Math Links for Week Ending Jan. 20th, 2017

I like this post from @marybourassa with a few tips. The importance of choosing students randomly and why even struggling students need to be given challenging problems, review day tweaks and using stickers. These are really simple things to do in class that increase student thinking. It's really worth the read.
Curriculum Tags: All
http://marybourassa.blogspot.ca/2017/01/little-things.html

And for those of you spiralling grade 10 academic, @Marybourassa has posted some updates on the semesters work. And if you have never spiralled that course then check out the link to her series of day-by-day posts which has all the goods.
Curriculum Tags: MPM2D
http://marybourassa.blogspot.ca/2017/01/spiralled-mpm2d-update.html

I like this simple activity of using playing cards to have kids work with mean, median and mode. The activity itself is nice but the discussion that follows when @msbjacobs talks about what happened when he gave the students an unsolvable question. I think this kind of thing is really important for students to see. Mistakes, that is. Sometimes I feel like when all we present is perfect work, students a) get the feeling that somehow they are inadequate because they aren't and b) then never see strategies for dealing with mathematical problems.
Curriculum Tags: Gr7, Gr8
http://themathguy.blogspot.ca/2017/01/the-best-laid-plansoften-go-awry.html

Taking simple problems and tweaking them so that they require much deeper thinking is a great idea. That's what @RobertKaplinsky tackles in this post. From addition and subtraction questions to exponents, trig and roots. All done by giving students the choice of filling in numbers. He gives you steps to change your own simple problems to increase their depth of knowledge (DOK)
Curriculum Tags: All
http://robertkaplinsky.com/3steps/

A couple from @Desmos. The first would be great to deal with introducing the idea of rate of change as it connects to slope. It uses some of the special Desmos tools only available to them but add a lot to the experience with students.
Curriculum Tags: MPM1D, MFM2P
http://blog.desmos.com/post/155493373922/friday-fave-for-january-6

The second one is for dealing with systems of equations. I like the fact that it starts with some review of the conceptual nature of what a solution is with simple equations and then transfers that to what it means to solve a system of equations.
Curriculum Tags: MPM2D, MFM2P
http://blog.desmos.com/post/155825958132/friday-fave-for-january-13

A conversation with @MathGarden and @JamesTanton via @buzzmath. I really like the bit about slowing down the thinking process where James talks about giving assignments that he would refuse to accept until they were done perfectly. There is also some fun math so watch the whole thing.
Curriculum Tags: All
https://blog.buzzmath.com/2017/01/19/sunil-singh-and-james-tanton-talk-about-teaching-math-video/

A new TED-Ed video about the origin of numerical systems. Thanks to @KMarkPet
Curriculum Tags: All
https://ed.ted.com/lessons/a-brief-history-of-numerical-systems-alessandra-king