Blogs

A factoring success story

January 22, 2013

I covered a couple of my colleague's classes yesterday so he could attend a math conference. The afternoon class was a somewhat boisterous grade 10 group. I was asked to teach students how to find the greatest common factor, and if I had time, introduce them to more general factoring techniques.

Investigation into scoring systems

January 21, 2013

I played ultimate tonight, and we usually keep score with shoes. Our normal scoring system is to count in base 5. Tonight, I tried to use binary, but at half-time I switched back to base 5 when most of our team struggled to read our score quickly.

I took some pictures of the arrangement of shoes during the game (when I wasn't playing).

01000

Teaching division algorithms

January 21, 2013

I'm assisting our 4th grade teachers in finding resources for their upcoming unit on division, and I'm hoping to avoid either of these situations from arising (see the videos below). Actually, these videos could be great hooks to see if students can figure out what mistakes the people in them are making...

The Reflective Educator

Social interactions and learning

January 20, 2013

A conversation on learning
(Image credit: Vandy CFT)

Raising mathematicians

January 14, 2013

I read a recent article about the importance of early number talk with children and was pleased that this issue was being brought up. The article shares research on a few of the stark differences in how parents talk with their children about numbers. For example, parents tend to talk to their daughters about half as much about numbers as their sons.

The Reflective Educator

Andragogy vs pedagogy

January 10, 2013

Andragogy is a theory of learning as learning applies to adults rather than children (pedagogy). According to Malcolm Knowles, there are 6 key components of adult education.

The Reflective Educator

Measurement by Paul Lockhart

January 8, 2013

You may remember Paul Lockhart as the author of a Mathematician's Lament. I'm currently reading his newest book, Measurement. I'm halfway through it and reading it every chance I get. Here's my favourite quote from the book so far:

"All of the events -- past, present, and future -- of our whole ridiculous universe are writ on this one four-dimensional canvas, and we are but the tiniest brush strokes." Paul Lockhart