Read the quote below from Michael Fullan’s book Coherence. If it doesn’t resonate with you, then you’re not going to be interested in the rest of this blog post. The problem is not the absence of goals in districts and schools today but the presence of too many that are ad hoc, unconnected, and ever-changing.…
If you’re a professional development provider, it can be disheartening when you think about your training’s effectiveness. The participant evaluations written at the end of your training might be glowing with your praises, but when you check in with attendees a day later, a week later, a month later, or a year later, are the…
Dear Future Math Standards Writers, I’m writing you this letter from the perspective of an educator who has worked as a math teacher and math teacher specialist for a public school district since 2003. I know that one day, maybe years from now, there will be a new set of math standards and I…
If you’ve ever wanted to speak at a National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) conference or you’ve applied and were not accepted, then this blog post is for you. It’s the text version of a presentation called How to Apply and Speak at an NCTM Conference which Dan Meyer and I co-presented at the 2017…
In my role as a secondary math teacher specialist for Downey Unified School District, I provide and consume a lot of professional development. Coming off of last week’s post on Sharpening the Saw, a question I often have is about when trainings should take place. More specifically, on what two consecutive days of the week should professional development take place?
Of all the habits in Stephen Covey’s book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, the one that has resonated with me the most is Sharpening the Saw. To illustrate this habit, Covey tells the story of a man who was walking through a forest when he came across a frustrated lumberjack.
Here’s a question to think about: if you can completely remove a problem’s context and still solve it, can it really be mathematical modeling?
Consider the math problem below from a middle school math textbook. It uses the context of a baseball diamond to discuss rational numbers. It is listed as a “Real-World Link” and demonstrating Math Practice 4 (notice the box in the upper right).
I was watching students work on this page and wondered how important the context was to solving these problems. Then it made me wonder, “What if there was no context? What would change?” This is what the problem might look like it the context was completely removed.
This is the fourth in a series of interviews with educators who are using #ObserveMe signs and what they’ve learned along the way.
Name: Bill Wietman
Twitter handle: @WWietman
Years in education: 12
Current position: Middle School Assistant Principal
Location: Bismarck, North Dakota
This is the third in a series of interviews with educators who are using #ObserveMe signs and what they’ve learned along the way.
Name: Kelley Kaminsky
Twitter handle: @Kelley_Kaminsky
Website: https://teachwritenow.blog/
Years in education: 13
Current position: English Teacher / Teacher Leader
Location: Estero, Florida
This is the second in a series of interviews with educators who have are using #ObserveMe signs and what they’ve learned along the way.
Name: Sherry Nesbitt
Twitter handle: @snesbitt1972
Website: http://sherrynesbitt.weebly.com/
Years in education: 23
Current position: Middle School Spanish
Location: Hershey, Pennsylvania
Consider this thought experiment:
What if we eliminated separate Honors and regular math classes? For example, instead of there being an Honors Geometry course and a regular Geometry course, we mixed all students together so there was just one type of Geometry course that every Geometry student took.
There’s a catch though: any of these Geometry students may earn Honors credit for the course, as long as the student does X, Y, and Z. What would X, Y, and Z need to be for this to be fair?
We’ll come back to that question later on.
This is the first in a series of interviews with educators who have are using #ObserveMe signs and what they’ve learned along the way.
Name: Nate Bowling
Twitter handle: @nate_bowling
Website: http://www.natebowling.com/
Years in education: 11
Current position: AP Government & Politics and AP Human Geography
Location: Tacoma, Washington, USA
I think that professional development providers, certainly including myself, often miss the mark and commit a common mistake when they tell attendees what they need to do but don’t leave them equipped to implement it. To explain this, consider how we teach students what to do during a fire.
The two most common options are providing a map (like you see in hotel rooms) or by simulating the experience through a fire drill (like you see in schools). Giving students a map is certainly less time consuming than running a fire drill, so why don’t we just give students a map?
From 2010 to 2013, I had the opportunity to facilitate approximately 70 lesson study days with third grade through high school math teachers in my district. It was one of the best experiences of my career as my job was focused on learning about how students learn. So, I thought it would be worthwhile to share some of the lessons learned (many the hard way) as I believe that other educators may find them useful.
First, let me describe the lesson study process we used:
My favorite tool for helping students solve problems is the Problem Solving Framework. I love using it because it scaffolds students often underdeveloped critical thinking skills and helps them develop their own problem solving techniques.
One of the most common concerns about implementing 3-Act Tasks (also known as problem-based lessons, application problems, or math modeling problems) is “How do you assess them?” Here are the four ways I use most often.
If you’ve put up your #ObserveMe sign but things aren’t going the way you hoped, then this post’s for you. I’m using this as a running list of solutions for problems that educators are encountering so we can have them in a central location. Here’s how you can help:
Are you encountering issues that aren’t listed?
Do you have solutions that aren’t listed?
If so, please mention them in the comments and I will add them.
I was recently interviewed by the very friendly and down-to-earth Tim and Scott Bedley for their Bedley Bros. Podcast. You can listen to it online or download to listen to it on the go. We talk about #ObserveMe signs and problem-based learning in this 24-minute episode.
I hope you check it out and let me know what you think in the comments.
If you live in a state that uses the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC)’s assessment for the Common Core State Standards in math, then you want to make sure you avoid letting anyone make the score interpretation mistake I describe in this post. Take a look at the data that comes from a school’s 2016 scores in mathematics.
A teacher who doesn’t collaborate works on an isolated island. When this lack of collaboration permeates an entire school, teachers more closely resemble independent contractors than colleagues. I’m growing increasingly concerned that this is becoming more, and not less, common. Consider the highly shared and liked tweet below from Heather Kohn. At a very collaborative…