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In Teaching Math, What’s the Right Mix of Content and Context?

January 31, 2013 | 11:47 AM | By
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“Polynomial functions!”

“Trig identities!”

“How about the properties? Commutative, associative, distributive.”

So unfolded a laundry list of what a group of math teachers considered the more painful and less necessary concepts covered in the average high school math curriculum.

The laments, aired at EduCon 2.5 in Philadelphia at Science Leadership Academy last weekend, were part of a discussion around how to rebuild math instruction under the radically different—and admittedly unlikely—parameters posed by moderator Mike Thayer, a math teacher at Summit Public Schools in New Jersey.

Thayer, who also has a background teaching high school physics, proposed a scenario in which high school freshmen would take a one-year course (or a one-semester course in a block scheduling system) that covered the essentials of Algebra 1 and 2, Geometry, and possibly parts of Trigonometry. Any additional math concepts might be learned in a cross-disciplinary fashion through other courses. For example, chemistry teachers would be responsible for teaching

“I’d like to delete polynomial functions, but I’d like my students to see a roller coaster and think, ‘There must be math involved in that,’ and to go online and try and figure that out.”

students the basics of logarithms while covering the pH scale. Biology teachers would explain concepts of exponential growth to their students when discussing species population and reproduction.

The rationale of such a course, Thayer said, would be to create a version of math instruction that more fully lives with the inquiry-based learning approach embraced by the Science Leadership Academy, the public magnet high school where the conference took place. His vision—which hinges on what he concedes is a large assumption that students would enter high school Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, Educon, math, Science Leadership Academy

How Math is Getting Its Groove Back

January 24, 2013 | 9:46 AM | By

PBS NewsHour

By Rebecca Jacobson

Carrie Lewis and Kelly Steele’s fifth grade students slide and spin across the classroom floor, doing the hustle, the robot, and the running man. While it may look at first glance like goofing off, these students are actually dancing for a higher cause…math.

Lewis, a STEM specialist for Virginia’s Lynchburg city schools, and Steele, who teaches gifted education in Bedford county, Virginia, are both math enthusiasts eager to instill in their students a love of the subject. And dancing, they hoped, might be just the thing to help tackle a common fifth-grade learning deficit — number patterns.

“Dances are patterns,” Lewis said. “We had identified that our students had trouble with patterns and this was a way to get them involved in it.”

Both teachers are part of Sweet Briar College’s STEM teacher education program, where they worked together to design “dance by numbers,” a lesson plan that relies on dance to teach pattern recognition. In the video above, Lewis explains how the lesson works.

IDENTIFYING A PATTERN

The first step was to turn a dance routine into a number pattern. Students logged onto the Pillsbury Dough Boy website and watched, studied and deconstructed the cartoon mascot’s six dance moves. They assigned each step a number, and charted the patterns in his dance. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, math

Making Math Meaningful with Online Games and Videos

January 15, 2013 | 2:37 PM | By

Re-Roofing Your Uncle's House

By Almetria Vaba

Math can be made meaningful when connected to students’ experiences. With video clips and interactive games from public media students practice math concepts while exploring real world concepts. Learn how to decorate an intricate cake, play the role of the pharmacist, roof a house and more using PBS LearningMedia resources to measure with math.

Using Recipes for Fractions Lesson Plan and Video
While doubling a cupcake recipe, students practice three ways of doubling fractions using representations, addition, and multiplication. Students also convert between improper fractions and mixed numbers. Grades 4-8.

Re-Roofing Your Uncle’s House Interactive Game
In this interactive activity adapted from the Wisconsin Online Resource Center, students use mathematics and measuring skills to solve a construction problem by playing a game using tools (including a tape measure, notepad, and calculator) to determine how many shingles are needed to reroof a house. Students also learn the importance of proper planning and how miscalculating the amount of materials necessary can add to the cost and time spent on a project. Grades 3-9.

Cake Designer Video
Math made delicious! In this video, a cake designer describes how she uses math with her recipes and designs. Students can relate the importance of mathematics to the field of cake designing. Grades 3–9.

