Now that I'm a freelance math education consultant and curriculum developer, I need to pay attention to the Common Core State Standards as they affect everything I do in my professional life. Merely listening to talks about the standards, and reading angry posts about them did not provide a lot of information. On the other… Continue reading The Common Core
Tag: Algebra
Proving Pick’s Formula
Pick's formula is a way to find the area of a geoboard polygon by counting interior pegs and boundary pegs. Students can discover the formula by doing some experimenting under teacher guidance (see Geometry Labs 8.6 or Algebra: Themes, Tools, Concepts 4.12.) I have used this in the classroom for decades, because it is such… Continue reading Proving Pick’s Formula
Asilomar Report, Part 2
Read about my morning at the Asilomar meeting of the California Math Council here.My afternoon was taken up with function diagrams. First, I attended Martin Flashman's presentation on this topic, then I made my own presentation, and finally I had dinner with Martin. (If you know nothing about function diagrams, read no further. Or find… Continue reading Asilomar Report, Part 2
Algebra: Themes, Tools, Concepts and the Common Core
Way back in the early 90's, I co-authored the textbook Algebra: Themes, Tools, Concepts (ATTC) with Anita Wah. It failed to become a best-seller, in part because while the lessons work well with students, the book is not very easy for teachers to manage. Still it's a good book. We have continued to use different… Continue reading Algebra: Themes, Tools, Concepts and the Common Core
Summer Workshops
I'll be teaching four workshops in June, at the Urban School of San Francisco's Center for Innovative Teaching. I just posted the info here. Some changes from past years:I've broken up my Geometry workshop, which used to be three or four days, into two chunks, two days each. The first (Hands-On Geometry) will be based… Continue reading Summer Workshops
Asilomar report, Part 1
Once again, I had a great time at the Asilomar conference of the California Math Council. Here are some notes from the first two sessions I attended.Scott Farrand (of Cal State Sacramento) and UC Davis's Rick West's presentation "Diophantine Equations Can Hide Geometric Surprises" was a fun way to start the day.Think of two whole… Continue reading Asilomar report, Part 1
No Three on a Line
In a recent post, I mentioned K-12 Unsolved, the project I'm involved in that aims to publicize 13 unsolved math problems, in the hope that an appropriate version of each problem will find its way into K-12 classrooms. One problem we looked at was posed by Henry Dudeney in 1917. Here is the problem: Consider… Continue reading No Three on a Line
Geoboards and Dot Paper
If you are familiar with my curricular creations, you know that I often use the geoboard as a microworld to introduce interesting problems and important concepts. This is in line with my call for a tool-rich pedagogy. (A geoboard is a square lattice pegboard on which students use rubber bands to create and investigate geometric… Continue reading Geoboards and Dot Paper
HTML 5!
In preparation for my Asilomar talk, I have updated all my function diagram Java applets to HTML 5.What that means is that (a) you won't get the annoying and scary message warning you of the dangers of Java, (b) the applets will work on a tablet, and (c) you won't need to have GeoGebra installed… Continue reading HTML 5!
"Enrichment"
During my first ten years as a teacher, I worked in elementary schools. In addition to team teaching my own class (grade 3, then 4, then 5) I was a math specialist for grades K-5. The basic idea was that there was "normal" math (a lot of arithmetic, textbook-based), and there was "enrichment" math. I… Continue reading "Enrichment"
Henri's Math Education Blog 