Turns out that Desmos already posts a ‘Friday Five‘. Wonder if I subconsciously stole the name from them?
I’m posting this early (although it is Friday here) because I have a hundred little things — and one big thing — to do today.
- Megan Schmidt (@veganmathbeagle) is wowing us on twitter with her number spiral investigations. See below. Megan’s own blog post is here. I love them so much that I’ve been storifying her tweets, including ones not in her post.
Let’s Play Math! https://t.co/WG5uQ6BcFa pic.twitter.com/YgAnWtEH39
— Megan Schmidt (@Veganmathbeagle) May 25, 2016
I get to name this one, right? @Trianglemancsd pic.twitter.com/anQ49QFCWi
— Megan Schmidt (@Veganmathbeagle) May 26, 2016
- I am a huge fan (like the rest of the #MTBoS) of Notice and Wonder. If you’re not sure what this is, go check out Annie Fetter’s 2011 Ignite Talk. I was planning on writing a post, but then Joe Schwartz wrote one about Notice and Wonder with second graders that is so much better than anything I could write. It’s important to allow students to notice in both mathematical and non-mathematical ways, but I like how Joe orients students towards the more mathematical wonderings.
- I love this paper-sharing activity for exploring infinite geometric series with students, thanks to Sam Shah and Bowen Kerin. It doesn’t need to be tied to a unit, either — a friend did it with a spare 10 minutes. The key for me is to ham it up; take the script that Sam suggests and really overact. I take different coloured paper, and make a big deal over each paper-master choosing their favourite colour. A recent improvement, at least for me, was to let the groups vary in size (within reason). That way, we explore several series in the same activity.
- Sara Van Der Werf writes how vocabulary can be the ultimate block to tackling a mathematical question — out of 80 students, 80 incorrect responses to a question involving ‘annual’ but 80 correct responses when changed to ‘in a year’. Sara offers a simple tweak, and some great reflections.
- This week I posted about focusing on relationships with students. Then I read Ilana Horn’s Who Belongs in our Math Classrooms. Powerful stuff. I was particularly interested in the linked article from PBS Newshour about the effect of teachers mispronouncing names. On this theme, I can think of no better way to end than with the transcript of Francis Su’s talk The Lesson of Grace in Teaching. David Butler called it a touchstone of what’s important in teaching. He’s absolutely right.
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