Area of Circles with Dive Dog Interactive Game
In this animated activity students learn the formula for the area of a circle and then apply it to multiple scenarios involving Spot the Dog. Activities include solving problems involving the area of a circle and for the areas of parallelograms, triangles, and circles. Students also calculate the area Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Teaching With Tech, math, PBS LearningMedia

Connecting the Dots: Teaching How to Think

December 27, 2012 | 1:00 PM | By

In her “anti-parabola” video Doodling in Math Class: Connecting the Dots, Vi Hart demonstrates mathematical curiosity and creativity, which happens to be the opposite of what she does in math class. As she says, “Teaching how to think requires giving power and responsibility to individuals while teaching what to think can be done with one-size fits all bullet points and check boxes.”

 

FILED UNDER: Culture, math, Vi Hart, videos

Why Nate Silver Can Save Math Education in America

December 14, 2012 | 11:38 AM | By

Ian Hill/Thinkstock/Penguin

By Nikhil Goyal

Call it “The Triumph of Nerds.” Poll statisticians have risen to rock star status. One of the most famous is New York Times’ wunderkind Nate Silver — or as Jon Stewart put it, “Lord and god of the algorithm.” He may be best known for predicting the 44th president, but Silver could be the one man who can save mathematics education in America.

Silver, who first gained notoriety for forecasting the performance of Major League Baseball players and for correctly predicted the winner of 49 of 50 states in the 2008 election, can save the tattered reputation of math subjects.

For students across the country, there’s clearly an engagement deficit in the subject. Paul Lockhart, a math teacher in New York, writes in A Mathematician’s Lament [PDF] that if he had to design a system for the express purpose of destroying a child’s natural curiosity and love of pattern-making, he couldn’t possible do a better job than is currently being done. He explains that he simply wouldn’t have the “imagination to come up with the kind of senseless, soul-crushing ideas that constitute contemporary mathematics education.”

He has the potential to telegraph an important message to kids: It’s O.K. to be a math nerd.

Across the land, kids hate math. You can hear it in their constant groans and see it in their deranged faces. They ask their teachers, “When am I ever going to use this in life?” On most occasions, they never will. Even President Obama agrees. He recently said on the Tonight Show, “The math stuff I was fine with until seventh grade. Malia is now a freshmen in high school and I’m pretty lost. It’s tough.” And no wonder — the system is suffering from a tragic case of nostalgia. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Learning Methods, math

How Teachers Mix Online Math with Classroom Instruction

November 14, 2012 | 11:08 AM | By

As schools start experimenting with educational software — or blended learning — teachers are trying to find ways of using tech to enhance learning in different subjects. When it comes to math, specifically, the tactics vary widely — from using software for remediation, to practicing drills and exercises to move students ahead at their own pace, to completely re-conceptualizing the traditional classroom model.

The one underlying common thread? Using online math has begun to change teachers’ perspectives. Here’s how blended learning in math is taking shape in three California schools.

BREAKING DOWN WALLS

Two Summit charter schools in San Jose, Calif. provide examples of blended learning that completely deconstruct the traditional classroom model. Just opened last year, Rainier and Tahoma have taken advantage of their one-to-one computer program to experiment with Khan Academy videos for math instruction. When the program first began, teachers introduced a concept, then had students do practice exercises using Khan Academy, which also provided assessment results for the teacher.

“I liked that model because it freed me up to do high-quality targeted instruction,” said Zack Miller a math teacher.

“A computer as of yet cannot help a student develop that deep mathematical reasoning and connecting concepts”

But Miller found this model unsatisfying in some ways. The ninth-grade class was working at more or less the same pace, with the only differentiation being the varying levels. “My biggest struggle last year was I had too many different skill levels in there and I had to kind of teach to one pace,” Miller said. “I kept thinking, ‘If I could only break down the walls.’”

This year, that’s exactly what Summit Rainier and Tahoma did. They’ve built one large math room for 200 kids, with smaller rooms branching off the main room that are set aside for assessments, projects and individual tutoring. Teachers work in teams of seven, alternating between teaching Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, Teaching With Tech, blended learning, math