Category: teaching
A Snippet of History of Lecturing
About 1000 years later, Pope Gregory VII decided the clergy needed to be educated. This was a good idea since clerics were very powerful and it was important that they all were properly trained in Church dogma. As far as I can ascertain, this was the first time in history that a large number of…
Idol of Cave in Teaching and Learning
One of the stumbling blocks, she found, was that “a desire to get good [student] evaluations posed a risk to their willingness to innovate.” But an even stronger source of inertia was the need to hang on to their “personal identity affirmation” — in other words, to avoid appearing stupid in the lecture hall. One…
Idol of Cave toward Math Class Hinders Change
Most high school graduates in the United States have experienced around 1,500 hours of mathematics instruction. This experience creates powerful expectations for mathematics teaching and learning among the general public that does not exist for other professions. Consider physicians. None of us spent our formative years observing a physician at work for 1 hour a…
Math with Dad: Decimal Decomposition
Activities Warm-up: Review grouping by tens. Using grouping by tens, identify the quantity, say, forty-three with 4 tens and 3 ones. Write the quantity as 43. Do the same with forty-two and forty-one, writing them as 4 tens 2 ones and 4 tens 1 one, and also as 42 and 41, respectively. Continuing in this manner,…
Math with Dad: Subtraction
Try some “take away” (subtraction) problems using physical objects (like the base-ten blocks or just fingers). Redo the previous activity while making connections with algebraic expressions. For example, “ten take away four equals five” can be written as $10-4=5$. Once the child is comfortable with the above activities (this may take some time and practice),…