A brief-ish summary of my thoughts on maths textbooks from my talk yesterday... 🧵1/n Pt 1: Why should we care about textbooks?
Most high performing countries rely heavily on strong, high quality textbooks (often centralised across regions enabling stronger collaboration & discussion across schools/districts). ~8% of 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿schools used them regularly (2018) 2/n

Geometry results that might create a 'huh!' moment.
A slow burn thread.
(Some are easier to figure out the "why" than others).

1/n:
Joining the midpoints of two sides of any triangle always creates a parallel line half the length of the remaining side 2/n:
If you trisect the angles of any triangle, you accidentally find a secret equilateral triangle (Morley's Theorem)

So this set of questions is the result of a few days thinking about prime factors, and 15 pages or so of notebook scribbles. I've had more DM's about these questions than anything else I've written so... ANOTHER THREAD.

https://twitter.com/edsouthall/status/1356726290947178497

Firstly, it's criminal that people 'get through' prime factors in like, 2 lessons max. This topic should be *everything*. It's amazing and gives a billion insights into multiplication and division.

Chillaxing with my turtle friends They’re up to something

This was so interesting (says me), so ... thread time... #tmwyk

https://twitter.com/edsouthall/status/1356963960126324739

I was discussing with primary trainees how important mathematical conversations were, and play, and moving towards a "thought provocation through prompts" model of teaching. So the boy (6) seemed like an apt guinea pig (bribed with strawberry laces).

Tiny personal thread.
My 10 year old son has high functioning autism. Home schooling has been pretty straight forward for almost every single thing we've done with him with one very profound exception... He intensly dislikes anything related to English (or other subjects, but it manifests mostly in English) that requires him to use imagination without scaffold. Completely shuts down on it, refuses to do anything. Any pushing to do it causes an argument.

Rest in peace Don Steward, you were and will continue to be a huge inspiration and positive influence on mathematics teachers. If you are unfamiliar with Don, I am jealous that you will get lost for the first time in a joyous discovery of the endless wonders within his website.
donsteward.blogspot.com

Today is Tom Lehrer's birthday. He's 91. 🎂
Tom is one of my favourite people on the planet, so for the uninitiated, here's a thread about him... Tom Lehrer studied mathematics at Harvard in 1946 and later taught classes at MIT, Harvard, Wellesley and the University of California. He’s best known for his satirical comedy songwriting in the 50’s and 60’s (some of which involved maths).