I Hope This Old Train Breaks Down...

I wrote previously (apparently, a while ago) about how I introduce lines visually via patterns . After the end-of-year grades closed for Gr...

I'm brainstorming / laying out my end-of-year plans for my 8th-graders. After their end-of-year exam in late May, we will close grades, ...

I made up a totally silly call-and-response thing this year for practicing exponent rules (after we did the initial exploration, obviously, ...

Here is an MS update. I feel pretty productive lately, as I always do during the second semester. I also feel quite productive with my Grade...

Good things: I've been thinking about little changes that have big impacts. For example, recently my colleague asked me for some artic...

I'm delving back into the nitty-gritty linear concepts with my 8th-graders. I came up with an idea of teaching perpendicular slopes usin...

I talk regularly about how I think that kids must, and I mean MUST, write in the math class. It's a lot of work for you as a teacher bec...

Since I have multi-input relationships on my mind, here is a visual pattern of 3 variables for you to enjoy (row, column, result). I'v...

This is a follow up to my  three-variable project in Grade 8 , which we're finally doing now that the semester test is out of the way. T...

I am reading parts of John Hattie's Visible Learning for Teachers , which has some real gems. Since this book reads dense like a textboo...

It's so nice to just slow down before the semester test and to review everything we have learned. It's like taking in a deep breath,...

Maybe some of these are "radical" and "offensive", or maybe they're not. I'm just throwing them out there. Pleas...

As a kid, I was never good with mathematical terms. I was always doodling in math class and only picked up vocabulary words osmotically (whi...

Even after teaching all of grades 7 through 12, I still LOVE teaching 8th-graders the best. (This is my 5th year teaching 8th-graders.) They...

I was doing a bit of sorting through old posts today, and I remembered that a couple of summers ago Sam Shah had asked me to blog about the...

I am doing daily 5-minute drills this year in grades 7, 8, 11, and 12. It started off with my frustration that kids cannot remember unit cir...

For the end of the year, I am thinking about asking my middle-schoolers (7th- and 8th- graders) to make a creative assignment for me. I am h...

After our successful intro to exponents in Grade 8 , I feel that the students can mostly articulate how to simplify exponents and why, and t...

I am not a fan of full-fledged lesson plans but I am also not a fan of not making any plans. Normally, I carefully plan out the worksheets a...

Some of my students who prefer not to solve systems by substitution have come up with a new way of substitution that I actually REALLY like....