The Multiplication Sundae and the Bad Taste of Incentives
Earlier this week I received an email asking for incentive ideas for a school wide fact fluency focus: Hi Graham, I need some insight about math facts and incentive programs. I follow your site and have read Not Your Mom's Flashcards:Conceptual Understanding of...
3-Act Tasks (#49, #50, #51)
They come in waves. It's both a blessing and a curse. Seems like everywhere I walk there's a perplexing question I can't just let go of. The bug of mathematization has hit my entire family. My wife is a teacher and for appreciation week she was given a light bulb...
Becoming a Better Storyteller
I recently had the amazing opportunity to be 1 of 6 speakers at ShadowCon16. The whole premise of ShadowCon is awesome and full credit goes to Zak Champagne, Mike Flynn, and Dan Meyer for having the vision and bringing this all together. Conferences quickly become...
Be the Teacher: Moving from Counting to Cardinality
Cardinality...what is it and what does it look like? If you're not a kindergarten teacher you might be left shrugging your shoulders if someone asked you to define cardinality. Before students can own the idea of cardinality, they need to have an understanding of...
The Progression of Addition and Subtraction
The more I create... the more I learn. Here is the 3rd installment of this whole Making Sense Series which has truly forced me to be a better teacher. A more educated teacher. I can't stress enough how much I've learned from diving into the progressions found here....
I’m Placing a Hit on the Pseudo-Context
This robs students of everything mathematics should be... The "real world" connection The step-by-step procedure Circle the numbers you need to solve the problem The pseudo-context word problem. Lesson 19.2 infers that this unit is front-end load with procedures and...
The Progression of Division
Last month I posted The Progression of Multiplication hoping that a couple of friends and parents would find it helpful. Well, here's my stab at the progression of division. I understand that there's lots of ways to model division and this is only ONE of them....
The Post-it Holds the Mystery Number
There's no denying the power of the Post-it. Many brilliant minds within the #MTBoS have harnessed its' power to help students make sense of mathematics and this week was no different. Only this time we infused them into a Marilyn Burns must have... To start we had...
Take it to the Bank
It's never been a secret that Superman fears Kryptonite. But I think the same can be said for many 2nd grade teachers and the way they feel about teaching money. There's no way around it...teaching money to students is hard. With money comes a level of abstraction...
The Progression of Multiplication
There's a lot happening in elementary mathematics and it's really tough for teachers to keep up with it all...let alone parents and administrators. I keep reminding myself that the turtle won the race. It's my hope that in creating and sharing this video, we can all...