Making Math Moments That Matter

In this Math Mentoring Moment episode, you’ll meet Bill Zbozny Del Percio, a Grade 3 teacher from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania who always felt drawn to teaching, but feels like he’s struggling to squeeze as much mathematical thinking out of each task as possible. Having built familiarity and confidence in sparking curiosity through 3 Act Math Tasks and delivering other rich tasks that leverage the nat...

In this Jon & Kyle only episode we’ll introduce math classroom challenges that we’ve heard from educators we’ve talked to in person, educators that have emailed us, and also Math Moment Makers who filled out filled out some of of our surveys and how we can work toward fixing those challenges. You’ll Learn: What can we do when not all our students are engaging in our activities. How we can ensu...

In this Math Moment Interview, we talk with Dr. Peter Liljedahl, Professor of mathematics education at Simon Fraser University who has been researching ways to get students to become resilient problem solvers through ideas such as using vertical non-permanent surfaces, visible random groupings, selecting tasks with evolving complexity, and much more...He calls his work The Thinking Classroom. What...

We speak with Lisa Geggie, a teacher of 24 years and self proclaimed perfectionist. and a brave, caring human being. Lisa, like many of us, spends countless hours of after school time, weekends, and evenings planning her lessons and activities for her students benefit…..She’s been eating, breathing, and sleeping math lessons and...She wants to desperately know how to help her students and GET HER...

One of the biggest challenges WE teachers have right now is helping kids not give up when problem solving in math class. It troubles us when students are working on problems that are slightly different from classroom examples and they either SHUT DOWN, or quickly raise their hands and say, “I don’t know what to do!” In this episode we share the audio recording of a webinar we ran in January 2019 t...

We chat with Dr. Raj Shah from Math Plus Academy about how how to harness the elements of video games that make them so addictive and how we can apply them to our math classes. We chat about how to build a culture of discussion, creativity and problem solving in our classrooms, and we also chat about how to use the power of mystery to engage our students. Show Notes: http://makemathmoments.com/epi...

On today’s show, we’re bringing on Matt Makuch from Victoria, British Columbia to share his mathematics professional learning journey thus far. Matt shares some of the influencers who inspired him initially to begin thinking differently about teaching his math class including Marcy Cook, Kim Sutton, and Sherry Perrish. He also shares how he took the plunge to take his professional learning to the...

Join us while we chat with the great Marian Small. For us, Marian has been a rock and a foundation for how we’ve changed our teaching practice! She’s an author, math education influencer, and Open question guru! In this discussion we talk with Marian about the origin story of open questions, how open questions compare to open middle problems, and how being more intentional with big ideas versus sp...

Conference season is just around the corner for us at the time of this recording. We attend various conferences throughout the year and a big question that we always have is, “Is this going to be worth it?” In episode 15 we want to give you 5 TIPS on how to get the most out of the conferences you attend and also what can you do if you can’t attend a conference this year. Show Notes: http://makemat...

We’re bringing on a colleague, friend, and fellow Ontarian from the math education world. He’s the author of Pi of Life and his soon to be released book, Math Recess, an international keynote speaker and a part of the BuzzMath team. We talk about the simplicity of mathematics, how learning mathematics should be more like the preparation of a fantastic meal rather than just serving up the final fin...

In episode 13 you’ll listen to Sam Brotherton, a teacher from St. Louis Missouri. Sam’s been teaching for 5 years and we chat with him on this Math Mentoring Moment episode of the Making Math Moments that Matter Podcast about struggling with the idea of where assessments fit in his routines. Sam’s been teaching with 3-act math lessons, desmos activities, and a variety of other great resources he’s...

In episode 12 Jon & Kyle address questions like: how to create a collaborative approach to teaching math AND cover curriculum standards? How to build resilient problem solver?  How do I decide to adjust my unit plans when not all students have made connections during my lesson? They walk you through what planning looks like before a lesson, during a lesson, and after a lesson to ensure we cove...

