Interesting article, considering our work

I came across this last year....

Almost half of England's schools are not teaching mathematics well enough, putting too much emphasis on "teaching to the test", inspectors have said.

Ofsted said pupils were taught to pass exams and results had improved, but understanding of the subject had not.

Read the rest of this article from the BBC here....

Making Progress

Hi all.

I want to thank Sharon and Michelle for doing fine work of taking us through chapters four and five in our text. This evening Scott will lead our group discussion of chapter six. If there is time, I would like if we could share some of our blog postings with one another. (just using the room technology - nothing fancy or time consuming).

See you this evening!

Your Topics

Tomorrow after the break we need to find time to discuss together your proposed topics for your project. I request that these be put in writing, one paragraph maximum is all that is needed, stating what you wish to investigate and how you wish to frame it. (paper, website, blog, etc)

Hopefully you have had the chance to begin to sort through the research literature out there to see how rich your topic is. The narrower the focus the better, mostly. We can help one another with our topics tomorrow evening if you are still unsure about what approach you wish to take, or to settle on one topic in particular.

See you tomorrow.

Last week I shared Math Curse with you, the award winning children's picture book by Jon Scieszka and Lane Smith and published by Viking.

There is so much you can do with this book. The fun begins when Mrs. Fibonacci tells the class, "You know, you can think of almost everything as a math problem...."

ISBN-10: 0670861944
ISBN-13: 978-0670861941

What's Math Got to Do with It?

Last week I showed you this great book by Boaler called What's Math Got to Do with It? Helping Children Learn to Love their Least Favourite Subject - And Why It's Important for America.

This book is helpful for parents and teachers. I strongly encourage you get a copy for your school or for yourself to share with parents or as a book study for professional development with your grade team.

The Number Devil

In class on Thursday we briefly discussed the following best selling children's book, The Number Devil: A Mathematical Adventure by Hans Magnus Enzensberger.

It is a chapter book containing colourful illustrations of various mathematical discoveries.

It's a best seller, so I think you'll enjoy reading it, and your students - particularly your elementary students - will find it engaging and entertaining.

I wouldn't limit it to just elementary students at all as it makes a great whole class read-a-loud. It will depend on your students of course!

Schedule

Here is the schedule for leading discussions and bringing nourishment:

October 8th -Sharon Chapter 4
October 15th - Michelle Chapter 5
October 22nd - Scott Chapter 6
October 29th - Krista Chapter 7
November 5th - Terri-Lynn Chapter 8
November 19th - Jennifer Chapter 9
November 26th - Melanie Chapter 10
December 3rd - Rosemary Chapter 11

Some people are swapping dates for official 'food bringing' and that is perfectly okay. Do whatever works for you.

Last Week

Hi everyone. Hope you have had a good week so far.

It was great to get back in the swing of things with you once more and I appreciated how attentive you were to our topics of conversation.

To re-cap, I shared with you some books as well as literature suggestions for you to turn to in your own furthering of your mathematics education understanding. I will try to post those books on here at some point.

We took up Schoenfeld's article and then we looked at the first three chapters of Boaler's text. We created the schedule as to who is going to lead which discussions. I will post that on here too, for your reference. We talked about the blogging and tried to sort out any technical issues for people.

I can already sense that the class is beginning to gel into a thoughtful seminar group and that is really great.

Tomorrow evening Sharon is going to led us through Chapter Four. Looking forward to it!