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Included this week: This week's Global Math webinar details, some blogs posts you might have missed.  Edited by Megan Schmidt
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This Week at Global Math: 

Growth Mindset: Laying the Foundation for the Revolution


Are you curious about how to effectively promote growth mindset in your classroom? Me too. Are you still a work in progress? Me too. In this session, we’ll look at some tools and strategies that can help, including the use of Google Forms and Sheets to assess student mindsets. In addition, I'll share successes, non-successes, and go into detail about how our actions can speak to the hearts of our students

Presented by: Dane Ehlert

Sign up here.
Last week on Global Math we heard from Rick Estrada on his flipped classroom.  View the recording here.

Link-stravaganzas!

Calls to Action

 

Sometimes social media and blogging can feel like an echo chamber of cyclical thinking and limited action.  For those who feel this way the mini-conference at NCTM Boston, ShadowCon15, is here to help!

 

ShadowCon15 introduced us to the idea of a social media-related, pedagogical call to action.  Click on the link above to find out more about Tracy Zager, Kristin Gray, Michael Pershan, Laila Nur, Christopher Danielson, and Elham Kazemi and their calls to action from ShawdowCon15.

 

Another call to action that went out recently was from Justin Lanier during his Global Math Department conference on May 12th.  In response to Justin’s call Heather Kohn, Dylan Kane, and I responded to Justin’s call with these tweets and blog posts: Heather’s, Dylan’s with teachers and students, and mine.  

 

Tracy Zager also recently reminded us all that a call to action is not a spectator sport!

 

zager call to action tweet.JPG

 

Here are some other blog post responses to the ShadowCon15 calls to action:

 

If you are also tired of just talking, tweeting, discussing, debating, or chit-chatting about how to make math education in this country a little bit better, use a call to action to focus on the change you want to see in your teaching practice next school year.


written by Andrew Gael (@bkdidact)

Tell Me Something About the Problem

 

I love this blog post from Annie Fetter because it arms every teacher with a simple two-for-one response when helping stuck students. The response can help both students improve at making sense of problems in math and the teacher to check for understanding.

 

Personally, I’ve asked stuck students, “What’s the question asking for?”

[crickets]...

 

I’ve also asked stuck students to, “Tell me something you know about the problem.”

Students respond… and you can assess their thinking.

 

 

*Bonus points: Michael Pershan is really interested in what we do as teachers to get students started. Read more in the comments.
written by Andrew Stadel (@mr_stadel)

 

Teachers Know Best, a study

 

Late last year the Gates Foundation released the results of a study they employed on PD "to help identify needs and opportunities for improvement". The study, Teachers Know Best: Teachers' Views on Professional Development, is an interesting read and while it was good to see that teachers and admin "largely agree on what good professional learning looks like", the observations of current vs ideal PD shaped up like so:

When I think about the PD I get through things like Tuesday night's at Global Math, from blogs, or from the #MTBoS tag on twitter, so many of my attitudes fall into the bottom row. I'm thankful for this. But then the study notes that "only 7% of teachers surveyed report that their schools have strong collaborative models" and I'm left wondering how to bring the MTBoS experience I know and love into the face-to-face reality of the school systems we have.
So what can we do to raise that 7%? Sharing the efforts of Shadow Con with colleagues and finding a partner or two in crime to tackle a Call to Action with seem like a place to start. Let's get those conversations started.


written by Ashli Black (@mythagon)