From today's whiteboards (Nov. 23): 2-column solutions & group micro teaching info

This Wednesday, Nov. 25,  I will need to be at grad (since several of my grad students will be graduating!) It will be a work day for the class, and a chance to work on:

•an individual assignment (2-column problem solving)
•a group assignment (group curricular micro teaching -- lesson planning for next Monday)

Here are the whiteboard notes from these!

And here are our notes as a class after watching excerpts from Dave Hewitt's Number Line and Thinking of a Number teaching videos:

Group curricular micro teaching & 2-column puzzle solving

Here are the groups and topics for the group micro teaching next Monday Nov. 30 (spilling over to Wednesday Dec. 2): (Please edit this to add your names, topic and grade/ course levels)

1) Deeya, Etienne & Ying Ting:  Ambiguous case of sine law (Gr. 11)
2) Alison, Ian: Introduction to linear relations/graphing (Gr. 8)
3) Alice, Daniel and Nadereh: Gr. 11 or 12
4) Pari, Amandeep, Shan: Probability (Gr. 8) (or possibly Pythagorean Theorem?)
5) Jacob & Julie: Multiplying Fractions and Mixed Numbers
6) Arshbir & Sissi: Graphing relations (Gr. 10) (What aspect of this topic?)
7) Pacus, Iqra, Heijin:
8) Simran, Mandeep, Jessica: Percentages (Gr. 8) (What aspect of percentages?) (or probability?)
9) Alice, Daniel, Nadereh: infinite geometric series

Here are the puzzles people have chosen from John Mason's Thinking Mathematically for their two-column problem solving individual assignment: (Please edit to add your name and the name of the puzzle you have chosen. We will aim to have a different puzzle for each person.)

1) Shan: One Sum
2) Rachel: Diagonals of a Rectangle
3) Alice: Reversals
4) Amandeep: Coin Slide Puzzle
5) Daniel: Quad-Cut Triangles
6) Jimmy: Kathy's Coin Puzzle
7) Sissy: Odd Divisors
8) Heijin: Weighing Fish
9) Deeya: Hundred Squares
10) Jessica: Faulty Bricks
11) Jacob: Rolling Coins
12) Pacus: Full-Length Mirrors
13) Iqra: Ins and Outs
14) Ying Ting: Ladies' Luncheon
15) Alison: Tethered Goat (Silo Version)
16) Etienne: Arithmagons -- Secret Numbers
17) Julie: Square Bashing
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Homework for Monday Nov. 23, 9 AM: Dave Hewitt on what is arbitrary and necessary in the math curriculum

Here is a very interesting article for you to read and respond to before Monday's class:

Dave Hewitt: Arbitrary and Necessary (part 1) 
 For your blog post, please respond the following questions:

1) What does Hewitt mean by "arbitrary' and "necessary"? How do you decide, for a particular lesson, what is arbitrary and what necessary?

2) How might this idea influence how you plan your lessons, and particularly, how you decide "Who does the math" in your math class?

Enjoy!!

[For those who are interested in following up further, here are Part 2 and Part 3 of Dave Hewitt's series of articles on 'arbitrary and necessary'.]

Oh, too bad! BCAMT New Teachers' Conference cancelled for Nov. 21 because of low enrolment

Hi everyone. Sadly, the BCAMT has decided to cancel their New Math Teachers' Conference next weekend (Nov. 21) because of low enrolment. Thanks to Ying Ting and Shan for alerting me to this, and very sorry that this happened.

If I remember correctly, this conference used to be offered in January or February, farther away from the big October Pro-D Day conference, and I think that may have been a better time for everyone. It also gave the BCAMT a longer time to publicize the event.

Sorry to everyone who was really looking forward to this great conference! I will keep my eyes open for other opportunities that may come up, or for a possible rescheduling of this conference.

SNAP Math Fair field trip this Wednesday Nov. 18, 1:00- 2:30 at the Museum of Anthropology!

I am very pleased and excited that we will be able to participate in the SNAP Math Fair organized by Chris Stroud and his colleagues at West Point Grey Academy this Wednesday afternoon at the Museum of Anthropology on the UBC campus.

Chris will be here for a short presentation in class today. Chris also did his Masters degree at UBC on the topic of SNAP Math Fairs.

SNAP stands for Student-centred, Non-competitive, All-inclusive and Problem-based. Here is a link to the SNAP Math Fair site. I think you'll find that Chris and his colleagues are taking this idea to many new and exciting places too -- for example, to collaborations with the Museum of Anthropology, the Space Centre, the Aquarium and Science World!

Here is a link to the Math Fair Booklet that Chris uses to plan his math fairs. It has lots of good, open-ended problems that are worth kids spending some time on!

On Wednesday Nov. 18 at 1:00 PM sharp, we will meet in the main lobby of the Museum of Anthropology (corner of West Mall and NW Marine Drive, about 5 blocks NW of the Scarfe Building). Our class that day will be held at the SNAP Math Fair there.

Your homework assignment is to read pp. 1 - 18 of The Math Fair Booklet (linked above) and to write a response to the following question:

• Could you, and would you, run a SNAP Math Fair in your practicum high school? Why/ Why not? If you can imagine doing so, how would you adapt the Math Fair to your school and classes, and why?

Enjoy!!

Csikszentmihalyi & Peter Liljedahl on "flow", happiness, and mathematics learning in your classroom

Mihalyi Csikszenmihalyi, a Hungarian-American psychologist, has studied a state he calls 'flow', where people are completely engaged and delighted in a process of problem-solving, and our normal sense of time is suspended. Here is a link to his TED talk on this topic from 2004.

Professor Peter Liljedahl from SFU Math Education has taken up the idea of 'flow' in both a descriptive and prescriptive way for our math classrooms. Here are his slides shared from his Saturday session at the Northwest Math Teachers' Conference from October.