A Message to Mathematicians

A Message to Mathematicians

The students above are tackling Costas arrays. The details surrounding Costas Arrays are not important. What is important is that finding a Costas array of a certain size is difficult, but that once an attempt at a solution is shown to you, it is pretty easy for you...
Hand Raising Meme

Hand Raising Meme

I subscribe to a newsletter from a university I enormously respect. This morning I opened it to find this image of hands raised. This meme of education has existed for long enough. Looking at the students above, you’ve got to say: 1) This looks staged. 2) The...
Two peas in a pod

Two peas in a pod

One of the greatest US university teachers is Robert Lee Moore (1882-1974) from the University of Texas. A quote of his reminded me of a quote from Joshua Zucker, the first director of the Julia Robinson Mathematics Festival. They are fun to compare. That student is...

Fill the Gaps?

“Fill the gaps!” is the command of many well-intentioned educators. Math especially succumbs to this twisted pedagogy because math is more obviously hierarchical with lower building blocks being required to understand higher building blocks. What is wrong...
Quotes from two women

Quotes from two women

Sofya Kovalevskaya and Marian Small would have had good conversations had they been contemporaries. Sofya Kovalevskaya was a mathematician in an age where mathematics was a man’s domain. Marian Small is Canada’s most prolific math educator. Here is a quote...
Smileys

Smileys

June 24, 2021 Incubator Daniel and Mason presented on Smileys. That’s a puzzle that has you sparsely filling a grid with smiley faces. Then you start the app running. At each time-step a grumpy face turns into a smiley face if it touches two or more smiley...
5×5 Pentomino Sudoku

5×5 Pentomino Sudoku

July 8, 2021 Incubator Asmita Sodhi presented 5×5 Pentomino Sudoku puzzles. These are problems that her father, Amar worked on so they have a special place. You can read more about Amar and these puzzles on pages 10-12 of the 2018 CMS Notes:...
The reflection fad

The reflection fad

I want to raise a red flag about a practice that may have value, but is being pushed too much. Asking children to reflect and articulate how they think is not as important as thinking. Math class should be spent thinking – not thinking about thinking. If I see...
Relying on Peer Pressure

Relying on Peer Pressure

I have honed some techniques for introducing new games and puzzles into the elementary classroom. From my previous blog postings (and the video below) you will know that I do NOT recommend teaching the rules at the start, but rather to engage students immediately by...
Scarce Paper

Scarce Paper

I failed yesterday. Background: I encourage students to work in pairs or occasionally triples with a single puzzle-sheet shared between them. In my classes paper is a scarce resource. I love to see co-operative math as in the photo above. However, I have been relaxed...