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#matheducation

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I've spent today making a poster for Newcastle Uni's teaching and learning conference.

I started off making it in Inkscape but quickly got fed up with laying out text, so switched to a web page. I'm quite happy with how it turned out!

And as a bonus, I automatically get a digital version I can direct people to with a QR code.

Online at improving-accessibility-ltconf

Hey people,
I remember some time ago reading how optimal outcomes for understanding and conceptual learning in mathematics happened when the students were in control of the pacing of the learning, but the teacher still chose and sequenced the content.

Now I need to find this research again because a bunch of parents are giving my fellow teacher grief for “Not finishing the textbook” in yr 7 mathematics!

Can anyone help me find this? (Boosts welcome)

A few weeks back I was complaining about this meme and we had a good discussion about it on here. I ended up making a lesson plan about taxes and my students really liked it so I will share it. (It is for students with a basic understanding of integration. But, you could probably rework it to skip that bit.)

drive.google.com/file/d/14xaQ1

(And if you have feedback let me know!)

#tax#taxes#math

Last Summer, my student intern Scarlett Spackman put together a great document about accessible teaching for , and .
Under two headers, "Why should I care?" and "Advice", Scarlett makes the case for improving accessibility and then offers practical ways of achieving that.

I've finally got the go-ahead to share it more widely:

mas.ncl.ac.uk/accessible-teach

www.mas.ncl.ac.ukAccessible teaching for Maths, Stats and Physics

If you think you are ‘just not a math person’ then think again
psyche.co/ideas/if-you-think-y
"By bringing mathematics into familiar, low-stakes situations, where the focus is on practical application and curiosity rather than performance, individuals can build more confidence in their use of it."
#MathEducation #MathEd #Teaching #EdDev #STEMeducation

If you think you are ‘just not a math person’ then think again | Psyche Ideas
PsycheIf you think you are ‘just not a math person’ then think again | Psyche IdeasUnderstanding how mathematics anxiety takes root points to ways to overcome it, opening up new opportunities and pastimes

Used the laser cutter to make a holder for my class set of spirographs — for the lessons I like to do my students need to know how many teeth the gears have. They write a program that produces the same curve using turtle. (with older students we do the trig, which I just call “magic circle functions” for the grade fives)

This will make it all go much smoother!
This is 8 sets packed into one box!
#math #mathEducation #teaching #spirograph #mathematics #k12 #hypotrochoid #trigonometry

One of the many classes I teach is a calculus course for 12th year high school students. Since their peers are taking Calculus II and Linear Algebra and beyond they regard themselves as “the slow class” which is ridiculous. Most people don’t take calculus until college, if they ever encounter it at all. But young people compare themselves to their peers— 1/

It's kind of your responsibility if you are teaching someone to have some confidence in their ability to "get it" -- and, sadly I encountered a number of teachers who had little confidence in me in my own education so I tend to err on the side of "of course you can" more than "hm maybe this is too hard for you right now"

This can be an error though that can really stress some students out.

So, that is a see-saw I'm always fiddling with.

Is it just me or could it be an ADHD thing?

So I took my content knowledge praxis 6 times before I gave up and decided not to get licensed. One of the shitty things I had to deal with was the shitty ass pencil and blank sheet of paper they give you to work out your problems. I could never organize my thoughts that way. Even worse I have to write out a problem, solve it, and scan it for the CSET.

I get the white board and pen issue when I took my tests at home but I am wondering what the issue would be if they gave folks graph paper and a lead pencil that was checked by the testing site. Someone want to elaborate on why this is how it is or how we can make changes?

#actuallyadhd
#MathEducation
#neurodivergence
#teaching
#FutureTeacher
#CSET
#ETS
#DisabilityAdvocate

Think of a mathematical definition as having two sides: a user side and a verification side.

The verification side is what you usually see in a book or paper: a minimalistic description that makes it as easy as possible to verify that a certain mathematical object has property X.

The user side is usually presented in form of one or more theorems that follow from the verification side. They provide the rich mental image you need to have in mind to think of property X or use it in a mathematical argument — its real nature, so to speak.

For, example a dense subset DR is defined by the property that if there are two different elements x and y in D, then there is a third one between them. This is the verification side. The user side is: If there are two different elements x and y in D, then there are infinitely many others between them!