Dustin Purdy Blog

On Friday, October 9, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize to Navi Pillay. That got me thinking about the prize itself, and about how much a simple picture of its history could tell our students. So I made one. It's a grid of 126 dots. Most are filled. A few are empty. There's no title, no labels and no key. If you're anything like me, you love a graph that starts a conversation before anyone knows what it shows. That's the whole idea behind a slow reveal: students reason about the data first, then get the context a little at a time and revise their thinking as they go. This one takes about 40 minutes, and it works as a 10-minute warm-up if you're short on time. Reveal 1: Just the Dots Start with nothing but the dots. Give students a full minute of quiet think time before anyone talks, then ask the two best questions in math class: What do you notice? What do you wonder? Write down every idea without confirming or correcting it. Students ...

What languages are spoken in the United States? How does where you live influence the languages you are likely to hear? And what can data tell us about the communities around us? Nearly 1 in 4 people in the United States speak a language other than English at home. That statistic creates an opportunity to explore percentages, ratios, proportional reasoning, estimation, and data representation while connecting mathematics to language, identity, community, and belonging. I created “How does America say hello?” as a short 5–10 minute data talk using 2024 U.S. Census data to help students make those connections. Starting With Notice and Wonder The routine begins simply. On every slide, I ask: What do you notice? What do you wonder? Students have about 30 seconds to think independently and another 30 seconds to share with a partner. We then hear a few observations and questions before moving into the mathematical prompts. This sequencing is intentional. Rather than telling students what is ...