MfA

Radians. Or Mission #2: Twitter Me This

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I’m just going to shout out my former student teacher Matt for not only being an amazing student teacher and now amazing struggling first year teacher, but for jumping into the MTBoS from Day 1 of teaching!  He’s much more active on twitter than I, but he mentioned me in a recent tweet about the meaning of radians.  So, I wanted to follow it up.

I don’t think I ever learned what a radian really was in school.  Somewhere along the way, I figured it out, and I love teaching it! 

I usually begin by having students (in PreCalc) put masking tape around the circumference of circular objects so that it makes exactly one circumference.  They then lay the masking tape flat on the desk.  Next, they measure the radius of their circle.  Last, they measure how many radii fit onto their masking tape.  “For some reason” everyone keeps getting 6 and a little bit.  Quickly, students catch on to 2pi, and they start to relate it to the circumference formula.

But that’s just the first half.  Then, students trace the circle onto paper, and put the masking tape back on the circle.  By now, they have all these little marks on the tape at the measurements of each radius length.  We then draw a central angle that is the width of one of these radius lengths.  This is an angle that is one radius wides.  A RADius ANgle.  A RADIAN!

Love it!

Debate PLT

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Tuesday night kicked off the first of four monthly meetings I’m co-facilitating with Steve Viola–a Professional Learning Team focused on debate and discussion in the math/science classroom.  We were nervous and excited, and we ended up with 45 awesome teachers!!  Way more than expected!!!!

There’s lots to share, and I hope some of them will be sharing their thoughts on it too.  Just a quick overview of what we did:

1. Soapbox Debate.  Standing up and saying “My Claim is…and my Warrant is…”

2. Research supporting debate in the classroom.

3. Circular Debate.  Same as soapbox with summary of the previous speaker added in.

4.  How to Start/Examples – Steve did a quick talk about the awesome way he introduces these structures into his classroom: using superheroes!

5.  Then we broke out into groups.  Groups completed (1) Table Debates and (2) Discussion about how to start including this in their own classrooms (maybe as soon as the next day?!).

6.  Hopes & Fears.  A final share out, followed by an exit slip.

At then end, we asked them if they were planning and able to come back to part 2 in November.  ALL 45 SAID YES!!

Differentiation: A New Vision

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I have this dream of a wonderfully differentiated classroom.  All students learning at a level that is appropriate for them, with just the right amount of challenge, engaged and loving math.  However, I’ve never seen this become a reality.  As a result, over the years I’ve doubted the existence of differentiated instruction.  Now, I’m rethinking…

I was at (part one of) a multi-part workshop offered by Math for America this evening titled “ALL-ED: All Learners Learning Every Day” led by Rhonda Bondie from Fordham.  While I think the title is a little ambitious, I was intrigued enough to go to the first part, this very evening.  Much of our talk was about differentiated instruction. 

We were first asked to free write pluses, minuses, and questions about differentiated instruction.  Then we did small group share out.  I discussed this dream of the ideally differentiated classroom and how I wonder if it exists…Then, I started thinking, maybe differentiated instruction exists, but maybe it’s just that my vision is wrong.  Maybe I was sold on a vague idea of differentiated instruction, and I made up my mind what the goal was.  I had an fictional ideal in my mind, and spent my energy and research with regard to differentiation trying to get there.  Instead, I should take the journey of differentiation and see where it leads me…I wonder what may come of it.