Over April vacation in 2011, I read a book called Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Stanford professor and developmental psychologist Carol Dweck. It shook my foundation. I re-examined my teaching, my parenting and my self identity. Probably many of you are familiar with the book which (in a nutshell) states that:
Intelligence is not fixed, and the brain is strengthened through mistakes and challenges.
Our self beliefs affect the way our brains work.
It is possible to change our self beliefs (and therefore make our brains work better).
When I returned to my classroom after vacation, I put all of my plans on hold. Fostering growth mindset became my first priority. I developed this lesson for my seventh grade students: Ellen's Mindset Lesson. My stated instructional goal was this:
The most important thingfor me to teach you is that you are capable of learning math at deep, deep levels if you open yourself to mistakes and challenges.
I've been meaning to post this for a while, ever since I was visiting Heather Robitaille's fifth grade classroom last fall at Rumney. As an ongoing math thread in her class, Heather has her students use checkbooks use to track various debit and credits that she devises for them. In her own words, here's how she works it:
I give the students deposits each day and throw done withdrawals in there as well. For example, students have to rent their chair... If I rent it to them for $3.75 a day, then how much would they be charged for the week? Some students decide to do a daily withdrawal, while others pay the sum up front for the week. At the end of the week students have to have a certain balance. If their balance is off, then they go back and find their mistake and correct it just like you and I would have to do. I really try to make this very realistic for the kids. Adding and subtracting decimals with real life skill.
Greetings, math nerds! I hope you have all had a fabulous summer... Last spring, on the WCSU Math Coaching Blog, I left off with a discussion of mastery and number concept. Obviously, we want mastery, but what does it mean? What does it look like? How do we teach for it? The math non-negotiables give us a sense of what will be "covered," but to focus on mastery, we need more...
This summer the WCSU Math Steering Committee had the opportunity to spend a few days working collaboratively on a document that (we hope!) will be an excellent resource supporting WCSU math instruction. We worked together on the format and content for kindergarten and first grade. I will be working with individual Math Steering folks to fill in other grade levels as soon as possible starting with 5th and 6th grade (because much of the work was done last year as a focus of math coaching, but just needs to be curated).
In my last blog post, I posted a video of Dave Willard explaining that taking the time to focus on mastery of number sense made grade level concepts more accessible. However, it occurs to me that it might not be clear what "number sense" is. We have various terms that we may throw around: number concept, number sense, numeracy. But what do these terms really mean? And how do they relate to mastering grade level concepts? Let's unpack these terms a bit...
A couple of weeks back, we had the opportunity to come together around math instruction at East Montpelier Elementary School for clinical rounds with Mahesh Sharma. Mahesh worked with a group of fourth grade students who are taught math by Anne Carter and Dave Willard. After working with the students, Mahesh remarked how well they did. As I watched the class, I was seated next to a fifth grade teacher who was also favorably impressed. Dave and Anne spent a little time with us afterwards reflecting on the changes that they made to their math instruction this year. These changes were inspired by the training they received together last summer at "Lab School" - a week long course focusing on math instruction that was taught by Mahesh.
Dave was adventurous enough to agree to let me capture some of his thoughts and ideas on the video embedded above (if you can't see the video, here is a link). He's very articulate (even under duress), so be sure to watch Dave discuss how he changed from a "coverage" mindset to a "mastery" mindset this year. And he feels that this change has made his students stronger math learners.
I spent this past week in lovely Calais. While we weren't literally unplugged, connectivity issues lent a bit of a "post-apocalyptic" feel to the first half of the week (minus the mayhem - everyone was making the best of it). No Google Drive access, no internet, no network, no printing, no cell phone coverage, etc... Since my essential tools for working as I travel from school to school are my Chromebook, iPhone and a set of manipulatives, this was a challenge. It forced us to go "old school," and highlighted the power of good manipulatives - especially when there's no power! By the end of the week, all systems (with the exception of cell service) were back up and running, and there is a lot of good stuff to share out...
When I left EMES, fifth grade students were working to get to the communications level on long division (blog post: Math Coaching at EMES: The Sequel). As you would expect, students were in different places with some ready to communicate and apply and others needing more conceptual work.
Tech Assisted Communication
Students have been using videos to practice the communication piece and document their learning as they became ready. Fearlessly, one teacher used a cell phone to record the videos and enlisted the media specialist/technology guru to upload it to Teachertube. Here is one student's video. Kindly, she was willing to share it with all of us. I love it for so many reasons, but especially because of how proud of herself she looks. If you can't see the video below, click on this link: http://bit.ly/1GrotF5.
Meanwhile, what to do with the students who have the communication piece down???
Greetings, math nerds! I hope you have all had a fabulous summer... Last spring, on the WCSU Math Coaching Blog, I left off with a discussion of mastery and number concept. Obviously, we want mastery, but what does it mean? What does it look like? How do we teach for it? The math non-negotiables give us a sense of what will be "covered," but to focus on mastery, we need more...
In my last blog post, I posted a video of Dave Willard explaining that taking the time to focus on mastery of number sense made grade level concepts more accessible. However, it occurs to me that it might not be clear what "number sense" is. We have various terms that we may throw around: number concept, number sense, numeracy. But what do these terms really mean? And how do they relate to mastering grade level concepts? Let's unpack these terms a bit...
I spent this past week in lovely Calais. While we weren't literally unplugged, connectivity issues lent a bit of a "post-apocalyptic" feel to the first half of the week (minus the mayhem - everyone was making the best of it). No Google Drive access, no internet, no network, no printing, no cell phone coverage, etc... 