Episode # 11 :   PLAY IS THE ENGINE OF LEARNING: An Interview With Dan Finkel Show notes page: http://makemathmoments.com/episode11   Play is the engine of learning, that’s the mission of Dan Finkel and his team at MathForLove.com. Over the next 60 minutes, we’ll dive into Dan’s story about how he fell in love with math and in particular, teaching with games in the math classroom, he’ll give us so...

Our conversation begins with Jo sharing some of her memorable moments from math class followed by a rich discussion about the importance of thinking deeply to communicate mathematical understanding, ideas for differentiation in the math classroom, teaching through task, and much more! Get ready to grow your brain with a variety of amazing mathematical ideas for your classroom. You’ll Learn:   How...

In Episode 9 of the Making Math Moments That Matter Podcast we have another Mentoring Moment episode coming your way with Kirsten Dyck, a grade 7/8/9 math teacher in rural Saskatchewan. Kirsten is working though how to bring out effective learning goals in all the great lesson ideas she’s already using. Listen in as we welcome Kirsten to the podcast and we all put our minds together to  work throu...

In this episode we talk to Katrien Vance who is a veteran teacher that set a total different approach to give her students a sense of direction and help them stay focused. We outline why she did it, how she did it, and how it all worked out for the students. You’ll learn: How to redefine success in your classroom. How to create lessons where students ask more questions. How to create a math class...

In episode 7, Kyle Pearce and Jon Orr talk with Making Math Moments That Matter online workshop participant, Sarah-Jane Wells about realizing her personal privilege has affected her teaching habits, how she’s been working on Sparking curiosity consistently to get kids engaged and keep them on task… and a BIG can of worms was opened when the conversation moved into assessment, evaluation and the ro...

This week we interview the great James Tanton. Author, curriculum writer, speaker, creator of Exploding Dots and spreader of joyous mathematics! We bet that you’ll find yourself smiling as you listen to James’ enthusiasm for joyous mathematics. You’ll Learn: Why Education at all levels K-12 is intellectually rich, profound, deep, wonderful, and equally important. How to make math joyous, wonderful...

In our first Mentoring Moments episode we chat with Nicole Martin, a 3rd/4th grade math teacher in Las Vegas Nevada. Nicole was struggling with how to structure her math lessons in a way that is engaging yet meaningful when she has so many great resources she’s found online. Nicole shares with us how after finding so many great math resources online such as 3 act math tasks, estimation 180 and mor...

In this episode, Kyle Pearce and Jon Orr share 3 moves to ignite TEACHER action in the classroom so you can spark curiosity and fuel sense making in your students. We outline how we’ve used these moves in our classrooms to make significant learning gains with our students and give you valuable tips on so you can incorporate these moves regularly classroom.   Specifically, you’ll learn: Why plannin...

Join Kyle Pearce from TapIntoTeenMinds.com and Jon Orr from MrOrr-IsAGeek.com as they take a dive into the Making Math Moments That Matter 3-Part Framework! In episode 3, they unpack 4 “Go-To” Tools for Fuelling Sense Making in math class.     What are you waiting for? Fire up the episode!   Looking for resources from this episode? Check out the show notes here: http://makemathmoments.com/episode3...

Join Kyle Pearce from TapIntoTeenMinds.com and Jon Orr from MrOrr-IsAGeek.com as they take a dive into the Making Math Moments That Matter 3-Part Framework! In episode 2, they dive into the first part: Sparking Curiosity and highlight one of their favourite curiosity sparking strategies called the Curiosity Path.   What are you waiting for? Fire up the episode!   Looking for resources from this ep...

Wondering how to create a classroom culture where students don't want to stop exploring mathematics when the bell rings? Join Kyle Pearce from TapIntoTeenMinds.com and Jon Orr from MrOrr-IsAGeek.com as they team up for EPISODE #1 to uncover how we can Make Math Moments That Matter for every student in the math classroom from Kindergarten through Grade 12. Discover how you can build easy to pl...