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
In the busyness of classroom teaching, do you find math lessons becoming a bit stale? Are textbook lessons getting you and your students down a bit? I believe that students crave interesting, relevant lessons, especially in math. How can we provide such lessons? It’s a simple idea: find real math going on in […]
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 […]
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 […]
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!
