Clairbourn School’s Middle School Math Teacher, Rebecca Messler, returned from winter break excited to share with her fellow teachers powerful ideas gleaned from the California Mathematics Council South Conference which she attended in mid-November of 2019.
This conference, offering hundreds of sessions and packed with several thousand math teachers, proved to be a power-house of great information! Messler attended eight sessions applicable to teaching middle school math. Highlights included presentations from two important thought-leaders in math education, Jo Boaler (a Stanford professor, research, and author) as well as Dan Myer (speaker, former teacher, and the chief academic officer of Desmos.com which, is Messler’s favorite math exploration and education support website).
At the Clairbourn staff development meeting in January, Messler chose to share with everyone the idea from the conference of incorporating “Rich Open-Ended Tasks” (ROET) into their teaching methods. She explained this simple concept can be easily implemented and produces stronger engagement and increased understanding of subject matter among students with differentiated learning styles.
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