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"What Makes a Great Teacher? Image credit: Veronika Lukasova Also in our Special Report: National: "How America Can Rise Again" Is the nation in terminal decline? Not necessarily. But securing the future will require fixing a system that has become a joke. Video: "One Nation, On Edge" James Fallows talks to Atlantic editor James Bennet about a uniquely American tradition-cycles of despair followed by triumphant rebirths. Interactive Graphic: "The State of the Union Is ..." ... thrifty, overextended, admired, twitchy, filthy, and clean: the nation in numbers. By Rachael Brown Chart: "The Happiness Index" Times were tough in 2009. But according to a cool Facebook app, people were happier. By Justin Miller On August 25, 2008, two little boys walked into public elementary schools in Southeast Washington, D.C. Both boys were African American fifth-graders. The previous spring, both had tested below grade level in math. One walked into Kimball Elementary School and climbed the stairs to Mr. William Taylor's math classroom, a tidy, powder-blue space in which neither the clocks nor most of the electrical outlets worked. The other walked into a very similar classroom a mile away at Plummer Elementary School. In both schools, more than 80 percent of the children received free or reduced-price lunches. At night, all the children went home to the same urban ecosystem, a zip code in which almost a quarter of the families lived below the poverty line and a police district in which somebody was murdered every week or so. Video: Four teachers in Four different classrooms demonstrate methods that work (Courtesy of Teach for America's video archive, available in February at teachingasleadership.org) At the end of the school year, both little boys took the same standardized test given at all D.C. public schools-not a perfect test of their learning, to be sure, but a relatively objective one (and, it's worth noting, not a very hard one). After a year in Mr. Taylo

"In September we introduced the new curriculum across all subjects and all of our school. This was scaffolding using the Chris Quigley's Essentials materials, during the previous year we had used a numeracy curriculum created by teachers within the Deal Learning Alliance, which a great source and piece of collaborative work in its own right, held too many links back to APP statement and old national curriculum levels. As as school we were finding that the DLA maths document did not provide the scaffold for the raised expectations in mathematics primary curriculum, furthermore, the deeper into the curriculum we delved, the harder it seemed to make the teaching, learning and assessment work efficiently."

Testing students over material that is NOT in the curriculum is not fair. I think that states should have a way to mark things not covered and just take the hits across the board for not having it in their curriculum instead of causing children to suffer through feeling ignorant. Common Core may be great, however, if it isn't in the curriculum it is unfair and shouldn't be done. What can we do? Do we cause children to stress out unfairly because adults can't get their act together or it takes time to change the curriculum? I don't know the answers, but the thought of a child looking at a test and knowing that some things didn't happen in the classroom and the impact of "feeling dumb" that will happen just turns my stomach, literally.  From the NEw York Times. " And they are likely to cover at least some material that has yet to make its way into the curriculum. The new tests, given to third through eighth graders, are intended to align with Common Core standards, a set of unified academic guidelines adopted by almost every state and goaded by grant money offered by the Obama administration. They set more rigorous classroom goals for American students, with a focus on critical thinking skills, abstract reasoning in math and reading comprehension."

From Dreambox in my inbox: "In honor of Math Awareness Month this April, I am e-mailing you this morning to share the news that DreamBox Learning is launching DreamBox Math Classroom, a school version of the curriculum and standards based children’s math adventure game, DreamBox Learning K-2 Math. To celebrate the release, DreamBox Learning offers free access to the game for any kindergarten, first or second grade classroom in the U.S. and Canada through the end of the current school year or June 30, 2009. Teachers at accredited schools can simply visit www.dreambox.com/teachers to sign up for classroom usage. "

Registration for World Math Day (March 3, 2010) opened today for students ages 5-18 at www.worldmathday.com. The competition is a free, online math competition where students compete against one another in a quest to answer the most math questions in 24 hours. Last year, a new world record was set after a staggering 1,952,879 million students from 38,058 schools in 204 countries answered 452,681,681 math questions correctly during the World Math Day competition. Students are looking to break the record again this year. This is a REALLY cool event.

Great project - this is on March 3 and registration closes March 1st, 2010.

A great place for math videos. This looks very interesting.

Tons of math videos and clips here. Some great resources for math teachers. From kindergarten to upper level math!

The primary purpose of blog is to facilitate interaction between a teacher and his or her students. This is possible because a blog is a dynamic tool which can be easily updated or transformed as necessary to meet the needs of a science or math class. The integration of blog technology in a class requires an investment of time. Because of this commitment, additional evidence is needed to support the integration this technology in a science or math class curriculum.

