and they’ll auto grade as long as students click on the affirmation. Here’s how I do it: I put the video
(5-min Non-curricular tasks that motivate, activate and engage Math students) If you want to read the research on why these are effective go here ENTHUSIASM MATTERS – There is enough info in each slide for students to figure it out. Start the timer and say “Go!”. Use your words to encourage them to persevere and
According to Wikipedia, “Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes.” Other sources have similar definitions but I would like to pose a different perspective. I think that what most people think of
As a math teacher I am constantly reevaluating my program because even if we think everything is perfect our group of kids change every year and what might have been great for last year’s group might not be so for this one. One of the parts of my program that I thought I’d revisit this
I developed the three read (self) assessment system prior to COVID and as great as it turned out to be at helping students take ownership of their learning and become awesome problem solvers it always took longer than I wanted for them to understand and truly embrace the system. This year I wanted to shorten
How to make every activity a low floor high ceiling high cognitive demand activity
Meet Rufus, a super light stuffed dog that we use to decide who reads or answers a question next. How does an inanimate stuffed dog choose students you might ask? Well, using a complex AI generated algorithm I created a… Only kidding!!! As much of a techno geek as I am, I have come to
I talk and think a lot about our art. As a scientist I also think and write a lot about data and research. I know some people think these are mutually exclusive but, in my opinion, anyone that says that doesn’t really have a good grasp of either. Last Formative Friday, the Team Test I
