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Once upon a time Mathematics was easy to teach. A typical lesson would begin with a direction towards a particular page of the text book and would conclude with the ceremonial marking of the answers. This process was repeated over and over, year after year and in the end students would be able to repeat the required method with a satisfactory degree of accuracy.

"teacher-ready tips for stimulating curiosity in others. First, she suggests starting with the question, rather than the answer-which teachers will recognize as the foundation of inquiry-based or discovery learning (see: math teacher Dan Meyer's take on how to make math "irresistible" to students). She then suggests offering some initial knowledge on the subject. "We're not curious about something we know absolutely nothing about," she writes. Again, teachers may know this as "activating prior knowledge" or "setting the stage" before a lesson. Finally, she says it helps to require communication, or "open an information gap and then require learners to communicate with each other in order to fill it." The think-pair-share technique and vocabulary activities that require students to teach each other their words both exemplify this. What would you add to the list? How does stimulating curiosity gel with other motivation tactics-or should teachers think of curiosity and motivation as one and the same?"

With the end of the year approaching and holidays looming for some now is the ideal time to share some suggestions for books and papers to read. A great book can provide the inspiration required to begin the new year positively and this list includes some of my favourites from 2015.

"Number Talks" is an approach to the teaching and learning of Number Sense. Rather than relying on the rote-memorisation of isolated number facts achieved through drills of "table-facts", Number Talks aim to build confident, number fluency, where learners recognise patterns within and between numbers and understand the properties of numbers and operations. Number Talks are a "mind on" learning task that engages students in an active learning process as they search for patterns, decompose and recompose numbers and develop a flexible understanding.

The shift away from teaching for the rote memorisation of prescribed methods requires teachers to rethink their approach to the discipline. With this new pedagogy comes a need to understand the processes of mathematical thinking in ways not previously required. When we require our students to be able to reason and problem-solve through unique challenges we also require our teachers to have an understanding of the mathematical moves that their learners are likely to call upon.

We rely on an assessment measure without taking a close look at what it is measuring and we obfuscate the information we need to evaluate the utility of these measures by reducing the results to numerical values.

Reasoning is at the heart of mathematical thinking. It is what mathematicians do. But how do we teach it?

I have just had the opportunity to spend the weekend learning alongside a large group of mathematics teachers. After a day and a half of talking and thinking about mathematics teaching, I am excited to get back to school and try out some new ideas. There were also some key takeaways for me that I share below. These are the questions or wonderings that my mind wandered to while listening to the numerous talented speakers over the past two days.

"Please share examples of how you have used these tools to help train teachers. Sometimes how we use these tools to teach adults can spark ideas for how to use them in the classroom. I am not interested in finding the absolute BEST ways to implement web tools into the classroom. I am looking for ALL examples of how teachers have used these tools. Teachers have this amazing way of taking a project and putting their own spin on it to make it work for them and their students, but many times we just need an example to get us going."

The Best Interactive Web Tools for Educators | Edudemic Herramientas web para la educación

Herramientas web para la educación

A great interactive timeline creator which now has accounts for education. 

Amzini is a specialized search engine for social networks designed to help you explore, compare, and learn about social networking and social media. This link is to the education category, where you will find social communities for alumni, language, literature, professionals, science, students, & writing.

What are the best social networks to build a pln in education 2.0 ? http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-best-social-networks-to-build-a-pln-in-education-2-0

I was surprised. I learned things from this article. It can be projected in class to teach students also.

FREE & ONLINE school report writing software for teachers, easy-to-use, with great features including an OOOPS! DETECTIVE that spots embarrassing mistakes and SPELLCHECK AS YOU TYPE. LATEST TEACHER REVIEWS From TES (Times Educational Supplement) http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/NEW-6204573/ "So grateful for this - took me a while to get the hang of it but the time investment was worth it. Thank you." "The software is great, really excellent. I love it already!" "Well worth investing the time to set this up with specific subject related comments. Has made the actual report writing process much faster! Really helpful spelling/grammar checker included. When I had a query, the online support was very useful and prompt. Thanks for this!" *** COMING SOON *** Statement bank sharing with colleagues... and more... (we're new - YOUR SUGGESTIONS ARE VERY WELCOME)