Author: Jon Orr

30 Days in 30 Minutes: A video series that gives you a glimpse in my classroom.

by Jon Orr

30 Days in 30 Minutes is a 30-episode video series I’m sharing where I’m sharing 1 minute of each day for 30 days in row. I’ll show you the good, bad, and ugly of a real math classroom where we’re trying to spark curiosity and fuel sense making in our students using our go-to math lesson framework for planning and delivering curriculum effectively.

By sharing my day-to-day experiences I hope that you’ll see a little bit of your own classroom in my classroom and realize that we’re all doing great things for our students to learn better, deeper, and fuel their sense-making.

Below you can watch the days unfold as they happen.

The first video in the playlist will be the most recent day while the remaining videos will start at day 0 and run in chronological order to the most recent day.

 

Did you miss a day and want to catch up? You can select any day you’d like to see.

DOWNLOAD THE BUILDING RESILIENT PROBLEMS SOLVERS GUIDE

Download the 3-page printable guide that will give you 3 actionable tips to build resilient problem solvers in your math classroom. 

DOWNLOAD THE GUIDE

 

What are your current math professional learning educator needs? If you’re looking to ramp up your pedagogical practice and build your content knowledge to help run lessons without a hitch, consider diving into our Online Make Math Moments Academy where we have over 10 self-paced professional learning courses for mathematics educators including courses on:

Earn your math teacher PD credit hours in the Academy!

Free Printable Random Grouping Cards For Math Class

by Jon Orr

[UPDATED – January 2019]

In my class, most often, I pair students up to work through math problems. I also, most often have less than 24 students. I’ve updated the cards to include a version for ONLY 24 cards and groups of 2. This will make it easier to create different groupings within the same class period without having to give students new cards.

Ready to download these free printable random grouping cards?

There are three copies of the cards.

ONE DESIGNED FOR ONLY GROUPS OF 2, One with equations/expressions and one without (groups of 2 or 3 – 36 cards). 

Continue reading →

Making Math Moments That Matter Podcast

by Jon Orr

Maybe you don’t know this about me but I’m an avid listener of podcasts! I love pushing play on an episode, putting my phone in my pocket on my way to work or on my run and just being engrossed in the stories I hear.

Here are a few of my favourite:

This American Life
Serial
Choiceology
Freakonomics
Revisionist History (Malcolm Gladwell)

Here are a few of my favourite Math Education Podcasts:

Global Math Department
OAME Math Talks
Math Before Breakfast
Vrain Waves
Mr. Barton Maths Podcast

and now…

I’m proud to announce that I’ve thrown my hat into the podcast ring! Along with Kyle Pearce, we’ve launched  the Making Math Moments That Matter Podcast officially on iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, and many others with our goal being to offer Moment Makers like yourself an easy way to reflect on your teaching practice and plan intentionally how you might use the Making Math Moments 3-Part Framework as you craft your next lesson.

You can listen right now to our latest episode by clicking play on the bottom of your screen.

Or you can listen to one of my favourite episodes so far: Episode 5: Too Many Resources & Too Little Time: A Math Mentoring Moment with Nicole Martin.

In the first handful of episodes, we dive into the Making Math Moments That Matter 3-Part Framework.  In other episodes we interview some pretty influential Math Moment Makers as well as invite some teachers from our community to engage in a mentorship call right on the show.

Learn more and see the show notes pages over on our podcast website: makingmathmoments.com/podcast

Subscribe right now to the Making Math Moments That Matter podcast on your favourite platform by simply searching “Making Math Moments That Matter” on that platform, or by clicking on the desired link below:

Regardless of which platform you decide to use, we would so appreciate if you SUBSCRIBED and left us a REVIEW to help us reach as many math educators as possible.

I can’t wait to hear what you think!

Double Jenga [3 Act Task]

by Jon Orr

I have a challenge for you and I hope you are up to it because I’m so excited to see what you come up with!

I have the beginnings of a math task that involves two Jenga sets. The challenge for you is to frame out how the lesson will unfold in your classroom. How would could you use these videos in your elementary class? Your middle school class? Your high school class? Maybe you have an idea on how to use these resources to start a lesson? Maybe you can already see how to create a math lesson using these resources? Maybe you have an idea on how to use the Curiosity Path to shape a lesson? Whatever grade level you teach or whatever lesson you build do these two things:

  1. Share your ideas, photos with your students, or questions either here in the comments, on Twitter, or on Facebook.
  2. Check back to this post next week where I’ll feature some teachers lesson ideas and I’ll also share how I used these resources with my students.

Watch below the first video:

Video 1: Double Jenga – Little Jenga

Video 2: Double Jenga – Little Jenga with Time.

Video 3: Double Jenga

Picture 1: Heights

Picture 2: Widths

Picture 3: Lengths

Video 4: Double Jenga – Time

Using those resources, build a problem based math lesson for your students and then,

  1. Share your ideas, photos with your students, or questions either here in the comments, on Twitter, or on Facebook
  2. Check back to this post next week where I’ll feature some teachers lesson ideas and I’ll also share how I used these resources with my students.

I’m pretty pumped to see what you come up with.