Monday Must Reads: Volume 6

I’ve been taking a break from Monday Must Reads this summer because I’ve been out of the country and have had very limited internet access. Now that I’m back in the states, it’s time to catch up on my RSS feed reader. There’s no hope of catching up on twitter, so I’m not even going to try. That means this volume will be heavy on the blog posts and lighter on the tweets.

Here are the posts that stood out to me that I think might be of interest to you!

Reflecting on Teaching Over the Past 10 Years

Pam Wilson wrote a great post reflecting on how her teaching has changed over the past ten years. She ran across a presentation she gave at a conference in 2007 and was shocked to see how many things she was no longer doing in her classroom that she used to love. Though I haven’t been teaching that long, I can still relate. One of my summer projects has been to try and organize my computer files. In the process, I have ran across so many activities I did during my first few years of teaching that have somehow fell out of the rotation. I also loved Pam’s fun post about incorporating a Where’s Waldo toy in her classroom. Be sure to check out that post, too!

Interactive Notebook Presentation

Jacqueline Richardson led an awesome presentation on using interactive notebooks in the secondary math classroom and she blogged about it with tons of pretty pictures that make my heart happy.

What is Math?

Sara VanDerWerf has written a beautiful, thoughtful blog post regarding “What is math? What do mathematicians do?” I think this post should be required reading for all math teachers. Be sure to check out her post for examples of how she engages her students in discovering what math is all about. Like every post Sara writes, this one makes me wish I could have been a student in her classroom.

Don Steward Perpendicular Line Task

Don Steward‘s resources always make me think.  Today he has me thinking about how I teach my students about parallel and perpendicular lines in Algebra 1.  It seems that every year I have a terrible time getting my students to memorize the facts that parallel lines have the same slope and perpendicular lines have slopes that are opposite reciprocals.  Maybe this is the fact that I’m just teaching it as something to be memorized.  In a recent post, Don shares a slide where he challenges students to draw a line perpendicular to another line that goes through a certain point.  Before I ever start talking about the rules for parallel/perpendicular next year, I’m going to get my students drawing.  I can’t wait!

Workers of Zen

Colleen Young has written an excellent post about games and mathematical activities to use in your classroom. Though I am already familiar with quite a few of the resources she suggested, I found several new ones to check out. I was intrigued by a link to an activity she mentioned called “Workers of Zen.” Students are given cards with facts on them. Students are only allowed to view the fact on their own cards. They may share the facts on their cards with the other students, but this sharing must happen verbally. Together, the students must solve a puzzle. I’m thinking this would make a great classroom building activity for the first week of school!

Meredith Purser Word Wall

I love looking at pictures of other teachers’ classrooms, so I was super excited when Meredith Purser gave us a peek at her beautiful word wall!

Data Collection Activity: How Many Dots?

M Horley has shared a great image to use for a quick data collection activity.  This would be perfect for kicking off a lesson on creating data displays such as box plots, histograms, etc! With only a two second glance, how many dots are there?

Go-To Engaging Activities

Brian at Lazy Ocho recently shared a list of his go-to activities to engage students he has never met before. There are some goodies on this list! I’m looking forward to trying O, T, T, F, F, S… with my students this year!

Let’s close this post out with a few tweets that caught my eye recently.

Normal Distribution Foldable

Cori Colby tweeted a picture of an awesome normal distribution foldable. This makes me a bit sad I’m not teaching stats next year, but not too sad because giving up stats means I am back to only having three preps!

Visual Patterns Wording Prompt

Greta Bergman shared a photo from Twitter Math Camp. I love the wording of this prompt. My students often struggle with where to start when they don’t see a pattern right away, so this is perfect.

Mullet Ratio Lesson

I’ve never been able to use the mullet ratio lesson in my classroom because in Oklahoma the topic of ratios falls in the middle school curriculum. But, I love seeing how this lesson brings out the creativity in math teachers. Renee Deken‘s inclusion of barbie dolls and play dough makes it even more awesome!

Quarter the Cross Template with Lines

I have had the privilege of doing Quarter The Cross with two groups of students. I love seeing what my students come up with. Often, they think about the task in a way I haven’t which is super exciting. David Butler has shared yet another awesome Quarter The Cross resource with the world in a recent tweet. I think this would be perfect to use with students on a second run through of the activity after they’ve had a chance to understand the task and create some of their own.

Draw an Atom Before and After Activity

I know this next tweet is science-y, but I think math-y teachers could find a way to still adapt it to their classrooms. Plus, now that I’m a certified chemistry teacher, you’re going to have to put up with more science stuff on this blog! I love this before and after post-it activity that was tweeted by Kate Atherton. What a creative way to get students interacting with the material!

Symmetry Lesson with Perler Beads

As a kid, I loved making designs from perler beads. My sister and I would spend hours making our designs “just perfect.” Then, my mom would get out the iron and melt the beads together. I guess this is why I was super excited to see perler beads being used in a math lesson on twitter. Aileen Kelly shares how she uses the beads to have students make designs with symmetry. I don’t teach geometry at the moment, but if I did I might challenge students to make designs with different types of symmetry.

That’s it until next time!  Thanks for reading!

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