Lovin On Maths

In case you’e never heard “maths” rather than “math”, talk to a Brit or an Australian about the beautiful subject, and you’ll hear “maths”. Somehow it feels more loving to me.

If you are a teacher or a parent or a human and you do not love math, please don’t say anything disparaging about math out loud- especially when you are in earshot of a child.

I have a theory that anyone not entranced by the joy of math had a math teacher early on that taught them fear- or that it’s okay to say “I’m just not good a math.” Please, please, for the advancement of math in our world, for the joy of humans and patterns and discovery, bite your tongue. Fake joy in math until you find it. I promise, if you give math a chance, you’ll discover its beauty and joy and relevance to EVERYTHING.

Math is patterns.

Patterns create music, patterns create art, patterns create language, patterns create nature. Patterns are everywhere. Maths are everywhere.

Fun Math Activity

5 minute prep to choose photos

I love to take random photos from beautiful photography websites and create math questions with students.

For example, this is a photo of the famous gum walls at Pike’s Place Market in Seattle:

Questions you could investigate:

Yes, we could go on for some time with questions- longer than you’d want to spend looking at the chewed gum in this photograph.

Growth Mindset and Maths- Resources

Jo Boaler- out of Stanford- has a wonderful website full of joy of maths, videos supporting growth mindset in maths and loads of creative math activities. You can get lost in the YouCubed website for days- SO much good stuff. Here are some highlights YOU CAN USE TODAY:

• YouCubed Videos Discussing Brain Science and Math Ability
• YouCubed “Mistakes Are Powerful” video- for kids
• YouCubed “Believe in Yourself” video- for kids
• YouCubed Tasks, Sortable by Grade Level K-12
• YouCubed Maths and Art- K-12

Check out the YouCubed page. It is awesome.

Another of my favorite math websites (and math educators!) is Greg Tang. Greg Tang and his family are inspiring new thinking and creative thinking about math. They support number sense concepts and concepts that you can generalize in math. I went to my first Greg Tang conference annoyed about the sub plans I had to write. I left asking my principal if I could take a break form the curriculum and dive into number sense for two weeks with my 3rd graders. He is inspiring and full of growth mindset ideas around math.

Highlights from TangMath Website:

• Tang Math Number Sense Skill Games– best for people developing number sense from the start
• Tang Math Number Sense Learning Games– best for kids learning and mastering operations (+-X÷) and number sense
• Tang Math Books– fun to do as a class- looking for patterns and variety of ways of seeing numbers- MANY ways to approach patterns, best for people developing number sense, math/patterns connection

Please, please love on math. It is awesome, it just needs the recognition it deserves. Play with maths, enjoy maths, share your joy in maths.