Half Yellow Fraction Art Students explore part-whole relationships while creating unique designs! This math art project was discovered by my mentor teacher. Second and third graders were asked to create art using geometric pattern blocks. The only catch was that their design had to be half yellow, meaning they had to base their artwork around yellow hexagon blocks. Hello and welcome to my 28th gems post. This is where I share five teaching ideas I've seen on Twitter. 1. Math Snacks I spotted a tweet from @fawnpnguyen about the website mathsnacks.com. The role of “practice” in mathematics class A few weeks ago a NYTimes published an article titled, Make Your Daughter Practice Math. She’ll Thank You Later, an opinion piece that, basically, asserts that girls would benefit from “extra required practice”. I took a few minutes to look through the comments (which there are over 600) and noticed a polarizing set of personal comments related to what has worked or hasn’t worked for each person, or their own children. Some sharing how practicing was an essential component for making them/their kids successful at mathematics, and others discussing stories related to frustration, humiliation and the need for children to enjoy and be interested in the subject. To many, the term “practice” brings about childhood memories of completing pages of repeated random questions, or drills sheets where the same algorithm is used over and over again. Students who successfully completed the first few questions typically had no issues completing each and every question.
Links – Classroom Chef Click here to see the handout to guide your students. 3-Act Math Tech Integration Musical Cues Great TED Talks Choose Your Own Assessment 5 Best Practices for Connecting STEAM with Special Ed My STEAM journey began five years ago as a special educator co-teaching 7th grade math and science. Immediately, my co-teacher and I contemplated how we could build more buy-in from our students. How could we plan hands-on lessons that would connect our math, science, and ELA (English Language Arts) standards? We also reflected on the missed opportunities that our students with special needs faced. These students oftentimes go to intervention classes in place of arts classes (technology, art, music, etc).
Hello and welcome to my 29th Maths Gems. This is where I share five teaching ideas and resources I've seen on Twitter. 1. A Decade of Expensive Video Lessons for K-16 Math Entrepreneurs This op-ed is part of a series of reflections on the past decade in education technology. Dan Meyer is chief academic officer at Desmos, and was previously a high school math teacher. He frequently shares his musings and insights on math education on his popular blog. Entrepreneurs had a mixed decade in K-16 math education. They accurately read the landscape in at least two ways: a) learning math is enormously challenging for most students, and b) computers are great at a lot of tasks. But they misunderstood why math is challenging to learn and put computers to work on the wrong task. STEAM Resources for Any Classroom Here’s a list of the many resources that are out there for STEM and STEAM: from explaining what it is, to sample lessons, to ways that it connects to the Arts. This is a living list, so please feel free to add any resources you have found in your travels in the comment section below! STEM presentations: Creating a Global Focus on STEM education is a very well-done powerpoint that gives a “big picture” to STEM. The STEM Education Coalition has a whole section of resource links to over 50 different presentations worldwide. The Journal highlights how teachers and administrators are looking for resources to support STEM.
Hi and welcome to my 30th gems post. This is where I share some of the best teaching ideas I've seen on Twitter. 1. Construction Comics Back in Gems 4 I featured Paul Collins' (@mrprcollins) brilliant comic resources for teaching constructions. Full STEAM ahead: Arts, STEM, and 21st century learning SmartBlogs It’s autumn in the Rockies and a season for debate and confrontation. In nature, the bugle call of the male elk woos mates and incites challengers for control of the harem. In politics, President Barack Obama and challenger Mitt Romney return again and again to the West to assert their positions. Why fight it? This month, let’s take a look at the argument for adding an “A” to STEM to create STEAM and acknowledge the role of the arts in 21st century learning. Back in Gems 18 I featured five ideas from the first 100 issues of Chris Smith's newsletters. I promised I'd be back with more newsletter gems, so today's post features some highlights from issues 101 - 250. Chris's newsletters are very popular amongst maths teachers - he now has over 1,000 subscribers. Each week's newsletter is full of teaching ideas, puzzles, jokes and mathematical trivia - it's always a pleasure to read.