Why iReady is Dangerous

This school year Fairfax County Public Schools, the 10th largest school division in the United States, adopted the iReady assessment as a universal screener across all of its elementary schools. Students in grades K-6 take these assessments individually on the computer three times per year, and the results are made available to both teachers and…

New blog!

Hi Everyone! What's the best way to deal with a blog that is collecting dust from lack of posts? Start a new blog! Check out my brand new blog, Hands Down, Speak Out, with literacy coach, Christy Thompson (@teacherthomp) where we'll be writing about classroom dialogue across literacy and math content areas. And in our…

The Tale of the Grumpy Parrot and the Purple Snazzleberries

Our kindergarten team did some work around 3-Act Tasks last year and in our team meeting today the teachers wondered if there were any 3-Act Tasks that might fit well with our pattern unit. We took a look at Graham Fletcher's 3-Act Task, Stage 5 Series. We wondered what a 3-Act Task around repeating patterns might…

3 Act-ish

This year I did a little PD work around 3-Act tasks for teachers at my school and some other math coaches in my district. I've spent time in classrooms teaching with 3-Act tasks and coaching teachers around them. We've mostly used the amazing Graham Fletcher's 3-Act Tasks, so if you're an elementary math person new…

More Thinking About Data Routines, Part 2

Yesterday I wrote about trying out Notice and Wonder Graphs with 4th grade teachers preparing for their unit on data. In yesterday's post I wrote about how these teachers noticed, wondered, and drew conclusions about a bar graph entitled "More then half of Brits like pineapple on pizza"--an interesting, if not earth-shattering topic. But we didn't want to…

Playing Around with Data Routines Part 1

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to hear Brian Bushart (@bstockus) and Regina Payne (@reginarocks) talk about Numberless Word Problems at NCTM in San Antonio. Brian and Regina left me with lots of ideas to think about, and one I've started working on already is numberless graphs. By the way, Brian blogged about…

Pumpkins, Preschool & Ambiguety

How do play and sense making intermingle in math? What does this look like for the youngest and oldest students at our school? How and when does school math get in the way? And how can we get out of the way a bit and use the power of play to guide the sense-making process? These…

Counting, Conjectures, and Claims

Last week I got to visit three wonderful schools in Michigan to think and learn with teachers about math talk, reasoning and number sense. We got to plan, teach and debrief together, which is one of my favorite ways of learning with a group of teachers! With one group of 3rd grade teachers, we decided to…

Count Around The Circle–Fraction Edition!

I just love counting routines. I've learned a tremendous amount about counting routines from Jessica Shumway's Number Sense Routines and the teachers featured in Elham Kazemi and Allison Hintz's Intentional Talk. (Several of these teachers are featured in videos you can view online for free. This one is my favorite!) Today I got to do a Count Around the Circle…

Math in Life Photo Series

The grocery store is one of my favorite places to think about math. Aron, my husband, has gotten used to me saying, "Oh, I've just got to take a picture of this!" on our weekly grocery shopping trips. Today I'm sharing a picture I took at the grocery store this week. This is the first photo…