Math is FigureOutAble Blog
Why is reasoning about integers so hard?
A few years back, long enough ago that I didn’t have nearly as much figured out about teaching FigureOutAble math as I do now, I was working with some middle school teachers.
Things were generally great....
Teaching Routine for Building Important Mental Math Strategies
Number partners are pairs of numbers that add to a third number. Given the landmark quality of powers of ten in our counting system, partners of powers of ten(1.0, 10, 100, 1000, etc) are immensely useful tools....
A Problem String Is NOT
I was recently at the Florida leadership conference, FAMS, working with leaders and ran into Howie Hua, and we had a great conversation. Fantastic guy. You can listen to Kim and I discussing it here.
In that...
We Need Thinking Classrooms
Peter Liljedahl’s Building Thinking Classrooms is full of fantastic work. So much so, I’ve got 4 podcast episodes talking about it. I don’t agree exactly with everything he says, but studying it...
Questioning Questioning
A thing I get asked about is the difference between focusing questions and funneling questions.
You may have already noticed that there’s something off with what I just said.
That’s because when...
Ep 147: The Area Model to Build Reason
Episode 147 of my podcast, Math is Figure-Out-Able with Pam Harris, is all about using area models to building intuition with the square unit of measurement for area.
I start off by modeling a problem string with...
Developing Mathematical Reasoning Part 4
Throughout this series we have discussed each of the stages of the Development of Mathematical Reasoning. In order to identify where students are in their development and to nudge them to more...
Why Doesn't Everyone Teach Real Mathematics?
Have you taken THE QUIZ?
We can only change what we know.
In the quiz post, I make the case that our perceptions of what mathematics is and what it means to teach mathematics influence the way that...
Strategies vs. Models
When I travel around the country and visit teachers in classrooms, one of the things I notice is that the word strategy and model are sometimes used interchangeably.
What is the difference between a ...
Problem String Videos!
Hey fellow mathematicians!
Many of you will be happy to know that what you have been asking for is now available - video of teachers in REAL classrooms with REAL students. We provide these to you for free, but...
Author
Pam Harris
Math Educator
Pam Harris is a mom, a former high school math teacher, a university lecturer, an author, and she wants to change the way we view and teach mathematics. While Pam was teaching high school math, her four children grew and mathematized their world in a way she had never imagined. “I had always bought into the myth that math is a disconnected set of facts to memorize, with rules and procedures to mimic. I now call that fake math.” Pam’s own kids, research, and experiences teaching real math have shown her what it means to mathematize and to support learners in their own journeys. Real math is thinking mathematically, not just mimicking what a teacher does on the board. You can shift your brain from using rote memory to mathematizing. Pam helps teachers make this shift for themselves, and helps teachers teach in a way that supports students to learn real math.
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