Category: Pedagogy

Effective mathematics involves two distinct acts: Parsing and writing mathematical symbols to create meaningful messages Applying an understanding of mathematical relations and objects It seems to me that we have two terms at our disposal: Numeracy and mathematical literacy. It also seems to me that these two terms are used somewhat interchangeably. (“What is numeracy?”)…

n this post, I’d like to reflect on story problems and the purpose of mathematics education. Consider this problem: Every week, Julie invites some friends over for pizza. Last week, she had four friends over and they ate one whole pizza. This week, she had two more friends over. If she orders two pizzas, how…

Part of my shtick as a Geometry teacher is the Rubik’s Cube. I have a 3^3 and a 5^3 in my room; I’d had a Void as well, but it’s wandered off (perhaps due to my own doing). The students will distract themselves with the cubes; some of them will ask me to do it….

I’ve been struggling for a while now to find a way to frame and articulate the answer to what seems like a simple question: “What is mathematics?” At the same time, I’ve been seeking to layout the similarities and differences between the concepts listed in the title: Computer programming, mathematics, and natural language. Recently, I…

I was recently reading a book on Greenfoot, a Java-based GUI intended for teaching programming to high schoolers and college underclassman. In the “Newton’s Lab” project, the writer assuaged the reader who might be leery of the mathematics in that particular project. Remember, the reader was told: Programming can do a variety of things, including…

In this entry, I’m going to be discussing how mathematicians tend to approach the world, and why we need better PR. I’m currently teaching High School Geometry. Here is what the book has to say about the “Segment of Chords Theorem”: “If two chords intersect in a circle, then the products of the lengths of…

The purpose of a mnemonic is to make something easier to remember. Roy G. Biv represents the major colors of the spectrum (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet); it has the weakness that most people tend to think of the spectrum having six colors these days, instead of seven, with purple in place of…

One of the greatest benefits to my current teaching position is its small class sizes, which affords me a significant amount of one-on-one tutorial time. I know fairly well how I think about numbers; I don’t know how other people, particularly students who struggle with mathematics, do. I feel that it’s crucial that mathematics teachers…

A good teacher is always aware that there are things they can learn. One of the ways in which I encourage students to connect mathematics to other topics is by showing how words and morphemes used in mathematics are used elsewhere. For instance, “median” in mathematics refers to a number in the middle of a…

Except for the final grades, I’ve just wrapped up teaching six weeks of credit recovery for Freshman Algebra. It’s tough enough packing nine months’ of material into six weeks, but consider these are the students who didn’t do well enough the first time to get a passing grade (in this case, a C or higher),…