The Nines Trick
And why maybe your fingers are magical
Make Math Make Sense
Questions, thoughts, and wonderings about math, education, and math education
Subscribe:.rss.atom.json.md.m3u.pls
Live Last read · last published · next check
Latest episodes
The Sixes Trick
Why fingers aren't magical
Engagement or Compliance?
And why we actually want both
Boxed Into a Corner
The reality in many schools right now and what to do about it
A Small Shift with a Big Impact
How one teaching move can transform student understanding
Math problems without limits
And also, it's spring.
Why we hate CUBES
And what to use instead
Thinking Negatively
and why we should disregard the rules
The Power of Expectations
How we unintentionally limit students and how to stop
Listen to the teachers
...they're the experts in the room!
Holding Instructional Time Sacred
Administrators, please just put down the phone
How to sneak math into your kid's life
Also known as mathematizing the world
The Crisis in the American Math Crisis
There’s been a lot of talk recently about “The American Math Crisis” ( here , here , and here , for starters). After a steady rise in standardized test scores from the 1990s to the aughts, scores began declining around 2013. Students aren’t prepared for college! Test scores keep dropping! Grade inflation is everywhere! And don’t get me started on cellphones! (Seriously, don’t get me started on…
Help (me help my kid)!
“Help!” the text reads. “My son has no idea how to do this problem. How do I help him?” I got this message from one of my friends last night. This was the picture accompanying the message: Not what you were expecting, right? That friend’s son is in second grade with my daughter, and I’ve been getting texts like this from several parent friends since our kids were in kindergarten. These parents are…
The Value-Action Gap
Why we have to believe students CAN
In Praise of Teachers
I had planned for this second post to be part 2 of the Cake Method (yes, they have cake in Algebra 2 as well!), but I need to interrupt my own thinking to praise teachers. I saw a reel on Facebook recently ( translation: I’m old ) titled Jobs Teachers Didn’t Sign Up For . It starts with being a technician (copy machine repair person), then moves on to detective (mediating student conflicts),…
The Cake Method...No, I'm not talking about baking
I was in a 6th grade classroom the other day where the teacher had asked the students to find the GCF and LCM of 12 and 24. I peered over students’ shoulders, expecting to see lists of factors of each number or perhaps a prime factorization tree. Instead I saw this: Huh, must be a new way of factoring, I thought. Setting aside my concern that nobody in the class of eighteen recognized right away…
Coming soon
This is Make Math Make Sense. Subscribe now