Math and Science professionals who to into primary teaching in Australia will get half of their student loan forgiven.

In Australia, they are taking an initiative to get more math and science graduates into primary teaching -- those who do so will have a 50% refund on their loan payments. This in response to a study in July from the National Numeracy Review that "concluded that systematic teaching of numeracy in the early years of schooling, in maths lessons and across the wider curriculum, was essential if these trends were to be reversed." I find this interesting and hope that it will encourage people who love math and science AND STUDENTS will accept. Just a geek doesn't mean you love students or want to teach them.

The JUMP Math workbooks are meant to be used in conjunction with our extensive Teacher Resources to enable students to practise and explore subtle variations on the lessons and to enable teachers to rapidly assess progress. For each lesson, there is a clear and highly effective lesson plan, which enables teachers to accomplish the seemingly impossible task of teaching to the whole class while tailoring to individual needs. Each lesson is carefully designed to generate deep, subtle, transferable mastery of key concepts. Lesson plans include ideas for contextualizing the math, questions and tasks that allow students to discover mathematical concepts, games, activities, and innovative extension questions that keep "fast" students engaged and learning while teachers help others to master the key objectives.

"Making Every Maths Lesson Count is underpinned by six pedagogical principles - challenge, explanation, modelling, practice, feedback and questioning - and presents 52 high-impact strategies designed to streamline teacher workload and ramp up the level of challenge in the maths classroom. Throughout this book, Emma McCrea (through extensive research and practice) explores how to manage mathematical misconceptions with practical ideas on many areas of the required curriculum. The six pedagogical principles mentioned above form the heart of the book, with metacognitive questioning given space in developing cognitive strategies with pupils. "

I got this notice from Moby Max. There are a proliferation of websites that let you check and have kids working in online spaces like this. Remember that these can be helpful, but you should and must have students programming and inventing with computers. These can be very helpful but are only one use of the computer. Below is what they sent me about the service. Please let me know if you're using this (educators only, please). "MobyMax has just released the easiest way to get your students motivated and start the year off right-a free 119 prize school contest. Within the first ten minutes of releasing the free 119 prize contest on Monday with no announcement, 22 schools signed up! Not only are the contest and 119 prizes free, but MobyMax curriculum is free as well. (You may remember that teachers can upgrade to the Pro version for just $79 per year, but the prizes, contest, and curriculum are completely free whether you upgrade or not!) We are also proud to announce our students' results from the last school year. The results from over 600,000 students showed that those who used MobyMax for 40 hours averaged more than a 1.4 grade level increase in math and a 1.5 grade level increase in language. Students answered over 1 million problems in MobyMax's new reading module released this summer."

A super collection of downloadable and flash-based maths resources for a range of ages and for topics across the curriculum. http://ictmagic.wikispaces.com/maths

This site provides games for different mathematic concepts as well as a link to prealgebra lessons.

Engage NH has some examples of lessons that they consider exemplars for English Language arts grades 6-12 and math grades 1,2,7, and high school. IF you're looking to see what this looks like in practice, here are some that you'll want to review.

An education research non-profit devoted to curriculum, professional development, and other learning goals connected and related to science, math, and technical education.

Great conversation with Darren Burris about Common Core math in the classroom and how to adjust your curriculum. Another Every Classroom Matters show.

Math and Science fellowships for beginning math and science teachers.

Math and Science teachers -- beginning teachers should consider applying for these fellowships. These are in the United States. Here is what the ocmpany says about the fellowships (applications due Jan 15): "The prestigious KSTF Teaching Fellowship is valued at nearly $150,000 over the course of five-years and supports aspiring teachers of promise as they embark on careers teaching high school science and mathematics. Designed to meet the financial and professional needs of beginning teachers, the Fellowship exposes educators to a variety of teaching resources, new curriculum materials, and research and experts in the field. Most importantly, the program fosters professional development within a community of high school science and mathematics teachers and prepares Fellows to become leaders in their field."

Dan Meyer's TEDxNYED session about teaching math. Very thought provoking for any level of math teacher.

Cool (not free though) website with some really nifty gizmos.

I think we're going to see more companies that have valid, standards based games like this one for elementary science and math. This isn't free but you can have a free trial and try the games free for 5 minutes. I think that games are going to be part of what we do and smart textbook companies would behoove themselves to embed games as part of the curriculum for each chapter. I wish my school could do something like this, another thing to look at.

Interactive math games prek-6