The SHIFT Blog

Students say the best things when they think I’m not listening.  It’s pretty funny actually, if not more than a little frustrating.  Students can be having excellent conversations about mathematics but as soon as I come over to listen they get just a little bit self-conscious and the conversation ends. I’ve gotten really good at listening from far away. We’ve been dabbling in project based learning with our grade nine academic classes this semester.  After our first project , we introduced our students to Dandy Candies .  This activity has been around for awhile.  I first was introduced to it at the 2015 OAME conference when Dan Meyer ran it with a packed room.  Since then, I’ve used this activity on and off with my classes, but never as a project. The premise is pretty simple, show students the video of a preset number of small cubes assembling into packages (prisms) of various dimensions.  Then ask them some questions about what they’ve...

Back when I started down this ever Shifting road, I learned that good Innovation starts with identifying a WHY.  Why might I want to let students access technology in class?  Why is building a positive classroom culture so important?  I spent the summer thinking about the direction I wanted to take my classes this semester and why I wanted to take them that way.  Neil deGrasse Tyson summed up my thinking pretty well. In school, curiosity is hardly ever taught or nurtured, breeding legions of students who’ve lost all love of learning. — Neil deGrasse Tyson (@neiltyson) September 7, 2017 I’ve noticed that try as I might, the students I encounter lack a spirit of creativity.  It seems that many times they would prefer to be presented with the answer rather than seek out an answer on their own.  Thinking is difficult.  Many students say they enjoy learning, but that the stress of grades and assessments turn passion into anxiety. I want to cha...

Me and my math classmate and helper Nikolina The other day, Jamie asked whether I wanted to become a student again for a math period.  All for it, I grabbed my laptop (as I was told I needed it), and ran for the portable.  You see, Jamie was doing a little recording of Stephanie Briggs’ Grade 10 math class for the upcoming OAME (Ontario Association for Mathematics Education) conference, where Briggs will be presenting on teaching using Desmos with Todd Malarczuk. I had heard of Desmos, the online graphing calculator, because well, Jamie won’t ever stop talking about it!  As an art teacher, I never really knew what he was always so excited when Desmos was mentioned. So here was my chance to see what all the fuss was about. I settled into a group, hoping that my new math classmates might help guide me through the period.  I have to say, it is a little intimidating diving back into high school math, not having done so SINCE high school *cough* a few years ago. ...