Reply To: Creating Your Own Progress Log

[Natalie VanWyngaarden]

I have taken lots of P.D. in math with primary and junior math in the past. I have familiarized myself with some of the ideas from Making Math Meaningful and Jo Boaler’s Mindset books. My goal is to learn about rich math tasks that engage teenagers. In the younger grades lots of concrete hands-on activities were key. Intermediate students still need this and they are very much visual learners too. Lots of gaps in math. With the primary grades the biggest gaps were always in reading and less so in math. The trend changes as the students advance in the grades so that the gaps in math are wider. Many students lack basic math facts which is problematic. Students need to be prepared for high school so trying to address expectations from the younger grades is challenging. At a recent math conference I wondered about one of the presenters ideas about the spiral curriculum. Each unit was alternated weekly e.g., 1 week number sense then the subsequent week was a weeks worth of geometry etc. I liked how you addressed many areas of math in one of your videos. In the shot put video you used measurement, number sense and data management.