{"id":4291,"date":"2019-02-21T19:50:50","date_gmt":"2019-02-22T00:50:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/blogonmathblogs\/?p=4291"},"modified":"2019-02-21T19:50:50","modified_gmt":"2019-02-22T00:50:50","slug":"a-tour-of-dan-meyers-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/blogonmathblogs\/2019\/02\/21\/a-tour-of-dan-meyers-blog\/","title":{"rendered":"A tour of Dan Meyer&#8217;s blog"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>While I was recently cruising through the mathematical blogosphere, I landed on a post I enjoyed on Dan Meyer&#8217;s\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/blog.mrmeyer.com\">dy\/dan\u00a0<\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.mrmeyer.com\">blog<\/a>. The post, titled <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.mrmeyer.com\/2019\/stats-teachers-2019-is-your-year\/\">&#8220;Stats Teachers: 2019 Is Your Year,&#8221;<\/a>\u00a0discusses proposed tax rates and using classroom examples to help students become &#8220;smarter about taxes in a day than fully\u00a0<em>half<\/em> of Americans have been in their entire lives.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In 2016, Meyer&#8217;s blog <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.mrmeyer.com\/2016\/ten-years-of-blog-comments\/\">celebrated its 10th anniversary<\/a>. Please join me on a tour of just a few of the many interesting posts available there.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.mrmeyer.com\/2018\/that-isnt-a-mistake\/\">&#8220;That Isn&#8217;t a Mistake&#8221;<\/a> and the follow-up post <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.mrmeyer.com\/2018\/mailbag-what-do-you-do-with-the-ideas-you-used-to-call-mistakes\/\">&#8220;[Mailbag]: What Do You Do with the Ideas You Used to Call &#8216;Mistakes'&#8221;<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In the first post, Meyer compares mistakes, which he defines as &#8220;the difference between <em>what I did<\/em> and <em>what I meant to Do<\/em>&#8221; and incorrect answers. He offers teachers this challenge:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;<strong>Our students offer us windows and we exchange\u00a0them for mirrors<\/strong>.\u00a0The next time you see an answer that is incorrect, don\u2019t remind yourself about the right way to talk about a mistake. It probably isn\u2019t a mistake.\u00a0Ask yourself instead, &#8216;What question did this student answer correctly? What aspects of her thinking can I see through this window? Why would I want a mirror when this window is <em>so<\/em> much more interesting?&#8217;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In the second post, Meyer remarks on reader-submitted questions and comments about implementing this approach to responding to incorrect answers in the classroom. Here&#8217;s one of my favorite sections:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;I don\u2019t have any problem saying a student\u2019s answer is incorrect, that they didn\u2019t correctly answer the question I was trying to ask. But my favorite mathematical questions defy categories like &#8216;correct&#8217; and &#8216;incorrect&#8217; entirely:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>So how would you describe the pattern?<\/li>\n<li>What do you think will happen next?<\/li>\n<li>Would a table, equation, or graph be more useful to you here?<\/li>\n<li>How are you thinking about the question right now?<\/li>\n<li>What extra information do you think would be helpful?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>How can you call <em>any<\/em> answer to those questions a mistake or incorrect? What would that even <em>mean<\/em>? Those descriptions feel inadequate next to the complexity of the mathematical ideas contained in those answers, which I interpret as a signal that I\u2019m asking questions that <em>matter<\/em>.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><strong>&#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/blog.mrmeyer.com\/2017\/a-high-school-math-teachers-first-experience-teaching-elementary-school\/\">A High School Math Teacher\u2019s First Experience Teaching Elementary School&#8221;<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Come for the story of an interesting adventure; stay insights such as these:<\/p>\n<p>From Meyer: &#8220;<strong>Children are teenagers are adults.\u00a0<\/strong>I was struck hard by the similarities between all the different ages I\u2019ve taught. People of <em>all<\/em> ages like puzzles. They respond well to <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.mrmeyer.com\/2011\/the-three-acts-of-a-mathematical-story\/\">the techniques of storytelling<\/a>. Unless they\u2019re <em>wildly<\/em> misplaced, they come to your class with <em>some<\/em> informal understanding of your lesson. They appreciate it when you try to surface that understanding, revoice it, challenge it, and help them formalize it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>From Joshua, a commenter: &#8220;Everyone has their right to an aesthetic preference for particular areas\/topics\/levels of math. The cool thing about math is that (almost) every topic can be really fun to investigate because it is open to a deeper exploration of pattern, structure, and connections to other areas.\u00a0A weakness of math education is that again, almost every topic can be presented in a way that is closed, shallow, isolated, and boring.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.mrmeyer.com\/2013\/fake-world-limited-theories-of-engagement\/\"><span style=\"color: #000000\"><b>&#8220;[Fake World] Limited Theories of Engagement.&#8221;\u00a0<\/b><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Just one of several interesting posts in his <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.mrmeyer.com\/category\/fake-world-math\/\">&#8220;Fake-World Math&#8221;<\/a> series.<\/p>\n<p><strong>His <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.mrmeyer.com\/category\/guestblogger\/\">&#8220;Guest Bloggers&#8221; series<\/a> about his student teaching days<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.mrmeyer.com\/starter-pack\/\">The &#8220;Starter Pack&#8221; page, in which he shares his own highlights from the blog<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As always, thank you for reading! If you want to reach me with any comments or suggestions, reach out in the comments below or on Twitter <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/writesRCrowell\">@writesRCrowell<\/a>.<\/p>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" ><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While I was recently cruising through the mathematical blogosphere, I landed on a post I enjoyed on Dan Meyer&#8217;s\u00a0dy\/dan\u00a0blog. The post, titled &#8220;Stats Teachers: 2019 Is Your Year,&#8221;\u00a0discusses proposed tax rates and using classroom examples to help students become &#8220;smarter &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/blogonmathblogs\/2019\/02\/21\/a-tour-of-dan-meyers-blog\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<div style=\"margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px;\" class=\"sharethis-inline-share-buttons\" data-url=https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/blogonmathblogs\/2019\/02\/21\/a-tour-of-dan-meyers-blog\/><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":143,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,86],"tags":[436,925,924,926,154,255],"class_list":["post-4291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-math-education","category-people-in-math","tag-dan-meyer","tag-engagement","tag-fake-world-math","tag-incorrect-answers","tag-math-mistakes","tag-teaching"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3tW3N-17d","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/blogonmathblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/blogonmathblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/blogonmathblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/blogonmathblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/143"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/blogonmathblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4291"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/blogonmathblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4297,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/blogonmathblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4291\/revisions\/4297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/blogonmathblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/blogonmathblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/blogonmathblogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}