Young Mathematicians at Play

 

It seems with the current focus on mathematical content, we have forgotten that play is critical for childrens' learning. Our session explored how to support the development of young mathematicians through purposeful play. We used manipulative-based games with a focus on the Standards for Mathematical Practice and the content domain of Number & Operations in Base Ten, including number sense, computation, and estimation. Let's bring play and creativity back into our classrooms!

Here is the link to a folder with resources for my NCTM 2017 presentation "Young Mathematicians at Play." If you search "math games", you will find links to past presentations with resources for additional games.



A big thank you to ETA hand2mind for sponsoring this presentation! We were able to give away all of the manipulatives they provided for this session!

NCTMNOLA: Playing with the Common Core

NCTMNOLA participants playing one of the games

This past week, I had the pleasure of presenting, with my husband Dave, my workshop Playing with the Common Core  at the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) Annual Meeting and Exposition in New Orleans. The official Twitter hashtag for this conference is #NCTMNOLA. I encourage you to check it out.

Shared Context

This workshop focuses on using a variety of games to establish a shared context within the classroom. Having a shared context provides teachers with an opportunity to develop narratives, or stories, based on the context so they don't leave learning to chance. At the same time, all of these games address both the CCSSM Content Standards and the Standards for Mathematical Practice. 

These games are excellent for use throughout the school year because they intertwine most of the content standards in Operations & Algebraic Thinking (OA) and  Numbers in Base Ten (NBT) for grades K-2. Each of the games can also be modified for other grade levels, either up or down.

Resources

For the slide presentation and "procedures" for each of the five games that were played click on the link below:

NCTMNOLA Playing with the Common Core (slide presentation and other resources)

Some of the games we played are copyrighted. For those resources, click on the links below:

Part-Whole Bingo, came from Contexts for Learning's resource Games for Early Number Sense. Scroll down to the "Year-long Resource Guides" and you can download a resource summary.

Roll-A-Square was adapted from Investigations in Number, Data, and Space®, 2nd grade module "Putting Together and Taking Apart: Addition and Subtraction"

How Many More To . . . was adapted from Carolee Norris' Focus on Math Blog

My original Playing with the Common Core session from GVSU's Math in Action 2013

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions! My contact information is on the last page of the slide presentation. I'd also love it if you would leave a comment.

High Fidelity Teaching

High Fidelity Teaching: Fine-tuning for Engaging Learners in Mathematics

It's Math in Action time again! This year my presentation theme is High Fidelity Teaching: Fine-tuning for Engaging Learners in Mathematics and looks at Stereotype Threat and Mindset. The slide deck is at the bottom of this post. Here is a link to a Google Drive folder with resources:  http://bit.ly/MIA14-hft

We know engaging students with mathematics in the United States is difficult. According to Jo Boaler and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 50% of students are in 2 year colleges and 70% of those students are in remedial math classes, essentially repeating high school math. Only 1 in 10 complete those remedial math courses, the other 90% leave college.

We can't wait until college; we must engage students as early as possible!

How can we work to engage students at an early age with mathematics? My presentation addresses three topics that can help with "fine-tuning" instruction to impact student engagement:

1) Intentional teaching practices that work to develop positive mathematical dispositions, such as implementing the CCSS-M Standards for Mathematical Practice (developed from the NCTM Process Standards & Adding It Up--if you don't like the CCSS-M, use one of those sources);

2) Awareness and prevention of Stereotype Threat; and

3) Intentional teaching that promotes a Growth Mindset.

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