Math is Everywhere

After seven years of teaching, I took a bold leap this year and traded in “my students” for “my teachers” as I transition into the role of a Math/Technology Integration TOSA. I pursued this position with the belief that working together, we will make a positive impact on the lives of our students. I am truly excited to work alongside our CUSD math teachers to identify and spread best mathematical practices, and to support technology integration to promote 21^st Century learning environments. This week I have been fortunate enough to bounce around all three middle schools and start making connections with some truly amazing CUSD teachers and students. 

Teacher Highlights

I will be writing teacher highlights to focus on sharing and spreading best practices from CUSD teachers. This week I spoke with several teachers about their community building activities. 

At CMS, James Peng has his students working in collaborative table groups. He used the marshmallow challenge activity to start establishing team norms for communication and collaboration. To make the directions more engaging, James made a quick Powtoon video that grabbed his students attention instantly. Click here to view the task he gave his "double-o-students"! James also used music during work sessions and as cues for transitions. One thought on gathering music that your students will enjoy is to send out a Google Form asking them what their favorite (school appropriate) song is and use this information to build a class playlist.

Kathy Alsup from Rolling Hills used these resources from Youcubed to kick off her school year. Youcubed focuses on building a growth mindset in students and helping all students access math at their level by creating "low floor, high ceiling" tasks. Week 1 tasks include drafting a math history to help students reflect on their personal experiences with math and build towards a positive math identity. One particular task that Kathy used promoted team building and visualization in mathematics. Students are given a piece of string and they work together to create a variety of 3-D shapes. The task requires team work, participation, and problem-solving from all group members (just try making a 3-D figure out of yarn yourself!).

Math is Everywhere

Hopefully you received my first day note and some Smarties to keep you going for your little smarties! When I was at the store purchasing the Smarties, I was reminded that math is everywhere. I picked up the bag and the mental math kicked in… about 12 math teachers per site with 3 sites. I see that the bag has a width of about 3 Smarties, a length of about 5 Smarties, and is about 4 Smarties deep. After pondering in the aisle for a moment to decipher how many Smarties I thought were in the bag, I flipped the bag over (duh) and read that there are 62 servings per container. Well, at least my estimate confirmed their count! This Smarties shopping experience reminded me of a great resource for helping your students use estimation to build number sense and become better problem solvers.
Click here to view this fantastic resource with daily estimation activities.

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