Videos

I Heart Math

Valentine’s candy conversation hearts are a favorite around our house.  I recently saw this post about these cool conversation hearts that have letters instead of sayings on them. Of course, being math minded as I am, my first thought was, “What math could teachers do with these conversation hearts?”  Here are my initial 🙂 ideas…do you […]

The Recovering Traditionalist

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Leftover Candy Canes? Do some 3 Act Math!

So here we are after Christmas and I still have boxes of candy canes sitting in my pantry.  I don’t want to eat them and I don’t want my kids to eat them….so let’s do some 3 Act Math with them instead. Candy Cane Act 1 What do you notice? What do you wonder? Focus question: […]

The Recovering Traditionalist

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My Dave Ramsey Goals

It was just last week that I wrote about how sticking to New Year’s Resolutions is really just like problem solving.  Then a few days ago I was listening to Dave Ramsey via the iPhone app on my drive to work and heard him re-iterate the 5 things that differentiate a WISH from a GOAL […]

The Recovering Traditionalist

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Where to go with teachers once they’ve drank the Kool-Aid??

So for the past 6 years my main job has been to teach a 3-credit PD course for inservice teachers.  The course is based off Cognitively Guided Instruction, Jerome Bruner, Cathy Fosnot’s work, Realistic Math Education, John Van de Walle’s work, and many others depending upon the grade band of the course.  In the PD course, […]

The Recovering Traditionalist

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Sticking to New Year’s Resolutions is Just a Problem Solving Process

I’m not one for doing New Year’s Resolutions because most of the time they are thrown out nonchalantly and never looked at in-depth by the person. Instead I am about setting goals. Goals that actually get attained have 5 things (Thanks, Dave Ramsey!): 1) Time limit 2) Very specific 3) Need to be in writing […]

The Recovering Traditionalist

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Christmas Math Center Activities 2014

I love Christmas.  I love it even more now that I have kids of my own.  I love seeing their faces light up on Christmas morning.  But one of my favorite things I get to do now is going into my children’s classrooms the last day before their Christmas break to do some Christmas Math […]

The Recovering Traditionalist

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Pre-service Elementary Ed Students and Student Loans

One of my jobs is teaching Math for Elementary Education at a university nearby.  Most of the students who take the course are Freshmen and Sophomores.  This semester I gave them an extra credit assignment designed to: 1) Encourage them to not take out any loans or reduce the amount of loans they do take out; whether […]

The Recovering Traditionalist

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