Lesley Take-Aways

Now that I have written up my take-aways from each session, I have gone through to figure out what are my overall take-aways.

Really important reminders:

- make sure to have some lessons that are based on the following formats: guided discovery, reasoning and proof, data collection and analysis, interesting application, interdisciplinary connection, problem solving, counterintuitive phenomenon

- algebra is generalized arithmetic

- all of our students deserve proper vocabulary and conceptual understanding, not cutesy tricks

Things I want to implement this upcoming year:

- Contemplate then Calculate Routine—choose tasks with multiple structural shortcuts

- conjecture board: record student conceptions before introducting a new topic and then have students see if they can disprove the conjectures through a counter-example

- have students predict the next step in a visual pattern after being given the first two

- open # line prompts as pre-assessment

- construct right triangles in order to exactly place irrational numbers on the number line

- data collection ideas for lines of fit: jumping jacks (x = time), the wave or wrist squeeze (x = # of people), # of pennies in a cup to break the noodles (x = number of noodles)

- the expanded tracks problem for the Pythagorean Theorem

- visual approximation of square roots

Resources to look into:

- Appreciating Mathematical Structure for All by Mason, Stephens, and Watson

- Well Played 6-8 by Dacey, Gartland, and Lynch

- Make bar diagrams at Thinking Blocks