I read Peter Liljedahl's book Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics  this past summer and it has been transformational in my teaching. Getting all my students to go to a vertical surface in groups of three has been MAGICAL!!!!  I absolutely love the idea of students thinking more on their own than myself blabbing on about the material.  Brilliant!   It is a must read that is appropriately called the #thinkingclassroom. Let me give you major things that I changed in my classroom this year.   1.  Select RANDOM Groups of Three  The first t ..read more

Zoom Fatigue?  Students still need to move.  Maybe more than ever we need to encourage students to get up and move around during their online learning.  A little break in the middle of your lesson or video or slide presentation would help.  I'm planning on giving one brain break per class period. Here are some ideas of how to use a brain break in remote learning. In the midst of your lesson via Google Meet or Zoom time, put in a brain break slide. I have included 9 different of my favorite Brain Breaks in slide form.  Do you present with SmartBoard or PowerPoint or Go ..read more

I bought a unicycle in June 2020.  The Covid lock down encouraged me to do this. Then a couple of weeks later I bought a different size unicycle because each has it's own unique speed and handling abilities.  I have spent the last month and a half learning how to ride them.   It has been an amazing journey as I think of all the parallels to teaching high school math.  Here are my big takeaways. 1.  Why am I doing this? As a unicyclist... The biggest question I get when people ask me about unicycling is "why?"  My answer is that I have always loved cycling an ..read more

James is a senior here at Naperville Central High School that I have known from when he as a soccer player on the freshman team that I coached. I recently had the opportunity to shadow James to see what it feels like to be a student at this school. He graciously allowed me to follow him around for an entire day of classes, even lunch and P.E., and I had a blast. What a great day! The question that students asked me over and over all day was WHY?  Why are you shadowing a student?  My quick answer was, "I want to know what a high school student goes through every day."   It was an eye-opening ..read more

A student stayed after school this past spring to talk with me.  I figured it was something about a grade or some help he needed.  He actually wanted to talk with me about the math class SCRIPT.  Here is what he said about math classes in general... ...everyday we had a note sheet, some set examples, a target written out with what we were learning, and then there were blanks so you would wait for the teacher to put it up on the board so you could then fill in the blanks.  Then you just followed all the examples.  It is like a script.  I guess it was really efficient in teaching you exactly wh ..read more