Amazing Things In the Math Blogotwittersphere

There have been some pretty Amazing things happening in the Blogotwittersphere over the last few weeks and I wanted to take a moment to recognize some of them. This has essentially been my reading list as I (1) prepare and organize a new classroom, (2) adjust the fundamental philosophy of my assessment cycle and transition to SBG, (3) reflect on the role of good problems and habits of mind in my classroom, and (4) search for meaningful activities that support how I want to use problem-solving in my classroom. If you’re thinking of any of those things too, I humbly recommend the resources below…

Intro to the Blogotwitterverse – Sam Shah has put together an amazing website designed to help introduce teachers to the many wonderful resources that our online community of math teachers has to offer. It’s amazing – if you know someone who’s hinting at wanting to dive into the world of blogging and tweeting, I highly recommend sending them there. I love that a community of teachers has essentially scaffolded a way for fellow teachers to enter our community – way to model good pedagogy.

Math Mistakes – Michael Pershan put together a website which aggregates math mistakes teachers have found so we can collectively analyze them and determine what is happening conceptually or procedurally that would lead to that conclusion. This problem has an especially enlightening mistake that shows up in the second comment.

Made4Math Mondays – An idea started over at @druinok’s blog where math teachers post little creative classroom organization projects/strategies every Monday. For someone who’s about to start school in a week and who moved classrooms, I’m loving this collection of resources. I’ve got hanging folder ideas,  classroom-material-organization ideas (rulers, pens, etc) – so many ideas! I hope to contribute in a week or so when my classroom is organized – I hope this continues throughout the year.

New Blogs!

Mathematics Bee – A blog belonging to my friend Julia who graduated with me from the University of Arizona and now teaches in Seattle. She’s a wonderfully optimistic teacher (like me!) and is doing amazing things at her school. I hope her blog gets a ton of traffic which encourages her to share more and more of her ideas with the world.
Update: It worked!! Check our her excellent reflections after the first year. I’m in love with her list under Communication.

Everybody Is a Genius – A blog belonging to a veteran middle and high school teacher who (from what I can tell) has recently entered the world of blogging, but is doing it with a bang. She has a whole series on Interactive Notebooks, which I’ve thoroughly enjoyed since I’m planning on having my students keep a notebook in my class and I’m greedily stealing a lot of her ideas. I’m also fairly positive that all the Pinterest traffic to my blog stemmed from her Pinterest collection, which is also amazing. If you’re into ISN’s and creative classroom design, you should be reading this blog. And if you are Sarah, then pretty please: (1) go on Twitter, and (2) participate in Made4Math Mondays.

Doing Mathematics – I started reading this blog because I wanted to emphasize Habits of Mind in my class this year and Bryan Meyer over at this blog had some Really Awesome Ideas. I hope he keeps writing about this so I can keep gleaning ideas from it. Sidenote: If Habits of Mind are a new but intriguing idea to you, consider reading This, This, and This.

Rational Expressions – In addition to Math Mistakes, I’ve been interested in Michael Pershan‘s blog as he’s been thinking about SBG and Types of Problems, which are two things I’ve been thinking about recently too. I used this post on SBG when I was thinking of what I wanted from my own SBG system, and I really like this reflective post on a problem-driven classroom which I can definitely relate to.  This is also a great post reflecting on what makes a ‘good problem’, which – again – I’ve been thinking a lot about too.

Mr Vaudrey – I stumbled into this blog after the intriguing idea of a math lesson based on mullet ratios and stuck around when he continued to post engaging, well-thought-out activities and lessons. I also stole his Teacher Report Card and hope to steal more from him in the future.

Speaking of consistently engaging activities and lessons… I also stumbled onto Fawn Nguyen‘s blog and stuck around for the same reason. She’s a middle school math teacher who has comprehensive posts on some great lessons she’s done. Here are some gems.

Happy Blogging!