Teaching, (re)searching and living as a working draft.
Before we engaged in this social experiment called Remote Teaching/Learning During a Pandemic, I like many other teachers had a syllabus that I only slightly tweaked over the years. I had deadlines and procedures for late work. I had "participation points" that counted towards the final grade. I had an attendance policy that I tried …
Continue reading "Why aren’t we trusting our students more?"
Sometimes we find ourselves as intersecting circles of experience. I was engaging in a conversation with my wonderful cousin about something she was grappling with: her son, a fourth grader, was frustrated with his math class. Evan (a pseudonym) said that his teacher expected him to memorize his multiplication tables and demonstrate mastery within a …
Usually once a month, someone posts a mathematics word problem online (FB, Twitter, email, text) and asks people how they solved it. Most often, I might scroll past it because I do a lot of math for a living and might wanna just look at a cat video for the moment. (Check out #BongoCat BTW). …
At the end of every semester, I always get excited to read the reports from my teacher candidates about their whole group math lessons. For weeks, my teacher candidates work to select a content standard, pull resources to get inspiration for a groupworthy task, plan connections to children's experiences, and rehearse those plans. And our …
I've considered many times renaming my blog as "Grasping for Gratitude as an Academic." Maybe it's because I like alliteration or just that sometimes I think I need to remind myself of the fact that I should be grateful more in my life. Either way, it been a nagging feeling I've had for a number …
Continue reading "Grasping for Gratitude as an Academic Part 1: Having Situational Awareness"
Howdy howdy! After a brief hiatus, I wanted to start back up a discussion about the amazingness of children’s thinking. Tonight’s post is about subitizing, even and odd numbers, and division. I know that’s a lot in just one post, so I promise to connect them across! In a post on 27 February, I tweeted …
Continue reading "Edgar’s Thinking About Even and Odd Numbers While Subitizing Dots"
For a while now, you've read about the Rights of the Learner (RotL) (1 2 3 4) and how it can help push students' ideas/voices/thinking to the forefront. Students who exercise their rights to learn see that ALL of their ideas are valuable and can make a contribution to the classroom. But other than encouraging …
It's nearing the end of the semester and I am having a case of the "Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda" (SCW). And I know why. I set myself up for it each semester. My husband knows that at the start of each semester, I am literally a nervous wreck. I stress out about every little detail about …
Continue reading "The Case of the Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda (SCW) Moments… Teacher Educator Edition"
In this post, we are going to talk about comparing fractions and to present a few models that might help us to do this work, especially for children who are developing their conceptual understanding of fractions. Before we start, I should make this disclaimer first: I really love fractions. Like... really. love. talking. about. them. …
Yes, you read that last part of the other post correctly. If you listen to country music, then you know that I was one of those teachers Alan Jackson sang about in his song. I was standing in front of a classroom full of 7th graders, one of which was to be my future sister-in-law …
Continue reading "My second day as a teacher was a Tuesday morning… (Part II)"
Embracing Life With Major Revisions 
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