This Week in Math Ed: April 7, 2017

John Urschel, the breakout star of NCTM17
Perhaps my favorite part of working for the Colorado Department of Education is that I get to engage with the mathematics education community, curate what I find, and share it with others. It's part of my job. Unfortunately, I've had very little time for this lately, so instead of falling a few weeks behind, I suddenly find myself a few months behind! Can I catch up? The only way to find out is to go back to March 31st. I was away at the ASSM, NCSM, and NCTM conferences, which was great for my personal learning but tough on my blogging schedule!

Math Ed Said

March 31: Jamie Duncan pushes for number talks and other forms of promoting student arithmetic reasoning in "The Mother of Fluency." One takeaway from this post should be a need for patience and a strategy for playing the long game, instead of knee-jerk reactions to moments when students appear to lack fluency.

Shared by: Rusty Anderson, Ann Gaffney, Lindel, Annie Forest, Jamie Duncan, Rosa Serratore, Tracy Johnston Zager, Margie Pearse, Math Coach Rivera

April 1: Desmos.com announced a plaid Spring Makeover for the Desmos Graphing Calculator. For April 1, anyway.

Shared by: Shelley Carranza, Sherri Burroughs, Cathy Yenca, Jocelyn Dagenais, Mary Williams, Desmos.com, Ben Morris, Allison Krasnow, Dewey Gottlieb, Audrey McLaren, David Petersen, Bridget Dunbar, Mary Gambrel

April 2: Math ed reporter extraordinaire Katrina Schwartz shares some Teaching Channel videos in a KQED post called, "How Kids Benefit From Learning To Explain Their Math Thinking."

Shared by: Christina Tondevold, Pat Power, Nicholas Smith, Kendra Lomax, Ed Campos Jr., Keith Devlin, David Coffey, Alex Overwijk

April 3: Jo Boaler writes in The Hechinger Report, "It's time to stop the clock on math anxiety; here's the latest research on how."

Shared by: Math Coach Rivera, John Berray, Kathy Henderson, Dewey Gottlieb, Nita Cochran, Lisa Melton Pizzuto, Rosa Serratore, Jamie Garner, Nicole Enzinger, Darren Burris, Robbyn Glinsmann, Laura Wagenman, Jennifer Lawler, Norma Gordon, Janine Franklin, Nikki Fife, Paul Gray, George Woodbury, Alison Hansel, John Rowe, Siri Anderson, Chris Kalmbach, Jo Boaler

April 4: Robert Kaplinsky makes an important point about the need for context when asking students about area and perimeter.

Shared by: Laura Wagenman, Josh Fisher, OCTM, Jen McAleer, Siri Anderson, WMC - WI MathCouncil, Alison Hansel, Robert Kaplinsky

April 5: Jo Boaler was surveying people to see which grade levels they wanted to see YouCubed make books for first.

Shared by: Kathy Henderson, Jen McAleer, Tyrone Martinez Black, Alison Hansel, Ben Woodford, Jo Boaler

April 6: If you've ever looked for tutorials on how to create things in Desmos, here they are.
Shared by: Mike Larson, Bryn Humberstone, Jon Orr, Michael Fenton, Kimberly Wassmuth, Jen Silverman, Danielle Reycer, Jocelyn Dagenais, Jocelyn Dagenais, Brian Bushart, Cathy Yenca