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"Fact, I have anxiety about math facts. I have a degree in math. I graduated college with honors. I got the highest score at my university on the Putnam exam, which is supposedly a big deal to get a non-zero score. I taught high school math for 14 years. I am the Queen of Spreadsheets. I code for fun and share my coding projects. I repeated the 4th grade due to math facts. After 2 years of 4th grade, I never passed the timed math tests. If you ask me to do basic arithmetic in my head, even 7×8, I freeze. My heart races. I try to dodge the question. I'm perfectly capable. I'm more inclined to use strategies when doing math problems than memorization. When I'm alone and tallying student scores on a paper, I do great. If I need to design a spreadsheet and apply math, I excel at that. I am not alone. Reading Mathematical Mindsets by Jo Boaler, for the first time in my life I realize I am not dumb."

"Focusing on these five qualities of thriving classrooms can help foster confident young mathematicians."

"Welcome to the ORC Stella website. The core of this collection is a library of more than 600 non-routine mathematics problems known as Stella's Stunners to be launched set by set over the coming months. The problems range from simple visual problems, requiring no specific mathematical background, to problems that use the content of Pre-Algebra, Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II and Trigonometry, up through Pre-Calculus. The Stella problems are not typical textbook exercises. They are considered "non-routine" problems because the methods of attacking them are not immediately obvious. Because these problems can supplement and enliven traditional mathematics courses in a variety of ways, we have included materials to assist in using Stella problems in your teaching: "

"We have designed a Mathematical Mindset Guide to help teachers create or strengthen a growth mindset culture. This guide contains five Mathematical Mindset Practices along with links to teaching videos.  The videos all show Jo and Cathy teaching middle school students. There are different stages described in each practice to help capture the journey of a mathematical mindset classroom and the evidence teachers may collect along the way for their own reflection or for discussion with colleagues.  The guide has been designed for teachers to use in the process of self-reflection, or for coaches or administrators to use to encourage a mindset teaching culture. In the interactive version of the guide on this web page, you can click on the arrow buttons in the Expanding descriptors to see a short extract of Jo/Cathy teaching in the ways described. Our goal for the guide is to support a mathematical mindset journey of learning and growth. Teachers can work with the guide individually or in collaboration with others. The guide is intended to be non-judgmental, non-evaluative, and iterative in nature. When using the guide consider the classroom community as a whole rather than the teacher alone. It is also important to note that while the goal of the guide is to communicate all aspects of a mathematical mindset classroom, it is not always possible to find evidence of all practices in one lesson. We encourage teachers, coaches, and administrators to use this guide, and our reflection suggestions iteratively over multiple lessons."

Today was Dr. Davey's first Maker Day, and an amazing one at that! Here's a look at our day. All of the Grade 1-Grade 7 students participated in today's Maker Day. Students attended two of seven different sessions based on their interests: Minecraft/Coding, Collaborative Art, Beautiful Junk, Positive Graffiti, Making Music, Lego/Blocks, and Egg Drop. Staff members paired up together to facilitate the learning at each of the sessions, and the students directed most of the learning based on their interests. I (Aviva) worked with an amazing Grade 4 student that led the Minecraft/Coding session, and even worked with small groups of students on coding the Arduino. It was really quite incredible! After two sessions, students reflected on the day and on their learning, and then extended the "Maker Learning" back in the classroom. Today was all about the Learning Skills, problem solving, creativity and critical thinking. As you can hear in our video reflection, there were also links to our classroom learning including Science (Structures) and Math (shapes, figures, and non-standard measurement). There was also a lot of Arts learning today (with creating music and creating works of art including the elements of design). What an amazing day!"

"Any parent who has battled with a child over homework night after night has to wonder: Do those math worksheets and book reports really make a difference to a student's long-term success? Or is homework just a headache-another distraction from family time and downtime, already diminished by the likes of music and dance lessons, sports practices, and part-time jobs? Allison, a mother of two middle-school girls from an affluent Boston suburb, describes a frenetic afterschool scenario: "My girls do gymnastics a few days a week, so homework happens for my 6th grader after gymnastics, at 6:30 p.m. She doesn't get to bed until 9. My 8th grader does her homework immediately after school, up until gymnastics. She eats dinner at 9:15 and then goes to bed, unless there is more homework to do, in which case she'll get to bed around 10." The girls miss out on sleep, and weeknight family dinners are tough to swing. Parental concerns about their children's homework loads are nothing new. Debates over the merits of homework-tasks that teachers ask students to complete during non-instructional time-have ebbed and flowed since the late 19th century, and today its value is again being scrutinized and weighed against possible negative impacts on family life and children's well-being."

"Words are the primary tools we use to convey meanings , of course there are non verbal tools as well but particularly in formal educational settings like schools and classrooms, words take the lion share of our language.  Can you imagine yourself delivering a lesson with no words in it ? will it work? Well Peterson has an answer." Peterson is a guy who used to have dyslexia when he was young and he did not learn how to read till he was in grade five. As an adult now, he designed some great applications to help teachers teach students without having to say a word. These are basically interactive learning games based on formative feedback. Watch the 8 minutes video to see the revolution Peterson triggered by the use of his free-language teaching approach. Enjoy

WatchKnow--as in, "You watch, you know"--is trying to do this. WatchKnow a non-profit, online community that encourages everyone to collect, create, and share free, innovative, educational videos.