How do you find the parents of your students? Are they helping their children to learn, or are they more of a hindrance? Some parents can be incredibly difficult to cope with, of course. And sometimes an assertive manner and explaining the boundaries between their opinions and your professional work is called for.
What are pseudocontexts, and should K-6 math teachers be concerned about them? I came across the term in Dan Meyer's excellent blog, in which he explores better ways of engaging students in learning math, and calls out "fake math" and poor teaching.
Are you getting a little tired of other people interfering in how you teach in your classroom? I see around the world teachers being put under greater and greater pressure to perform, as if they were mere employees or servants of the state. And I'm over it!
Do you use technology as much as you'd like to help your K-6 students understand math? How do students respond to tech? Would they actually prefer old school resources? Have you started using Snapchat yet? Would you like daily K-6 math videos to start conversations? Follow me: petes_classroom
Have you ever felt like banging your head on the wall when trying to get kids to learn something? Do you feel you're not up to the task of "getting through to these kids" and making them learn something?
Teachers recently told us, of all the K-6 math topics in the curriculum, which one they would most like help with. Care to guess which topic came to the top of the list? Most Challenging K-6 Math Topic The “winner”: Place value. Close behind? Operations, followed by Number facts. Since these three broad topics form […]
From today onward, I will not apologize for expecting students to memorize the times tables. And nor should you.
Do your students believe that math is irrelevant to their lives? Sadly, all too many of them do, especially as they reach high school. The article I discuss this week lists 10 occasions in which major Australian supermarkets got the mathematics behind their special offers totally wrong. Sometimes the “offer” was worse than the standard […]
How can a teacher use Pokémon Go to inspire her students to study hard in math? Surprisingly enough, the viral hit Pokémon Go which broke records at Apple's iTunes store has multiple possible uses in the regular K-6 classroom. Watch the video for much more!
What do your students believe about their abilities in mathematics? Do they say "I can do this", or "I'll never get this"? We discuss a TES article which focuses on the message that "Everyone Can" succeed at math, urging teachers and students to believe in the students' success. What do you think? Is simply being positive about students' abilities and capabilities really going to make a difference to the results that they achieve? And are some people simply born "with a maths brain" and others not?
Starting a mathematics lesson is possibly the most important part, and yet it is often given little thought, and falls into the "Who can tell me what we did yesterday?" pattern. Reinvigorate your math teaching with a creative, attention-grabbing start!
