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.
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 […]
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?
Do you wonder about the wisdom of sending math homework home? Have you ever had a sneaky suspicion that parents may actually not be helping their kids learn math?
From today onward, I will not apologize for expecting students to memorize the times tables. And nor should you.
How important is it for our kids to grow up being good at math? Try this on for size: in 2016, terrorists are as likely to carry a laptop as a bomb. And they are probably in a basement somewhere, not risking being found out in the open. Want to try that line "We don't really need to be all that good at math, now we all have smartphones" again? I thought not.
Infants as young as six months recognize interesting shapes. And babies who show higher spatial reasoning skills do better in math at age four. This is good news for parents and carers who purposefully try to help their children understand the world around them in explicitly mathematical ways...
Indigenous students in Australia typically lag two years behind other kids in math. How can teachers connect indigenous kids with classroom math? A new approach proposed by Dr Chris Matthews incorporates story telling and dance as ways to connect students' interests and culture with math.
Rote learning of math was abandoned in western nations as early as the 1960s. So why is the UK government spending £41m to train teachers in 8000 English primary schools in so-called "mastery maths", based on the approach in Shanghai, China? More importantly, is rote learning somehow the "missing ingredient" in English kids' learning of maths?
Standing in the Rain, Teaching: Video Rain gauges measure rainfall by collecting a small sample and measuring how deep the water is. The trouble is, we are interested in very small units – in the metric system, rainfall is measured in millimetres/millimeters. How can you accurately measure such small amounts? How can we use everyday […]
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!
