Years ago, when beginning some work on percentage with some HSE students (they were called GED students at the time), I posed the following problem:
Veronica’s math class has 25 students. If 7 of them identify as men, what percent of the class does not identify as men?
I used it as a quick assessment to see what kind of understanding I could build off and what kind of misconceptions I could draw out. Continue reading Mistakes in Math: Expected, Respected and Inspected
“So I’m there on the beach with my friend Ben when we notice a taco cart up the road. Ben wants to walk straight over, but I’m thinking we walk a lot slower in the sand than we do on the street. So I say we walk straight to the street and then down the street to the cart. So we went our separate ways…” Thus begins the first Three-Act math task I ever experienced, courtesy of Dan Meyer.
Continue reading Inspiring Student Curiosity (or What’s “Real” about Real-world Math?)
A Number Talk is a brief activity teachers can do with students to help build their computational fluency, number sense and their mathematical reasoning. They don’t need to be longer than 5-15 minutes and they can be done with students at any level.
Continue reading Mental Math to Increase Student Computational Fluency and Number Sense
My Favorite No is a great assessment activity that turns students’ mistakes into collective opportunities for learning. It can be done with any math topic or content. It takes very little time, so teachers can do it often and weave it into the daily routine of their class. I learned about it from a middle school teacher named Leah Alcala through a video created for the Teaching Channel. Continue reading My Favorite No: A Great Way to Celebrate Student Mistakes in Math
Illustrative Mathematics is a great resource that brought together teachers, math educators and mathematicians to create mathematical tasks aligned to each standard of the Common Core. There are currently over 1000 tasks, from grades K through 12. Because it is K-12, some tasks will need to be adapted, but because it is K-12, there are rich materials for adult education students at all levels, from ABE to HSE. Continue reading Math Problems Aligned to the Common Core