Nancy's Math Blog

Welcome back to my blog! How to look at a math problem This week, we covered intuition and thinking like a mathematician. Math is so much more than plugging a number into a formula. We need to understand math problems and be able to explain and justify our thinking in words instead of a formula. What does that formula really tell us? We need to know how to apply our mathematical thinking in other settings, so a formula is not always going to help out especially when dealing with something new or unknown. Too often, we give up too soon. Even brilliant people, such as Sebastian Thrun, an accomplished inventor and Google executive, admitted to taking weeks to be develop an intuitive understanding of a math concept. I also liked his comment about taking away the fear of math in our students. The struggle and frustration experienced by students is actually an excellent indicator of brain growth and learning. Drawing in Math In his blog, Ryan discussed the pencil as ...

Let’s face it -teaching is a demanding profession. A lot is expected of us. We need to cover a lot of material and differentiate to reach every student. This week’s discussion regarding rich tasks really made sense to me as this approach really benefits both teachers and students. At first, I thought it seemed kind of complicated. We, as teachers, should weave other subjects such as language, science, art and social science as we teach math. Math is all around us and we need to incorporate this wide-angle lens approach. It’s not the easiest thing to do and it’s truly best done with other teachers, but I really believe that with time and practice, it will become much easier! It is also a much more efficient way to teach as you are combining content and skills in two or more subjects, which enables students to meet expectations in multiple subjects within a lesson or task. Math and the world around us Math is an important part of our everyday life, not just something le...