Meet Taco, my trained snail. I give him signals, and he walks up and down a tree in my backyard. If you’ve worked with integer tiles, you can see some quick connections. The yellow commands look like positive integer tiles, and the red commands look like negative integer tiles. After students experiment with Taco the snail, they are ready to… Read more →
We all stumble across moments or images that would make for great math explorations. For example, every time I stop at Buc-ee’s I photograph the cabinets of ice for sale. Someday, I am sure I will make an interesting activity predicting how much a bag of 30 pounds of ice should cost. On a recent trip, however, I discovered that… Read more →
A few years ago, I was talking with a teacher on my team, asking him how he coached students who struggle with word problems. His toolbox of problem solving pedagogy boiled down to one sentence: “I tell them to read the problem again.” While it is vital to make sure students understand the problem, we can help them develop strategies… Read more →
Two of last week’s sessions at T3 in San Antonio highlighted some great strategies to differentiate for Special Education students using TI Nspires and TI’s Navigator teacher software. Andy Aguirre, from Northside ISD’s new Harlan HS, share very practical strategies for differentiating a TI Nspire activity to meet the needs of different learners. She began with a .tns file from TI’s… Read more →
The first two weeks of this school year, I have been teaching a Geometry course for 8th graders in a face-to-face/distance learning hybrid. My students were spread across several campuses. I would physically teach from a different campus each day, which students from other campuses would join us via teleconference. My biggest concern as the first day of school approached… Read more →
We just completed the first week of school, and I taught a middle school Geometry course in a distance learning/face-to-face hybrid environment. My students were spread across several campuses and I physically taught the class from a different campus each day. This allowed the students to have face-to-face class time with their teacher on the days I visited their campus,… Read more →
My oldest brother earned his undergraduate degree in astronomy. He puts it to good use. He studies space weather and helps design components for satellites. Sometimes we end up in remote locations with great views of the night sky. He enjoys pointing out some highlights: “The International Space Station should be visible near the horizon in view minutes over that… Read more →
Here’s the latest installment in my efforts to understand our students’ development of math concepts in the middle grades (based on the Texas curriculum laid out in the TEKS). My previous video looked at the Geometry strand, and I found the research eye-opening (and useful when working with students). As a long-time 8th grade math teacher, the take-away for me… Read more →
Recently, as I worked with some struggling math students, we spent a fair amount of time addressing gaps in prior learning. They were open to our classroom activities, so so it was interesting to challenge their thinking and observe their growth. For example, it was clear most of their previous discussions of relations and functions had focused on tables to the exclusion of… Read more →
Graham Fletcher (@gfletchy) creates a great series of short videos showing the development of early math skills throughout the elementary grades. These Progression Videos not only show the importance of each part of the instructional sequence, but they also help you reflect on math pedagogy and how the brain makes connections and develops fluency. I felt it would be useful… Read more →