Letting students struggle, persevere and even fail is integral to helping them learn problem solving skills. Helping students improve their problem solving abilities can be done by learning how to question and guide students through problem solving activities that help them to develop better understanding. We also need to give them the time to …
Read More “Navigating a Class Through a Differentiated Task”
What is a differentiated task? A differentiated task is a question or activity that allows for multiple entry points as well as multiple ways to solve. One of the purposes of using differentiated tasks is to meet the needs of the varying ability levels of students that we often find in a single math …
I recently took a GRE exam as part of my application for a PhD program in Mathematics Education. The exam consisted of several sections, all timed at either 30 or 35 minutes. There were essays, verbal reasoning sections and quantitative reasoning sections. It has been since my undergrad that I’ve written a test and …
The changes in the math curriculum might seem small but they represent a very large philosophical shift. The traditional approach to teaching math has been to focus on procedures. We taught students how to do the math but there wasn’t a big focus on when we would use the math or why the procedures …
Read More “A Math Class Make-Over: A Current Approach to Math Education”
I recently finished Jo Boaler’s new book ‘Mathematical Mindsets’ and was, as always, blown away by her work. I learned a lot from the book and as a result am going to create some add-ons to our lesson plans and videos. Firstly, if you haven’t already been using the differentiated tasks that are in …
