Illuminations

Mathlanding Educator Review Learning Scores Engagement Is the product stimulating, entertaining, and engrossing? Will kids want to return? 3 This well-organized site for teachers is very plain visually, but lets linked content shine. Kids will want to use more direct routes for games. 18 YouTube Channels for Elementary Math A while back I shared a post with a list of 20 great YouTube channels for Social Studies that I curated for a teacher inservice I was leading. Recently I had the chance to do the same thing again for a group of elementary math teachers. Once again I searched for great YouTube channels that these teachers could use with their students to teach new content, provide extra review, or explain math topics in a different and engaging way. Some of these channels and playlists are created by talented teachers sharing their classroom creations with the world, while others are made by companies, TV shows, and more.

Math Programs: How They Rate on Common-Core Alignment Based on market share and states’ recommendations, EdReports.org selected 20 math instructional series to review for common-core alignment. (For reporting purposes, K-5 and 6-8 texts from the same publisher were considered separate series.) Small teams of educators scored the digital and print texts on focus, coherence, rigor, and usability. In addition to individual grade-level ratings, EdReports.org gave summative ratings for each grade band (K-2, 3-5, and 6-8). Eureka Math was the only program that met the expectations for alignment to the Common Core State Standards at every grade level reviewed.

Beyond Working Hard: What Growth Mindset Teaches Us About Our Brains Growth mindset has become a pervasive theme in education discussions in part because of convincing research by Stanford professor Carol Dweck and others that relatively low-impact interventions on how a student thinks about himself as a learner can have big impacts on learning. The growth mindset research is part of a growing understanding and acknowledgement that many non-cognitive factors are important to academic learning. While it’s a positive sign that educators see value in the growth mindset research and believe they can implement it in their classrooms, the deceptively simple idea has led to some confusion and misperceptions about what a growth mindset really is and how teachers can support it in the classroom. It’s easy to lump growth mindset in with other education catchphrases, like “resiliency” or “having high expectations,” but growth mindset actually has a much more concrete definition. Approaching the world with a growth mindset can be very liberating. Katrina Schwartz

I Don’t Teach First Grade; I Teach Mathematics By Claire Riddell, posted July 5, 2016 — While teaching first grade, I sought out a partnership with a fifth-grade teacher to co-teach some math lessons in both of our classes. This partnership was not required by an administrator or a district initiative; instead it came from our mutual desire to understand mathematics and pedagogy before and after our respective grade levels. After experiencing just a few lessons in fifth grade, I realized that this partnership was opportunity to see into the future. I was able to experience what my students would be doing in mathematics in just four short years.

NCSM - Overview When we move on, people do not remember us for what we do for ourselves. They remember us for what we do for them. They are the inheritors of our work. How Much Freedom Should A Teacher Have? How Much Freedom Should A Teacher Have? by Grant Wiggins, Ed.D Ed note: On May 26, 2015, Grant Wiggins passed away. Grant was tremendously influential on TeachThought’s approach to education, and we were lucky enough for him to contribute his content to our site. Mathematical Habits of Mind We all have them, some good and some bad. We pick them up from friends, family, and even strangers. But we may not recall who we picked them up from or when they began. Because we've practiced them over and over, these seemingly thoughtless repeated habits or behaviors, the pathways in our brain have become so broad, fast, and efficient in carrying them out that we do them automatically without even thinking. Yet these unconscious habits and behaviors add structure and order to our lives and help us to make sense of the world we live in.