Information for Participants at NCTM Institute Orlando

In case you wrote on or cut up the hand-outs for the activity we did at my workshop at the NCTM High School Institute, here are the pages that we discussed in my session. Seven-page hand-out (including problems and Square Puzzle Templates) Full-Size Powerpoint Slides of Presentation Thanks to everyone who came!

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Being sterotyped?

My daughter is starting middle school this fall and is extremely anxious about so many things that new sixth graders worry about over the summer. She’s on of those kids, though, that go to extremes – you know the type – the ones who love to shop of school supplies the first week of August, […]

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Thanks for a great week!

Thanks to everyone who was in my PBL class this week. I had a wonderful time at the Anja S. Greer PEA Math Conference and met lots of wonderful people. For those of you in my week-long class, please feel free to fill out the course evaluation at: Schettino Course Evaluation So many teachers that […]

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Wrong is not always bad

I recently read an article in Education Week that was proclaiming the benefits of discussing student mistakes in class. The author, Alina Tugend who has recently published a book entitled, Better by Mistake: The Unexpected Benefits of Being Wrong, cited that in some asian cultures students can be asked to work out “math problems in […]

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Many thanks

I have returned from my trip to Indianapolis and I would like to thank everyone that I met there for turning out to both of the presentations that I gave. The talk I gave on Saturday, which was with my colleague was more about our Problem-Based Learning curriculum at our school. The turn-out there was […]

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First Day at Indy

What a great day at the NCTM national conference in Indianapolis. My colleague and I arrived late last night so I missed registration. However, since my talk was today at 9:30 am, I was supposed to be registered at least two hours before I was supposed to speak, so I needed to be up pretty […]

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NCTM national conference

I am really looking forward to my time in Indianapolis this week. I have made a page where people who come to my talks can obtain the powerpoints and handouts. Go to this link and that’s where all of the documents will be.

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How do you measure success?

Last week I was being observed by a colleague and my class was doing an exercise in GeoGebra about circles, arcs and inscribed angles. I don’t think I can do the experience I had justice as I try to describe to you what happened in this class, but strangely, I just can’t believe that someone […]

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Documents for NCTM National Conference

Here are some links to documents that I will make public for my talks at the conference in Indianapolis this week: Powerpoint Presentation for Improving Classroom Discourse to Support Communication, Equity, and Students’ Agency Handout for Improving Classroom Discourse to Support Communication, Equity, and Students’ Agency Powerpoint Presentation for Problem-Based Learning (PBL): A Transformed Perspective […]

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Modeling Proper Mistake-Making

Whether it be a small arithmetic error, or correcting a student when they were actually doing something right, we always make mistakes in class. The other day, I wrote the parametrization of the unit circle as x=cos(t) and y=sin(t) and took the derivatives as dx/dt=sin(t) and dy/dt=cos(t). It wasn’t until a student humbly interrupted me […]

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