Math Blogger Initiation, Week 3
You know what tastes better than a glazed doughnut? Nothing. It's only the third day of school and I'm popping doughnut holes from the teachers' lounge like they're giant vitamin pills.
I get to feature eight wonderful bloggers this week, and I hope you'll check them out! (I will leave my comments at their posts.)
Confidence and inverse relationships
"The idea of having a big ego is certainly something they can relate to."
I'm thinking a lot about confidence, or lack thereof, in my students as I get to know them this year.
crazedmummy
Misconceptions
"Using the ten symbols for digits (I include zero because it's just so handy, thank you some arabic guy) is not arithmetic."
This post is about math=arithmetic.
Beth
"I love to share quotes about the beauty of math with students because for so many students, math is painful and sometimes while learning the language and processes of math they miss out on the beauty!"
While I enjoyed math as a student, I don't remember being taught about the beauty of math. I don't remember lessons about patterns, connections, references to nature and such. I learned about the beauty of math from math colleagues at conferences. It was because of those experiences that I determined to teach my students about the beauty of math!
Rebecka Peterson, @RebeckaMozdeh
"I want to help develop curious students; and central to curiosity is the desire to ask good questions."
Every time I read this quote from Cantor, I wish he were still alive and I wish I could be his friend. He summarized how I've felt about mathematics for a long time: good mathematicians are the ones who never stop asking questions.
Rob S, @saxobob
Week 3 - Monk Mountain Problem
"He ascended the path at his leisure, stopping for a sausage roll along the way."
This deals with the monk climbing then descending a mountain - an illustration of a Fixed Point theorems, with some examples of open questioning. Allows scope for a nice visual proof which can lead to a discussion about proof in general and 'existence' proofs as a subtype.
Kristen Hahn, @scmathcoach
"It's never to late to build number sense!"
This post is about providing students opportunities to build number sense through problem solving, rather than rote memorization. It debunks the misconception that number sense has to be there by the end of first grade. Number sense is a process just like reading and writing and students need rich experiences to build it.
Robin Nehila, @radical_robin
"I can totally relate to my students who think they are bad at math, and am still in awe of the one who it comes naturally for."
The story of how a math dud became a math teacher!
Andrew Knauft, @aknauft
NBI Week 3 — On Bovine and Big Numbers
"The take away, of course, is that pseudocontext doesn't matter when you write your problem in poetry."
I'm not a big fan of working with actual numbers, but Archimedes' Cattle Problem was puzzling enough to entice me to work through it. The fact that it took hundreds of years to fully answer adds to the allure for me.
Updated 09/14/12:
Please check out the rest of Week THREE posts featured at:
Julie, Anne, Megan, Bowman, Sam, Lisa, John, Shelli, Tina, Kate, Sue
Categories: Teaching, General Math
Tags: New Blogger Initiation blogosphere Pippi's Adventures in Teaching Pippi crazedmummy in stillness the dancing Epsilon-Delta Differentiating/Integrating Rebecka Peterson The Journey of Mathematics Kristen Hahn Flip! Learn! Share! Robin Nehila LimSoup Andrew Knauft
Thanks for the mention! I'm excited to read and share these other great bloggers!
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My pleasure, Kristen! I've been adding a lot of blogs from NBI to my Reader, more importantly I'm keeping up with reading them every morning now. iPad has a nice app for it too, so I have no excuse.
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