Mathy Math Mom

December 5, 2016 I have a 6.5 year old son who loves to rattle off math facts. Jo Boaler talks about how she never memorized math facts. I have to believe her, but I just can't wrap my head around it. We are still working on concepts, but his school values facts/procedures/memorization. Now, not only do I agree that these facts have a place, I have a hard time imagining life without them. Driving home tonight (after day 1 of Robert Kaplinsky's 1st Grassroots Workshop...fantastic!) my son rattles off his newest memorization,                           "10 times 10 is 100! I know multiplication!" Clearly he has been hanging out with his 3rd grade buddy. So being the math nerd/teacher that I am, I asked,                           "Why"?                           "Because Gavin said so."                           "Well what IS multiplication?" I have a lot of practice questioning this kid :)                           "I

November 9, 2016 I am not an elementary school teacher.  I have a mathematics degree and the majority of my experience has been in a secondary classroom. Robert Fulgham I spent 3 years in varying ages from birth to prek. With this wide range of experience, I have always said that high school students are just kindergartners who "wipe their own nose". Although I agree with the obvious that they do more than that, it is important to remember that our primary and secondary students deserve the same, welcoming, highly engaging, rigorous, hands on education. Don't skimp with kindys and don't forget to have fun with big kids. One of my favorite activities is card sorts, arranging cards, find a frame, fill a frame, ... (the list goes on). Recently, I used this strategy with my first grader. He was working on related number sentences . For those of you who are unaware of the math associated with this academic language (myself included until a couple day

October 19, 2016 I made a card sort for an Integrated 1 teacher for the features of exponential functions . It focused on: equation graph table a value (principal) b value (rate) y-intercept domain and range She removed one card from each function, each a difference representation, so students could create the missing card.  This was a group of repeating 10-12th graders at a low socioeconomic status (Title 1) school. The stage has been set. Students had difficulty getting started but with some well placed questioning, they got the hang of it. They used academic language to discuss whether two cards went together and would either agree or justify their disagreement. Overall, an extremely rewarding lesson.  What I learned from the teacher were some ideas on managing the card sort atmosphere. She had two creative features that helped her manage who needed help as well as what had been accomplished.  Asking for help. Rather than having students out of t

September 27, 2016 I have been using number lines to teach negative exponents (I will write another post about this soon!) and the built in conceptual understanding explains to my students WHY a zero exponent yields 1 and WHY negative exponents are not necessarily negative numbers and they never reach zero.  So WHAT could I do to teach rational exponents?  I have used this activity before with my Integrated Math 2 students and it yielded a deep understanding of rational exponents. They understood what the fraction MEANT and we were able to step off from there to the more symbolic representations and procedures. **I've always taught these with blank diagrams because I didn't have fraction bars. Future me will have them draw the diagrams or buy fraction bars.** Here's how I bait the hook... "Start with 64.  What two numbers multiply to 64? 8*8. Okay, so HALF the perfect square factors of 64 is 8 and two 8's multiplied make 64? Int

September 13, 2016 Radicals came up this week in a high school math PLC (that is Professional Learning Community). They were trying to figure out when students would be learning how to simplify radicals. For example: Prior to common core, these guys had a nice chunk of a chapter dedicated to them. First we would remember perfect squares, then depending on the conceptual focus of the text, we would first simplify or learn to multiply and divide, then vice versa. Finally we would add and subtract thus using the simplifying, and finally rationalize the denominator . In every day terms, this means "in a fraction, you cannot have a radical on the bottom". Why you ask? Because it isn't truly simplified. And that was that.  Now, if you are ANYTHING like the students I taught you are thinking to yourself...why? Why do I care what a radical is in the first place? Even IF I cared, why would I simplify, or perform operations on said useless giant check-marks. And if THAT i

September 6, 2016 Here it goes. Starting a blog has been something I have been considering for a while. Its value seems obvious just as we are told to reflect on our everyday. Why tonight? Well this amazing mathematician once told me that he learned more from his experience blogging for himself than for other people. Now I can't fathom having the same experience as him, but it was worth a shot. He posted on twitter that today was his 10 year anniversary for blogging, so starting today seemed like a valid choice. Who you ask? None other than Dan Meyer! I have recently started my new position as a high school math TOSA in Southern California. After living and teaching in Boise, Idaho for 4 years, California was a change. I am originally from SoCal and have only been gone for 9 years, but my experience in education has only happened out of state. It has been difficult to transition home, but also helpful to have a different perspective. Working in Boise has given me an ama