This book will change how I teacher math this year from the very first day of school. I will continue to blog about how things are going in my classroom, but here are a few bullet points of my main takeaways.
- I am going to talk with my kids about brain research--not just once--but several times throughout the year and heavily the first two weeks of school. I have to change their mindset about math and their selves.
- Homework will look extremely different. Jo Boaler says "homework perpetuates inequities in education." She even talks about how her family has two working parents and after everyone is home and fed for the evening, she wants to spend time with her daughters-not in frustration over homework. My homework was very light in the past, but this year it will be more reflections questions and maybe 1 problem to start on that we finish discussing in class.
- "No one is born knowing math, and no one is born lacking the ability to learn math."
- Mistakes are necessary!
- My grading will look different--if mistakes are necessary, I can't punish students for making them.
- Mental Math will improve--I especially want to show students ways to think about numbers to improve their number sense.
- Boaler talks about using tasks that are "low floor, high ceiling." Everyone can access the task and anyone and take it further.
One www.youcubed.org--which is a website Jo Boaler is part of--there are two weeks of inspirational math with videos and activities designed to help students change their mindset about math. What I like most about the activities is they are "low ceiling, high floor" but they also give students practice to work together in math. Math should be a very social subject. I will be using (and blogging about) several about the activities the first two weeks of school.
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