Categories
quadratics technology vine

Animating Quadratic Patterns

My first attempt at animating patterns was published on this blog in 2013. I suppose you can consider this post a long-overdue extension of the thinking there, however with a much-needed bump in production quality. In those old days, I hunched over a whiteboard with a collection of square tiles, creating six-second loops on the (now defunct) social media platform, Vine. Now, thanks largely to Berkeley Everett and his crash course on how to make animations in Keynote, the process has become much more streamlined.

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Categories
classroom structure factors games play projects reflection technology

Report on a Math Tournament

**This post contains the materials and advice you’ll need to run a distanced math tournament with your district, division, school, province, state, classroom, family, coworkers, neighbours, etc., etc., etc.**

Honestly, the more math love, the better! (IMHO)

In mid-October, I designed a math provincial math tournament open to all middle school teachers in my home province of Saskatchewan, Canada. After writing up a blog post that served as a formal invitation, the tournament (which I affectionately called the Saskatchewan Mathematics Invitational Tournament–or #SMIT2020 for short) has been running for just over a month with over 80 classrooms from across the province playing Federico Chialvo’s delightful game MULTI. (see here for more information).

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Categories
reflection whiteboards

Thoughts on Thinking Classrooms

“Mathematics is equipment for thinking”

Francis Su, Mathematics for Human Flourishing, p. 110.

The sun sets around 5:30PM this time of year in my little prairie slice of paradise. Yesterday, well after dark, there was a ring of the doorbell and a package delivery: My copy of Building Thinking Classrooms by Peter Liljedahl. Over the last couple weeks, I have watched as tweeps1 sent messages of exhilaration having received their own copies. The, now familiar, orange cover adorned with the beautiful illustrations of Laura Wheeler is a welcomed sight on my Twitter feed, each time accompanied with excited messages you’d expect to hear from children anticipating a visit from the Tooth Fairy.

Honestly, holding the book felt weird. I say that as a testament to Peter’s work: It draws you into participation to the point where it feels like it’s a part of your history. In my case, that’s because this book is a part of my history. Receiving the book sponsored a sort of nostalgia, as I’m sure it did for so many who have followed the ideas as they’ve developed over the years. This feeling surprised me, because, despite the real feeling of connection to the physical copy of the book and the brand of teaching it represents:

I don’t run a Thinking Classroom.

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Categories
classroom structure factors games numerical flexibility play technology

A Math Tournament

**Update: Nov 23, 2020: Follow along on Twitter with some of the thinking at the hashtag #SMIT2020

COVID has created a global (and now chronic) pressure on all teachers in all classrooms, and the shifting, local realities have made teacher collaboration a precious commodity. It’s hard enough to find time to confer with colleagues under the best of situations, and now our major professional muster points are not currently viable–adding further value to any sense of connection that can be generated.

Bummer, right?

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Categories
assessment probability

Probability Quizzes with No Questions

A few years ago, I came across the following multiple choice question:

Argue about the solution all you’d like (oh, and people argue about the solution), the beautiful part of this, for me, is that the question is not really the question. The point of the exercise is not to complete the exercise, it’s to dwell a while in the complexities it offers. By constructing the argument, you interact with notions of odds, randomness, probability, and the like. This is similar to the idea of #SandwichChat, where the point is not to define what a sandwich actually is, but, rather, to play with emerging definitions and consider their consequences. I love these sorts of activities, because they, almost unexpectedly, turn our own thinking upon ourselves. They have a way of snapping us out from the familiar ebb and flow of the mathematics classroom, whereby prompts are passed to solvers who manufacture resolutions and, in turn, re-sell them back to teachers at increased costs. Teachers cover this inflation by remunerating the students with a most precious commodity–grades. And so the classroom economy ticks forward.1

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Categories
reflection

A Lesson from a Washing Machine

My mind has been wandering back to the math class lately. I’ve missed it, and, given the current health concerns associated with the re-opening of schools, I may not be getting it back anytime soon. (At least in the form that I feel the most comfortable operating in). Perhaps it is the pendulum between anticipation and dread that has teaching and learning at the forefront of my awareness lately. Although this is not uncommon for me, absence does, as they say, make the heart grow fonder. It is, therefore, possible that this post represents my final descent into pandemic-induced psychosis; maybe this strained analogy symbolizes just how much I need the classroom back, and serves as a sort of Warshak test–math education style–where ink blot after ink blot of everyday experience suddenly holds latent lessons about the mathematics classroom. Maybe it’s just a way to air my dirty laundry1, to simply stop some thoughts from rattling around in my skull by writing them down. Tabling the discussion of my sanity for the time being, what follows is a quick story about my Saturday afternoon.

