Real World Math: The Garden Stone Problem
I’m always on the lookout for ways to make Math seem “more real” for my students. I find one of the worst things that can happen in a child’s Math education is if they get the idea in their head that Math is an abstract concept, detached from everyday...
Critical and Creative Thinking in the Math Classroom
I believe critical and creative thinking are both essential to doing math. Yet I believe both are relatively unexplored areas with our young student mathematicians.
Here is the lone reference to critical and creative thinking in the Ontario curriculum:
The...
What makes math interesting anyway?
I sometimes reflect on what it is about math that makes me love it. I think that what attracts me is the opportunity to think and reason. But for lots of folks, math is not really about the thinking as much as it about getting answers to problems (or exercises).
I’ve...
Making Kids Doers of Math Instead of Doing the Math
My biggest fear in education right now is that we are having our kids go through the paces of doing school. We are turning our students through the drudgery of school. Before I started to really question this thinking I saw it in my own class. My students...
If Math is the Aspirin, Then How do you Create the Headache?
Several months ago, I asked you, “You’re about to plan a lesson on concept [x] and you’d like students to find it interesting. What questions do you ask yourself as you plan?”
There were nearly 100 responses and they said a great deal about the...