Math Practice #6

This site offers a set of four graphics, numbers, shapes, and other sets, prompting students to decide "which one doesn't belong" and to justify their choice(s).

This New York Times resource provides graphs, maps and charts--and an invitation to students to discuss them live.

This slide deck provides a concise summary of several effective strategies to get students using mathematical language in speaking and listening.

Cathy Humphreys and Ruth Parker extend number talks strategies and tools into the secondary school grades. See also their follow-up book, Digging Deeper:  Making Number Talks Matter Even More.

This book supports teachers working to improve guiding reflections, conversations, feedback, and planning.  It includes a series of short videos on how to use the strategies and tools.

This book is essential for math educators at all levels. It provides ample time to pause periodically and talk with our students about our mathematical talk. 

Grant Sanderson has created several video series out of a desire to share the joy and beauty and sense of mathematics. The computer animations along with the structure of his explanations make clear many concepts that we learned (and that we're tempted to teach to our students) as rote or procedural. See the "Lockdown Math" episodes especially.

This article by Beth Herbel-Eisenmann originally appeared in NCTM's Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School journal.  NCTM members may have access as part of their membership.  

This searchable and filterable database of over 1000 works (including TV and film) provides users with the ways mathematics has had everything from a minor supporting role to a primary character role.

 Think-alouds have been described as "eavesdropping on someone's thinking." With this strategy, teachers verbalize aloud while reading a selection orally. Their verbalizations include describing things they're doing as they read to monitor their comprehension. The purpose of the think-aloud strategy is to model for students how skilled readers construct meaning from a text.

The first half of the slides in this Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction deck set the stage for thinking differently about literacy. Beginning with Slide 17, ideas and suggestions for teaching and learning how to "speak and listen" mathematically are presented. 

This page provides a conversational overview of math talk moves and other strategies, including downloadable posters.

Vihart takes a fresh look at mathematics in an accessible way.

This YouTube channel includes a wide variety of mathematical topics and presenters.

This channel provides a collection of engaging videos on topics such as: What Is the Golden Ratio? What You Don't Know About Pascal's Triangle. Why are Walled Cities Round? The 5 Best Proofs that the Square Root of 2 Is Irrational. 

Check out the video collections, many of which may be appropriate for middle school and high school students.

This page provides guidance and steps for working with students to think aloud.  It includes a Teacher Playlist of linked resources.

For those who liked Donald Duck in Mathemagic Land back in school, here's a contemporary take on mathematics by PBS.  

This video provides a contemporary look at how probability and statistics analyze and shape contemporary life. 

This is a set of resources from Laura Chambless and Minna Turrell at St. Clair RESA - includes powerpoints, print materials, video clips and more.

This is a video of Ian Stewart's lecture on visual illusions (optical illusions) and the mathematics behind how they work.

Purdue University's Online Writing Lab has a number of resources, including this brief summary of Toulmin's approach to argument.  The terminology here should be familiar to students from their ELA coursework (and ideally, science and social studies, too).  

Plus Magazine provides articles, news, podcasts, puzzles, videos, and more. This site is accessible to expert and non-expert audiences alike.

This YouTube channel provides a collection of video brain teasers, riddles, logic puzzles, viral math problems, and math topics from around the world.