PDTCA 2022

Ready to understand the geometry of the Radical Rules? Please join me with your graph paper, pencil, ruler, and compass to explore and visualize ALL the radical operations. Participants will draw squares, triangles, rectangles, and other polygons; apply elementary operations and gut instinct to find the patterns that evolve into the Radical Rules. These explorations will help students to easily compare the exact lengths of all radicals, such as √2, √3, √5. Geometry will be the math genre for the debate to prove or disprove many common student misconceptions: √5+√5=√10? or √2+√8=√10 or 2∙3√2=6√4. In addition to clearing up the misconceptions commonly seen in classrooms (as previously mentioned in this description!), participants will gain the depth of the exact value (length) of any radical even though the decimal representation can be irrational!

After 10 years as a PE teacher and 9 years of teaching Math in the blended homeschooling math program (grades 1 to 9), it is time to share some strategies I have been using to improve student retention, engagement, and independent problem solving. In 60 minutes, I will attempt to share my accelerated approach to influence students' thought patterns for three major units: Order of Operations, Integers, and Algebra. If you understand how a Lion hunts a gazelle, you can learn to do algebra. If you have ever been in a line for a roller coaster with 3 people, you know how to multiply integers. Using analogy, simple images and paring down the infinite variations of units to the most fundamental rules, I have had incredible success with students at all skill levels. This all came about when I was tasked with teaching without a textbook or heavy reliance on workbooks. There will be lots of time for conversation as we play. Works in person and virtually. As a bonus I will share student note taking and activities to enhance learning.

What is it about the way we talk about mathematics that promotes the acceptance of "I can't do that"? What might we do to shift the conversation? How might we focus on the way we talk to students, parents, our colleagues, our leaders to build success in mathematics and confidence in numeracy?

Join Jennifer for a session where ideas and questions will be presented that will encourage reflection. Resources will be shared to continue to grow as a mathematics educator long after this session.

Currently the acceptance of innumeracy is far greater than the acceptance of illiteracy.

Learning will include:
Personal reflections on how math is learned
Connections between mathematics learnings and numeracy
Considerations regarding language that is used in teaching mathematics
Considerations for growing from a subject to be learned to a skill set to be engaged
Considerations for engaging in conversations with students, parents, colleagues, and leaders

There are patterns within the patterns that junior high students are required find the rules for and write as math expressions or equations. Hmmm…guess and check is not an efficient method for figuring out the descriptive function (rules) for a given pattern. When Galileo worked with sequences, he noticed patterns within the patterns and used these observations to find efficient methods (one dimensional matrices) to identify the function (equation) that can model the sequence of numbers. During this session, participants will explore number patterns the way Galileo did 400 years ago. Through a few explorations of the various number patterns, participants will see the connections between junior high and senior high mathematics outcomes regarding sequences, functions (linear, quadratic, cubic, other), and introductory matrices. Please come prepared to do math and engage in logical conversations! Bring your own pencil and paper or digital notepad.