All Things Learning

  THE IDEA: Because educational challenges are complex, typically educators receive an ocean of well-meaning but unviable suggestions from ‘Backseat Drivers’. My personal opinion is that we educators find the ‘Passenger seat Pals’ more helpful. These contributors are curious and not cynical; they look to genuinely solve problems instead of complaining / protesting; they look to collaborate with educators rather than to ‘school the educators’; they ask questions to understand the challenges and learn together, rather than making dramatic statements or proclamations to disrupt or sway opinions.

The Idea: Be thoughtful about which math strategies you use or choose to equip students with. Use these 5 important questions (adapted from Adding it up ) to understand what each math purpose each math strategy serves: Transparency: Does the strategy help me understand the concept better?  Efficiency: How productive is the strategy? Does it reduce the time/effort?  Precision: Does the strategy give you a precise answer or an estimate? Clarity: How easy is the strategy to use? Is it easy enough to implement on my own? Generality: How transferable is the strategy? Can I apply it to many other situations or will it work just in this one context? You can use these key questions to help your students choose the most appropriate strategy based on the needs of their problem (for example, does our problem require a precise answer or an estimate? Do we need to break down the problem to understand it better? Do we just need to compute something quickly?)