One question I often get about problem-based lessons is “What should I do if students finish a problem early?” The conversation often shifts to ways to extend the problem so that students who are done and want more challenge have something to do. So in this blog post I want to dive into a distinction…
Recently I’ve become aware of the reality that as math teachers, we often talk about what problems we will be using and even how we will implement them but frequently we miss opportunities to discuss why we’re using them. Consider Graham Fletcher’s amazing sugar cube task on volume of a rectangular prism. I can think of three different…
I had the opportunity to do my first IGNITE! talk during the 54th Northwest Mathematics Conference in Whistler, BC, Canada. If you’re unfamiliar with the IGNITE! talk format, all speakers give talks that are exactly 5 minutes long. They get 20 slides that automatically advance every 15 seconds, whether you’re ready or not. It was definitely…