Author: swuttig

Love helping people see math as something beyond calculations - wait, that's my job - K-12 math mentor teacher for our Special Education Department in Fairbanks, Alaska. Also love learning, carting my kids to their athletic endeavors, exploring the outdoors, sewing, and triathlons.
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Solve Me Puzzles – Day 5

swuttig

Puzzles are a great way to develop mathematical habits of mind and logical reasoning. SolveMe puzzles focuses on supporting algebraic and mathematical thinking in a fun way. With each of these puzzles, Mobiles, Who Am I?, and Mystery Grid, students are able to explore different ways to solve them using logic and reasoning. These puzzles allow students to track their progress in solving them. Mobiles Mobiles involve find the values of different shapes in a balance. Students learn how to use substitution, elimination, and other strategies to solve these problems in an informal way. By doing these problems, students are … Continue reading Solve Me Puzzles – Day 5

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Noticing & Wondering – Day 4

swuttig

Today’s activity is taken from Youcubed’s Week of Inspirational Math. It involves taking the structure of noticing and wondering and extending it into an activity. And I think everyone could enjoy this one. What do you notice? What do you wonder? Here are some other questions that Youcubed has included: What questions do you have? What information does this graph provide? Other questions might be which emoji is the least cute? Do you agree with that? Which emoji does this person like the most? How do you know that? Where would you put cat emojis? Why are the emojis with … Continue reading Noticing & Wondering – Day 4

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Ultimate Tic Tac Toe – Day 3

swuttig

Games are a great way to try different strategies and to practice skills. With most games, a variety of ages are able to play them. Today’s game goes back to an old favorite – tic tac toe and provides a twist that will engage kids, and adults. I have heard that it can be quite addicting too. For Ultimate Tic Tac Toe, there is another another layer of strategy added. Nine tic tac toe boards make up the larger tic tac toe board that you are trying to win. Here are the basic rules for Ultimate Tic Tac Toe: On … Continue reading Ultimate Tic Tac Toe – Day 3

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Panda Puzzles – Day 2

swuttig

Puzzles are a great way to explore different ideas and ways of thinking. For most puzzles, it takes quite a few attempts to find a solution. And for some puzzles, there is more than one solution. I love puzzles because everyone can try out their own idea to see if it works. How are puzzles related to math? Well, for many good problems that involve math, you need to make quite a few attempts to find a solution. And for many problems, there is more than one solution. All of these ways to thinking relate to the Standards of Mathematical … Continue reading Panda Puzzles – Day 2

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Supporting Mathematical Thinking

swuttig

Welcome to ways to support mathematical thinking during these uncertain times. I believe that one of the most important things that we can do is to encourage mathematical thinking. During this time at home, there are a lot of different ways to do that. I am hoping to share a few of them & hoping that you will share what you are seeing and learning. From these experiences, my hope is that you may change how you view math from a set of rules to a way of thinking. As a coach, I am finding that my work is changing. … Continue reading Supporting Mathematical Thinking

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What is noticing and wondering? – Day 1

swuttig

As an educator, I want to cultivate curiosity. This structure of noticing and wondering about an image allows for all students to share what they see and what they are curious about. What this structure teaches: see things in a variety of ways hear how other people see things – so yes, empathy to some extent curiosity – how did you see that or what made you see it that way? how to connect what I know to something unfamiliar What math this structure teaches: there is more than one way to see something vocabulary will share more after some … Continue reading What is noticing and wondering? – Day 1

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What I Noticed doing Number Talks

swuttig

In our district, we have been pushing Number Talks as a strategy to get students (and teachers) thinking mathematically.  The beauty of Number Talks is that the focus is on how the student is thinking, not on the answer.  Being a math mentor teacher for special education teachers, this is one strategy that I can model fairly quickly for teachers.  Here is what I have noticed doing them:  No matter what, I cannot predict all of the strategies.  I have tried to plan by predicting their strategies how I am going to record their thinking – especially trying to bring … Continue reading What I Noticed doing Number Talks