First day of TEEM! Off to a great start learning about how students need agency to be fully invested in mathematics, and many students lose agency when they have a negative mathematics identity. I know I see this a lot in my classes, so my goal this year is going to be to make sure that they have agency.
One way we learned we can give them agency is with storytelling, thanks to teachers from the UCLA Lab School. Give the students a picture and have them discuss what they notice and what they can count in the picture. Pictures can come from anywhere, as long as they can provoke discussion and mathematics.
The best part, I think, is that the students create the story, and create the math question. The math is left blank so students can choose "just right" numbers, allowing them to differentiate on their own. The presenters said if you know your students are choosing numbers that are too low for them you can ask them if those are really their "just right" numbers.
I'm going to try doing this on those random Internet Holidays like Donut Day or Emoji Day, so that it'll be fun and interesting for my middle schoolers. I think I'll also do it on other holidays from students' cultures, to help bring that in to the math classroom.
Another strategy we learned to give students agency is teaching through problem-solving. Now, I tried to do a lot of this year while using the Illustrative Mathematics curriculum. But I struggled. Every time my principal observed me, he said I was doing too much talking, even though I felt like I gave the students a lot of think and talk time. After this presentation, it clicked with me that I was talking too much, and have better strategies for getting the students to talk & share, such as selecting certain strategies to share with the class, having the students compare and contrast the strategies, and to have the students create a summary of the learning as a class. Even though these are strategies I learned before, I had forgotten about them in the chaos of the school year.
One new strategy I'll be trying to bring to my class is the Boardwork, which is to keep all of the work discussed on the board instead of erasing, so that if a student tuned out or was out of the class or just needs to check again, they can look back at all of the work already done. I'm trying to figure out exactly how this will work in my class, since I don't really have the setup for that. I have one whiteboard that I use for work and then another that I use for agenda/announcements. I might be able to do it with some easels, but again it's something I need to give more thought.
I also really appreciated the focus on Math Equity this past week. It's something I've already been looking into on my own, and I'm so glad that I have more ideas to put into place in my classroom. It's so important for students to think critically about the world, and there's no reason that can't be done in my classroom.
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