“Math class is tough.” Barbie (1992) How can I use SBG to challenge the top learners? So after weeping quietly into my cereal while looking at the Geometry Regents results at the end of this year (just kidding, I don’t eat cereal, it was my toast), I noticed that I didn’t have as many “mastery” […]
End of the year reflection time. In my 7 years of teaching, I’ve never required my students to have a math notebook. The sum total of my speaking on the subject is probably a couple of minutes at the beginning of year, “You need a math notebook or binder to write notes in and […]
From Infinigons, etc: Putting myself in kids’ shoes You have a square dartboard. What is the probability that a randomly-thrown dart will land closer to the center of the dartboard than to an edge? Superb problem. I took the lazy route. I made a python program to run 100,000 trials, and graph those trials on a […]
The grading system in Geometry this year was described to the students with the following description: The final concept grade will be out of a grade of 8. The best you can do on the first quiz is a 4 out of 8 (50%). Every concept will quizzed at least twice. If the second grade […]
To copy Ms. Nowizee from last year, I want to share my Geometry Concept List. This was the first year of Standards Based Grading in Geometry, and before seeing the end of the year results, I’d give it a B (more to follow). The hard part was designing the list so that each concept was not […]
The newest car talk puzzler. Draw a diagram, it may help. Three men, Mr. White, Mr. Brown and Mr. Green, were in the habit of meeting in a local doughnut shop every morning for coffee and doughnuts. One morning as they were sitting at their usual table, Mr. White remarked, “Hey, will you look at […]
Must watch: Math needs better marketing. There are people who say “I’ll never need this math, these trig identities”, from 10th grade, or 11th grade, or maybe you never learned them. Here’s the catch. Whether or not you ever again use the math you learned in school; the act of having learned the math […]