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Categories
pattern play projects

Project: QuaranTiles

If you are like me, your workload hasn’t exactly petered out during these recent weeks of quarantine. Within this new normal, I have found it incredibly beneficial to play. That play is freeform; you could categorize it as aimless, but it is far from mindless. The need to step away from the computer for a few precious moments has allowed me to finish up a couple math projects that have been brewing for a while. The first was the creation of Upscale Pattern Blocks. The second was really an unintended one, born from the influence of Christopher Danielson’s new Truchet Cubes. I affectionately call them QuaranTiles.

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Categories
area games geometry investigation pattern reflection scale

Upscale Pattern Blocks

Update: April 13th, 2022

Upscale Pattern Blocks are now available!

Now you can get your hands on a set of blocks through the amazing and creative folks at Math for Love. Click here for details!!

(If you are not familiar with Math for Love, poke around the website. Along with the Upscale Pattern Blocks, there are numerous other curiosities for home-based and school-based mathematical exploration.)

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First off, I hope you are well. This post represents a portion of my attempt to remain “well enough” in the midst of tremendous uncertainty. Most of my time is spent talking about the teaching and learning of mathematics, something that seems to have ground to a necessary halt in recent days. Given our collective circumstance, the time feels as good as ever to talk about a little project I’ve been working on, and ask for a smidge of help.

The Blocks

Recent access to a laser cutter and a kindergartener got me wondering. I began to play with a few possibilities. One of the fun things that fell out was a set of scaled pattern blocks I’m calling, “Upscale Pattern Blocks”. Essentially, they are pattern blocks scaled in three different sizes. The sizes interacted in some very interesting ways, and after some test cutting and multiple trips to the craft supply store, I ended up with a really fun result.

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Categories
geometry reflection

On Scalene Triangles

[Update Nov 4th, 2021: Since this initial post, I have intentionally backgrounded the term “#FreeScalene” because I am now at a place where I feel that facetiously couching a classroom activity in this language treats the work of important social movements with too little respect. I leave this post here (complete with this addendum) because this blog is a place to archive my professional trajectory, and I feel this update is an important piece of that growth.

If you want to read my thoughts on the merits of debating geometric definitions (especially triangles), portions of this post are expanded upon here.]

[Original Post: Published March 2020]

This past weekend I was invited to Toronto to give the 2019 Margaret Sinclair Memorial Award Lecture at the Fields Math Ed. Forum at the Fields Institute for Research in Mathematical Sciences. While the layers of the organizational hierarchy can be a mouthful, the bottom line is that I was given the great honour of presenting my thoughts on the teaching and learning of mathematics–as they are formulated at this time of writing. I broke the day into three distinct sections: The recipient’s lecture, a poetic provocation about hotdogs and mathematics education, and a gallery walk composed of some of my favourite invitations from my career to date.

(Link to the video archive of the invited lecture.)

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Categories
probability reflection

An Improbable Run at the Rosenthal Prize

In early December, I found out that my submission had been selected as the winner of the 2019 Rosenthal Prize for Inspiration and Innovation in Math Teaching. At the time, I had zero reference point to understand what that meant, but have since experienced first hand the hospitality of the international math education community. This post is not a summary of the winning submission; that detailed lesson plan has been posted on the MoMath website. [UPDATE April 2021: Rachel Welbourn a gracieusement traduit les documents de la tâche en français.] Here, I want to take the time to reflect aloud on how this whole thing happened–a process, I think, might be of value for math teachers. I’ve attempted to distill my take-aways into four categories, but, in actuality, they still exist (for me) as a tangled heap composed of equal parts disbelief, gratitude, and empowerment to pursue the next challenge.

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