Dan Meyer: If Your Content is The Aspirin, How Do You Create the Headache?

Episode 011: Dan Meyer, Desmos
Dan Meyer has been revolutionizing math instruction for years, and in this episode he shares with us the importance of mentors in his life, a few of his favorite teaching mantras, mathematics as storytelling, and how to notice and develop perplexity.
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Connect with Dan Meyer
Twitter: @ddmeyer | Website: blog.mrmeyer.com | Desmos
Links & Show Notes

Math is a (usually poorly told) story (02:22)
Put students in a place to experience new learning through a need
Dan’s math journey & mentors (4:20)
“Be Less Helpful” (6:58)
Let students do the interesting, important work of the thinking about the problem
Thanksgiving dinner task example - by giving all the information necessary you’re making the problem less interesting, losing the opportunity for deeper thinking, and blocking some students out
Discovery learning in the math classroom (9:52)
You can always add, you can’t subtract (11:08)
Once you add information, you change the nature of the challenge
3-act math (Dan Meyer’s spreadsheet; Dan Meyer’s ‘How-to’ / Graham Fletcher’s EL resources (12:39)
Bucky the Badger task / Blog write up
One 5th grade student: “While we were figuring it out, our ideas changed and it changed the question we were asking.”
Subtract stuff from the problems in your curriculum (18:38)
Popcorn container task
Benjamin Baxter (20:23)
“Never assume anyone even cares.”
Teach math as though it were an elective
Perplexity / Curiosity: Teaching as a science - reproducible (24:23)
“Developing curiosity in ourselves and capturing those curious moments and presenting them in curious ways for other people, that has to be an ongoing discipline.”
Benefits of being a connected educator (27:31)
Quick growth; posing open questions and semi-formed ideas
Memorization in math (30:26)
Driving analogy
Having as much as you can in your long-term memory makes more interesting work possible
Practice with purpose, mix frequently with purposeful activities (not memorization drills)
Offer them pictures of where their memorization will be used
Math assessment (35:07)
Break learning objectives down into smaller grains of learning and assess on each
Standards-based Grading
Talk to him more about this @ddmeyer
Desmos (38:04)
Free calculators
Polygraph game
If [vocabulary] is the aspirin, what is the headache?
Students solve problems created by each other
Teacher.desmos.com for more free resources
Dan’s TED Talk
tinyurl.com/vrainwavesfeedback
Lots of other videos of Dan’s keynotes, ideas, etc…
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