multiplication

Blogarithm Posts

Last year I had the honor of being asked to write four posts for NCTM’s Math Teaching in the Middle School Blog: Blogarithm (one of the coolest math blog names out there).  They were posted every two weeks from November through the end of December (which just shows that I can post more frequently if someone is reminding me every other week that my next post is due (thanks Clayton).

Pythagorean Decanomial

The four posts are a reflection of a lesson I taught with a 6th grade teacher, in September of last year, who was worried (and rightfully so) that her students didn’t know their multiplication facts.  After a long conference, we decided to teach a lesson together.  I modeled some pedagogical ideas and she supported students by asking questions (certain restrictions may have applied).

Links to the four posts are below.

  1. Building Multiplication Fluency in Middle School
  2. Building Multiplication Fluency in Middle School Part 2
  3. Building Multiplication Fluency in Middle School Part 3
  4. Building Multiplication Fluency in Middle School Part 4

While you’re at the Blogarithm site check out some other guest bloggers’ posts.  Cathy Yenca has some great posts on Formative Feedback, Vertical Value Part 1 and Part 2, and 3-Act Tasks

 

The Best Part about Blogging

This is super exciting!  I love it when teachers keep thinking – especially when I stop!  What you’re about to read is truly the best part of blogging!

Readers of Under the Dome have been terrific commenters and questioners of my posts over the last 2 years and you all just keep getting better.  Recently, Sharon Wagner, a teacher I met during a three-day summer institute in June visited my blog and reached out to share her ideas about the Olympic Cola Display 3-act task.

Sharon’s words:

Screen Shot 2015-08-16 at 7.34.10 PM

Through the course of a few emails over the summer and a lot of my time spent doing things outside of the MTBoS (my lovely wife got some of her honey-do’s completed and I got some of my Mike-do’s finished) I have Sharon’s extension and am now posting it with her blessing!  Please take a look.  Her idea is a natural extension and allows students to design their own display using the colors of Coca-Cola twelve packs (which she most helpfully added to her document).  Any Pepsi fans out there?

Sharon’s idea also ups the rigor by providing an audience (the merchant).  This, again, is a part of that natural extension (of course someone designs these displays for the merchants).  As for the Standards for Mathematical Practice . . . let’s just say your students will be engaging in multiple SMPs.

Again, this is super exciting.  I love to share my ideas here, but when someone else takes it and makes it better – in this case by adding to it – everyone wins.  Especially the students in our classrooms.

Thank you Sharon.

Sharon’s Display Extension:

coca cola display project extension