I'm just back from the NCTM National Meeting in Boston, where I promoted the Lab Gear at the Didax booth, and attended a few sessions.One nice thing about NCTM was the opportunity to connect with friends and colleagues who I don't see often enough. Another is running into fans of my work, which happened with… Continue reading NCTM Report: Adaptation
Tag: Teaching
Math for Equity
A couple of years ago, I recommended a few books on complex instruction, an approach to teaching that was refined by a group of teachers in a Bay Area public school nicknamed "Railside", as it sits "on the wrong side of the tracks." My recommendation was based not on reading the books, but on my… Continue reading Math for Equity
Summer Workshops, 2015
I'll be teaching four workshops this summer, in two new locations: Seattle, and Waltham, MA (which is a half-hour West of Boston.) If you've meant to attend my workshops in the past, but couldn't make it to San Francisco, New York, or DC, perhaps these venues are more convenient for you? There will be no… Continue reading Summer Workshops, 2015
Asilomar Report: Think First
I attended the California Math Council meeting last Saturday. This post is a report on one talk I attended. It was given by Scott Farrand, a prof at Cal State University Sacramento. (I also reported on one of his talks last year.)This year's talk was called "Think First", which can be interpreted a few ways,… Continue reading Asilomar Report: Think First
Pythagorean Proofs
I just added a second dynamic geometry proof of the Pythagorean theorem on my Web site.Both are proofs "without words", which in reality means that you should use them to generate discussion. Indeed, many words are needed for students to fully grasp what they see, but the words should not come exclusively from the teacher.… Continue reading Pythagorean Proofs
Interactive Whiteboards
Some years ago, I wrote about interactive whiteboards (IWBs), in response to a passionate anti-IWB opinion piece I stumbled upon. The author of that piece objected to IWBs on multiple grounds, some of them legitimate. But I disagreed with his main point, which was to counterpose IWBs to student-centered pedagogy. To me, those are not… Continue reading Interactive Whiteboards
Make These Designs
Among the activities I have developed, "Make These Designs" is among the most popular. Students enjoy it, and teachers appreciate how it can be used as an engaging introduction to, or interesting review of, an important topic: graphs of linear functions, and the parameters m and b in y=mx+b.When electronic graphing first came onto the… Continue reading Make These Designs
Proportional Relationships
One good thing about the Common Core middle school standards is the emphasis on proportional relationships, and the fact that they are approached in a multidimensional way. In addition to "set up a proportion and solve it", which is probably the most common way to teach this, the standards propose multiple representations and a variety… Continue reading Proportional Relationships
Patterns
A correspondent writes:We emphasize the idea that students should approach problems in multiple ways. This has caused me to wonder about patterns. For example:students might conclude that 3^0=1 because of the pattern 3^4=81, 3^3=27, 3^2=9, 3^1=1orwhen the second difference is constant, students will conclude that the function is quadraticorwhen a function is concave up, the… Continue reading Patterns
Reasonable Acceleration
In previous posts, I expressed my concern about hyper-acceleration, the foisting of ever more advanced math topics on ever younger students. After illustrating some of the problems with that trend, I suggested a strategy for teachers to resist it. In this final post in the series, I will unpack one ingredient in that strategy: reasonable… Continue reading Reasonable Acceleration
Henri's Math Education Blog 