Up and running

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Now that routines and expectations are up and running I wanted to share a few things that you might want to think about during the month of December.

• One, technology use in the classroom..
• Two, a user friendly version of the Common Core Math Standards.
• Three, learn more about teaching students who struggle.

One: Matific is a web-based platform with student activities aligned to the K-6 common core standards. Alignment is such a big word that I want teachers to know it's true value. Alignment will be on EVERY publication you find for school mathematics. Alignment is not just a series of skills tagged to a standard and that is what EVERY product claims to have done. There are a few products that really do a nice job of aligning big mathematical ideas from the common core that are included in activities, lessons, and practice. Matific.com is one of those. It doesn't have everything but it is a great starting point. I created a short video for you to take a look at (click here if the video is not embedded).

The free version of Matific allows any student access of their activities. The trial allows a teacher to collect data on individual students completion and interaction with the activities. Check out either version with students. My own children seem to really like the activities.

Two: Our state math consultant, April Pforts, has been working tirelessly on the state's math website. I highly encourage you to use this along with other resources to support your understanding of the common core in mathematics. Check out page 9 of this document. It provides the scope and sequence of algebraic thinking for all grades.

Green Hills media center has worked along side of the math team to purchase HIGH quality resources for teachers of math. Math In Practice are professional resources for grades k-5. Each chapter is dedicated to content standards along side of the practice standards, click here for information from the publisher. I used this to learn more about the grade 5 standard NB.7 Add, subtract, multiply, and divide decimals to hundredths, using concrete models or drawings and strategies based on place value. The examples are clear helped me understand the standard.

Three: Karen Karp has spent her career working in special education AND mathematics. Her research and work has been focused at elementary. She was a keynote speaker at the NCTM Innov8 conference last week. Here are her slides from her keynote presentation and feel free to take a look at the slides she shared. INTERVENTION is all about creating "blue lines" or cognitive structures for students who struggle. How can you help to create blue lines for students? Looking for structure and patterns seems to be the constant strategy shared at the conference. In short, if a student understands strategies for multiplying by 7 (like using x 5 and x 2 and the distributive property) then we have to help them to make blue lines for 47 x 5 in the same way. Breaking it apart into 40 and 7 or any other way that make sense to the student.

Getting Started

So I have plunged back into the blogging world. The first time around I think 3 people read my posts, so my goal is to have 10 people read this post and have a threaded discussion with at least 2 interactions. High goals I know.

I am actually writing this blog for our Green Hills Math Team. I may write for a while using everyone's ideas but we may have guest writers along the way. If you find this enlightening you may want to write for this audience as well.

I am going to try to give short insights into my new learning for the week. Targeting 3 topics I am always interested in learning more about.

• One, technology use in the classroom. Not the gimmicky stuff we see sometimes but the true use of technology that pushes student to think deeply about mathematics or gives good practice with immediate feedback. 
• Two, a user friendly version of the Common Core Math Standards. I work with many teachers that avoid reading and understanding the standards for a variety of reasons. I want to have a place to help teachers support ALL students in reaching high levels of mathematics.
• Three, learn more about teaching students who struggle. This needs to include screening and diagnostic assessment and research based instructional strategies for struggling students.

One: Math Planet. This is a free app for kids. I recommend this app because it uses a number line (battleship line) and visual representations for numbers (whole and fraction). My own children are also getting good at telling time because of the practice and immediate feedback. You will want to download each grade level planet because you get more levels.

Two: Kansas Flipbooks for each grade level make it much easier to understand the Common Core standards. Other resources can be found on our Math Team site under Iowa Core Supports.

Three: This can be used to start the year off....Connie Terry and I hosted a math camp for girls entering 6-8th grade. This camp was held at UNI this summer for 1 week. We used material from Stanford Professor Jo Boaler and saw growth results like we had never seen. She has not only created materials for her summer camp, she also makes many of these resources available at youcubed.org. Many are found within Week of Inspirational Math and her free online course "How to Learn Math: for students"

You maybe asking what does this have to do with strugglers? Well, research tells us that 1 of 8 factors that contribute to success or failure of struggling learners is motivation. Meaning if kids are motivated to work hard and make it through the struggle they will succeed. So Jo Boaler has taken Carol Dweck's research and laid it along side of mathematics. The first three lessons in her free course take growth mindset straight on. We had students watch these videos independently, answer the "quizzes" within the course individually and THEN did a small group processing activity. The results were amazing. We learned lots more from our work with these girls that we will highlight throughout this blog.

We collected pre and post profile data using Brainology's work found here. Like we said, "we couldn't believe the results"!

If you try this in your classroom let us know how it goes in the comments below. WE can trouble shoot problem areas as a team.