Making Mastodons Real

For many years, in addition to teaching I ran an outdoor education program at a school in urban southern California. Most of my students lived far-removed from the natural world and outdoor education was literally a breath of fresh air for them. Usually we took students to Joshua Tree National Park, a land of giant granite boulders sculpted by the wind and glowing gold in the setting sun. One evening we drove into the park with a new group of middle schoolers, their faces pressed to the window in awe of the hulking stones looming like mastodons. One kid, who had studied the basics of geology in his science class, nevertheless innocently exclaimed, “Woah, who put these here?”, thinking that the fabricators of Disneyland had been hard at work in Joshua Tree. This climbing trip made those stones real for the students, bridging the gap between the abstraction of nature and the reality of rocks.

Climbing in Joshua Tree

The CTC on the TpT!

A quick take on the difference between graphing a line and understanding a linear function.

Ten Tricks for Effective Group Work

When I first considered putting students in small groups to work on missions the biggest fear was that students would run amuck, losing focus and wasting time when they weren’t being told what to do. Even more, I was worried that some elements of the activities not might not work, and imagined the exhausting challenge of dealing with the pandemonium of various groups variously confused. It would be so much easier to simply keep a tight reign on a quiet class as I gave them a solid and entertaining lecture. And yet it seemed that group work provided an opportunity for students to engage in the risk-taking, creativity, conversation, failure and recovery which gives students greater ownership over learning. Was I willing to take the personal risk to give up some control and allow students to become the principle agents of their own success?

Better Together: 11 Tips for Great Group Work in Middle and High School - Teachers Pay Teachers

Courage To Core materials are designed for students to work in small groups to explore math deeply. It can be a challenge to organize and manage groups successfully. Jodi Rigotti at Teachers Pay Teachers recently assembled a fine list of teacher tips on how to help students get the most out of their group work. My personal favorite is that we set clear expectations knowing that students will need to practice in order to work effectively in groups. What's your favorite, or do you have any tips to add? On an upcoming post I'll discuss in detail the structures and techniques I use to get the most out of group work.

Better Together: 11 Tips for Great Group Work in Middle and High School - Teachers Pay Teachers

A Snapshot of Interactive, Hands-On Math

What they're working on.

An Introduction To Courage To Core

Introduction
My first year of math teaching was in 1995 at an innovative private high school in San Francisco named Lick-Wilmerding. Students worked in small groups to explore algebra and geometry, reporting their findings in documents written as if they were lab reports. Students would receive direct instruction when necessary, but frequently, questions were explored and answered by members of the groups themselves. I adapted hesitantly to this new structure, as I myself had been taught by teachers and professors using lecture combined with extensive homework practice. Over my subsequent years of teaching in the states I explored a range of methods tailored to the various cultures of the schools at which I taught. This included straight lecture and homework, a mixture of lecture and independent class work, and collaborative group work supported by a textbook. Over the last 8 years of teaching at La Jolla Country Day in San Diego and two international schools in Spain, the American School of Valencia and the American School of Madrid, I’ve developed Courage To Core which allows my ninth and tenth grade math students to explore mathematical concepts as if exploring scientific concepts in laboratories.