Five Principles of Extraordinary Math Teaching
Dan Finkel is the Founder and Director of Operations of Math for Love, a Seattle-based organization devoted to transforming how math is taught and learned. Dan is also one of the creators of Prime Climb, a beautiful and colorful, mathematical board game. He contributes regularly to the New York Times Numberplay blog and hosts Seattle’s Julia Robinson Math Festival annually. He also does comedy improv!
So as you can see this guy loves math and at the same time loves to have fun. He wants other people to have fun with it too and explains in this talk why some kids may come home from school dejected and hating math. This is a great video to watch for any teacher or parent wondering how to help their child with math and how to get excited about it! In teaching math he encourages courage, curiosity, and play! He also discusses from the beginning the practical ways in which your kids in the classroom or at home need to be mathematically literate.
I won’t give it all away before you watch it because like he says in this video
“I will have robbed you of an opportunity to learn”.
Plus watching the guy Ted talk himself must be more interesting than listening to me blather on about it right? It’s pretty entertaining as well. So, these are just a few quotes I grabbed from the video that I loved myself. Take a look at it yourself and let us know which parts were your favorite! Also let us know if you’d like more TED Talk Spotlights because who doesn’t love a good TED Talk?!
“Thinking only happens when we have time to struggle.”
“Struggling with a genuine question students deepen their curiosity and their powers of observation.”
“Not knowing is not failure, it’s the first step to understanding
