Morning coffee

One of the best ways we can help our children learn mathematics (or anything else) is to always be learning ourselves.

Here are a few stories to read with your Monday morning coffee:

• Don’t miss Playful Math Carnival 132, featuring delightful math books and games for all ages.

• Speaking of math games, I love Jenna Laib’s Simple-but-High-Leverage Game Collection.

“Games aren’t just about practice and fluency. My favorite games create opportunities for learning, too. They spark discourse, promote the use of strategies, and allow students to dig into the mathematics.”

—Jenna Laib
The Simple-but-High-Leverage Game Collection: Making Games Routine

• Mark Chubb poses a pattern block polygon investigation in An Example of Teaching Through Problem Solving.

• Matt Coaty offers a nice variety of math journal prompts in Math Reflections and Sentence Stems.

• Manan Shah muses on Learning Math as an Adult (over the age of 30).

• Have you read Pam Harris’s Development of Mathematical Reasoning series? Check out Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. Well worth your time!

“The teacher’s role is to help students change the way they think, in increasingly sophisticated ways. The goal is not answers. The goal is development. We don’t need students who can just answer a multiplication question, we need students who can reason multiplicatively.”

—Pam Harris
The Development of Mathematical Reasoning

CREDITS: Feature photo (top) by Kira auf der Heide via Unsplash. “Morning Coffee” post format inspired by Nate Hoffelder at The Digital Reader.

One of the best ways we can help our children learn mathematics (or anything else) is to always be learning ourselves.

Here are a few stories to read with your Friday morning coffee:

• In the spirit of cracking eggs to make omelets, Michael Pershan cracks open some of the ideas around Equations and Equivalence and relational thinking.

• David Wees ponders the use of manipulatives in Hands on or minds on? And be sure to read (or reread) the insightful article he mentions, Deborah Ball’s Magical Hopes: Manipulatives and the Reform of Math Education.

• Did you know that October is Black Mathematician Month? Your children might enjoy ScienceStruck’s post on Famous Black Mathematicians. Older readers can browse the archives at Chalkdust Magazine or dive into the delightful link-fest rabbit hole at The Mathematicians Project: Mathematicians Are Not Just White Dudes. And of course, any excuse is good to rewatch the movie Hidden Figures.

• Allison Krasnow shares 13 Seconds of Mathematical Bliss.

• Alex Tabarrok pushes back against the common explanations for the Gender Gap in Math-Related Fields.

• Jo Boaler and Keith Devlin talk about The Nature of 21st Century Mathematics and how the focus of math education must change to meet it.

“My experience is that when I have vague hope that children will learn something from an activity that is related to the mathematics I want them to learn, they usually don’t.”

—David Wees
Hands on or minds on?

CREDITS: Feature photo (top) by Kira auf der Heide via Unsplash. “Morning Coffee” post format inspired by Nate Hoffelder at The Digital Reader.

One of the best ways we can help our children learn mathematics (or anything else) is to always be learning ourselves.

Here are a few stories to read with your Monday morning coffee:

• Keith Devlin discusses the importance of struggle to learning: On making omelets and learning math, with a follow-up post Why straight A’s may indicate poor learning — report from an unusual study.

• Kathy Iwanicki’s students explore an unsolved math puzzle: the Hailstone Sequence. I think my co-op class might enjoy this activity, too.

• If you want to understand how number concepts develop through the school years, Graham Fletcher’s Progression Videos are a great place to start. Watch, re-watch, and learn.

• Clothesline math is a wonderful hands-on way for students to build number sense. And it’s not just for little kids! Check out Chris Luzniak’s unit circle clothesline project (and calculus, too).

• Can applied math change the world? People can now move wheelchairs, control robots, and type using a portable wireless brain-machine interface. Wow!

“Learning occurs when we get something wrong and have to correct it. This is analogous to the much better known fact that when we subject our bodies to physical strain, say by walking, jogging, or lifting weights, the muscles we strain become stronger — we gain greater fitness.
…
“Indeed, the learning is better if the correction occurs some time after the error is made. Stewing for a while in frustration at being wrong, and not seeing how to fix it, turns out to be a good thing. Cracking your ego is an unavoidable part of learning.”

—Keith Devlin
On making omelets and learning math

CREDITS: Feature photo (top) by Kira auf der Heide via Unsplash. “Morning Coffee” post format inspired by Nate Hoffelder at The Digital Reader.

One of the best ways we can help our children learn mathematics (or anything else) is to always be learning ourselves.

Here are a few stories to read with your Monday morning coffee:

• David Butler invented a challenging new game that can spark plenty of mathematical thinking: Digit Disguises.

• Which led me on a delightful rabbit trail through David’s archives, rediscovering old delights like his Seven Sticks post and The Arts students’ maths brain.

• If you liked James Tanton’s video on the area model in last week’s post, you may enjoy his in-depth discussion of The Astounding Power of Area.

• And a (broken) link on that page sent me along another rabbit trail to find Geri Lorway’s blog. I love her post on multiplication: Teaching division?… Do you know the “basics”?

• On a lighter note, I’m sure any classroom or homeschool teacher can think of several ways to use Sara VanDerWerf’s collection of Math Fails. Scroll down for links to earlier collections, too.

“I told them that actually what they did was exactly what maths is — reasoning things out using the information you have and being able to be sure of your method and your answer. Just because there’s no symbols, it doesn’t mean it’s not maths.”

—David Butler
The Seven Sticks and what mathematics is

“I am not willing to teach mindless math. It leads to mindless adults. Thinking is not an add-on once they have memorized. Thinking is the basic tool to negotiate the world.”

—Geri Lorway
Teaching division?… Do you know the “basics”?

CREDITS: Feature photo (top) by Kira auf der Heide via Unsplash. “Morning Coffee” post format inspired by Nate Hoffelder at The Digital Reader.