math education Archives - Page 2 of 2

04 Jun 2015

Challenges Of An Inquiry Based Math Classroom- Part 2

Check out 'Challenges Of An Inquiry Based Math Classroom Part 1' to see how I develop inquiry through dialogue & discussions in my classroom. Another way I've tried to develop a little bit more inquiry and curiosity in mathematics is through Dan Meyer's 3-Act-Problems (check out Meyer's TED talk on math education in the US if you're interested). I had heard of these 3-Act-Problems for a long while but didn't actually try one out until later in the year. The 3-Act comes from the idea of how a story unfolds; Act 1 is where you grab your audiences attention, Act…

Challenges Of An Inquiry-Based Math Classroom- PART 1

I'm about to finish my 4th year of teaching. This was my first year as a middle school math teacher and my first year really trying to create an inquiry-based math classroom. It's hard. What is an inquiry based math classroom? I generally see it as getting students curious about mathematics and driven to understand and explore and willing to fail. How do you generate curiosity and inquiry about mathematics? I did several things this year. At the root of a lot of it, I made space for discussion and dialogue in small and large groups. When presented with most problems in class,…

“The Best Discussion I’ve Ever Had”

I just got out of my 6th grade Math Skills class. We finished up the Proportions project (something akin to THIS) and spent half the class getting their final papers printed and putting the project papers up in the hall. I thought it would be hard to really have an engaging lesson afterwards as they were a bit hyped up but we refocused and got started on our lesson on converting percents. Being that it was our first lesson on percents, I had a few opening questions just to get their minds geared into thinking about what percents actually were:…