Community of Adult Math Instructors (CAMI)
teachers learning math together
With a simple set up, CAMI enters a rabbit hole of notice/wonder and number patterns.
At our meeting, we worked on two tasks that I got last summer at a gathering of teachers from the K-12 system called NYC Twitter Math Camp.
The first is an activity teachers can use to develop group problem-solving norms with students. Continue reading “Carl’s Basketball Problem”
Many of us are familiar with the 3, 4, 5 right triangle, and maybe the 5, 12, 13. Do you know any others? Is there a pattern to these triples?
As we came in the room, Eric asked us to place a post-it with our name on a voting spectrum he’d drawn on the board, ranging from “Never” to “This morning” under the statement, “The last time I thought about multiplication”.
As we settled in, Eric shared his goals for the meeting. He’s been working on a lesson for students combining some work he’s been doing on area models with a problem that has been consuming him for weeks. Continue reading “Keep it in the Family (with Pythagorean Triples)”
Using number pyramids to practice adding signed numbers leads to a surprising discovery.
Jane started the meeting by telling us that her class has been studying signed numbers recently. She has been looking for creative ways for them to understand adding and subtracting signed numbers. One example was to imagine taking away negativity as the same thing as making someone happier.
A big thank you to Turning Point for hosting us this month and raising the bar for all future hosts. We started with a tour of TP’s building and saw their classrooms, offices, and rooftop deck (!). Evidence of great student work is everywhere with student posters and presentations on the diverse topics of supply and demand, classified ads for housing, and dice and probability. It was wonderful to see such a beautiful, well-established community-based education program with full-time staff. And they provided refreshments!
For this meeting, we looked at Pascal’s Triangle, since it came up in discussion at the end of the October craps meeting Continue reading “Pascal’s Triangle”
Our work on this month’s problem led us to the beginning of a larger exploration of a very curious repeated loop in a certain sequence of numbers.
This month’s problem comes from the 2015 Stanford-Math League Tournament Individual Questions for grades 6 & 7.
Still looking for a name for our group, we went around introducing ourselves and each offered one word for our group vision:
Fun, Math, Community, Community, Building, Sharing, Other People’s Thoughts, Resources, Escape, Learning, Ideas, Adult/Young Adult, Inspiration
