I now know why everyone loves using a John Mason quote. I was listening to a Mr Barton Maths podcast where Craig (@mrbartonmaths) is interviewing Anne Watson and John Mason. These two are like the equivalent of a Jedi in Mathematics education. This particular episode caught my attention because of a book John co-authored, Thinking…
As I’ve mentioned in a couple of blog posts, I’m no longer in the classroom. I’ve been working in the Department for Education leading out a professional learning program for Senior Years maths teachers for nearly two months now. The change of pace and scene has given me time and space to reflect on my…
On Tuesday, I finally turned some thought into a problem. In pretty typical fashion, I put out this problem to the Maths Twitter Blog-o-Sphere (MTBoS) for advice about how to better present it, as I felt the wording wasn’t quite right. Here’s the revised problem (thanks to @DavidKButlerUoA for reframing the question): I then started…
Today, I said goodbye to teachers, students and SSOs from Wirreanda Secondary School, where I’ve been teaching for the past couple of years. It wasn’t just those people I was saying goodbye to, however. I was also saying goodbye to teaching (well, not forever but for the next year or so). Tomorrow, I start my…
Allow me to attempt to generalise our current curriculum in a way that hopefully makes some sense and explains why Year 10 Quadratics (or parabolas for those on the other side of the Atlantic) is a topic that I can say, more than anything else, I teach differently to how I was taught. Imagine solving…
Big names in maths such as Dan Meyer, Jo Boaler, Ed Southall, Eddie Woo and the like are inevitably thought leaders across the maths teaching landscape across the world. These people have walked a mile in our shoes, knocking at each student’s door trying to sell them something they don’t want – maths. So when…
Last week, I wrote this problem. I personally found it interesting that a thought that I had about it’s possible validity actually turned into something that worked quite nicely. Here's a new @openmiddle problem I just made. Let me know what you think. #MTBoS #iTeachMath pic.twitter.com/WWz0q7hNOQ — John Rowe 👨🏽🚀 (@MrJohnRowe) June 14, 2018 I…
On Friday morning I was sitting at home having coffee before I left for school, still dissatisfied with my most recent lesson with my usually receptive Year 8 class. I had them first block that morning and felt like I really needed to reconnect them with not only the concept of dependent probability but also…
A constant thought that came to mind in every session I attended at the 2018 NCTM Annual Meeting & Exposition was, “how am I going to be able to take everything I’ve learnt and actually use it to improve my own practice?”. The short answer, I feel, is that I’m not going to be able…
My learning journey, I would comfortably say, really began nearly four years ago. August 4 2014, I was the lucky person from my school picked to go to a professional development session about a new way of teaching problem-based learning activities. Having nearly forgotten that I was supposed to go, I truly had no idea…
How I teach maths. 