In 2008, I gave a talk about teacher collaboration at the Asilomar meeting of the California Math Council. It was well attended, and well received, but more than a few attendees told me that they had no one to collaborate with. They were the only math teacher at their school, or the only one teaching… Continue reading Online Collaboration
Tag: Teaching
Pruning the Curriculum
In my decades as math department chair, I learned that if you want to teach for understanding, you need to approach important topics repeatedly, and from different points of view. This includes different representations of concepts, and different learning tools to get at them. One reason for this is that since students have different backgrounds,… Continue reading Pruning the Curriculum
The Thinking Classroom
In my last post, I summarized Peter Liljedahl's paper on "visibly random groups." That research confirmed many things I already knew from experience. Today, I will summarize another one of his papers, this one titled "Building Thinking Classrooms: Conditions for Problem Solving." (It is also available on ResearchGate.) I learned quite a bit from reading… Continue reading The Thinking Classroom
Random Groups
Peter Liljedahl is a math education professor at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia. He is interested in helping teachers create what he calls a "thinking classroom," as contrasted of course with a classroom where the main objective is memorization. I just read two phenomenal papers he wrote. Since his research confirms my beliefs, I… Continue reading Random Groups
About hints
A few days ago, I saw a raging debate on Twitter about hint-giving in math class. It was triggered by a short talk by Michael Pershan, a teacher in NYC. Michael argues that high school teachers need to share good hints with each other, and he proposes some guidelines as to what makes a good… Continue reading About hints
NCTM Report: Adaptation
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
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
