My first two days went well, so I thought I’d share. Plus, if you happen to be another geometry teacher, I need your help with something (I’ll get to that later). DAY ONE I have the des…| The Number Warrior
I. Unconditional war On January 8, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson declared an “unconditional war on poverty in America.” The effort spawned the creation of Medicare, Medicaid, food s…| The Number Warrior
So based on my last post about Canada’s math wars I had a number of people stop to comment about direct instruction in general, including Robert Craigen who kindly linked to the PCAP (Pan-Can…| The Number Warrior
Canada went through a bit of a panic recently when the PISA 2012 scores came out. [Source.] Oh no! Scores are dropping! There must be something done wrong, so it’s time to change policy: “If …| The Number Warrior
I was reading the comment thread in an old post of mine when I hit this gem by Bert Speelpenning: Here is a short list of things that kids in math class routinely unlearn in their journey from K th…| The Number Warrior
It is tempting when hearing about student performance on an international or national test is to assume they measure some monolithic mathematical ability. When a country is doing well on a test mat…| The Number Warrior
In most education literature I have seen going from concrete to abstract concepts as a ladder. The metaphor has always started with concrete objects before “ascending the ladder” to abs…| The Number Warrior
The idea of “working memory” — well established since the 1950s — is that the most objects someone can hold in their working memory is 7 plus or minus 2. There have been som…| The Number Warrior
I’ve had a series where I’ve been looking at Common Core exams delivered by computer looking for issues. Mathematical issues did crop up, but the more subtle and universal ones were abo…| The Number Warrior
When first teaching about the interior angles of a polygon I had an elaborate lesson that involved students drawing quadrilaterals, pentagons, hexagons, etc and measuring and collecting data and fi…| The Number Warrior
