Math is FigureOutAble Blog
What is the purpose of math class?
Would you agree with me that many, if not most of us, were in classrooms as students where the purpose of math class was to get answers. We were taught the most straightforward, non-confusing, easy, step-by-step way...
Math is FigureOutAble + NumberClub
I’m thrilled to announce that Math is FigureOutAble is teaming up with NumberClub, creators of the super cool Stick and Split app!Â
Why This Matters
Together, we’re turning screen time into building mathematical r...
From Rules to Reasoning: How Math Is FigureOutAble Transformed My Teaching
We love hearing from educators who are putting Math Is FigureOutAble into practice in their classrooms. Today, we’re excited to feature a guest post from Erica Foster, Lower School Math Differentiation Specialist, w...
Dan Finkel Shares Resources for Playful Math Classrooms
 Guest Blog Post by Dan Finkel, mathematician, speaker, and creator of Math for Love, inspiring teachers and students to experience math as play, and a recent guest on the Math is FigureOutAble Challenge!
Hi everyo...
Why is reasoning about integers so hard?
A few years back, long enough ago that I didn’t have nearly as much figured out about teaching FigureOutAble math as I do now, I was working with some middle school teachers.
Things were generally great. They loved...
Teaching Routine for Building Important Mental Math Strategies
Number partners are pairs of numbers that add to a third number. Given the landmark quality of powers of ten in our counting system, partners of powers of ten(1.0, 10, 100, 1000, etc) are immensely useful tools. Mas...
A Problem String Is NOT
I was recently at the Florida leadership conference, FAMS, working with leaders and ran into Howie Hua, and we had a great conversation. Fantastic guy. You can listen to Kim and I discussing it here.
In that conver...
We Need Thinking Classrooms
Peter Liljedahl’s Building Thinking Classrooms is full of fantastic work. So much so, I’ve got 4 podcast episodes talking about it. I don’t agree exactly with everything he says, but studying it was very much worth ...
Questioning Questioning
A thing I get asked about is the difference between focusing questions and funneling questions.
You may have already noticed that there’s something off with what I just said.
That’s because when we’re talking abou...
Ep 147: The Area Model to Build Reason
Episode 147 of my podcast, Math is Figure-Out-Able with Pam Harris, is all about using area models to building intuition with the square unit of measurement for area.
I start off by modeling a problem string with m...
Author
Pam Harris
Math Educator
Pam Harris is a mom, a former high school math teacher, a university lecturer, an author, and she wants to change the way we view and teach mathematics. While Pam was teaching high school math, her four children grew and mathematized their world in a way she had never imagined. “I had always bought into the myth that math is a disconnected set of facts to memorize, with rules and procedures to mimic. I now call that fake math.” Pam’s own kids, research, and experiences teaching real math have shown her what it means to mathematize and to support learners in their own journeys. Real math is thinking mathematically, not just mimicking what a teacher does on the board. You can shift your brain from using rote memory to mathematizing. Pam helps teachers make this shift for themselves, and helps teachers teach in a way that supports students to learn real math.
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