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Tisha Jones, Assessment as a Shared Journey: Cultivating Partnerships with Families & Caregivers ROUNDING UP: SEASON 3 | EPISODE 16 Families and caregivers play an essential role in students' success in school and in shaping their identities as learners. Therefore, establishing strong partnerships with families and caregivers is crucial for equitable teaching and learning. This episode is designed to help educators explore the importance of collaborating with families and caregivers and learn strategies for shifting to asset-based communication. BIOGRAPHY Tisha Jones is the senior manager of assessment at The Math Learning Center. Previously, Tisha taught math to elementary and middle school students as well as undergraduate and graduate math methods courses at Georgia State University. TRANSCRIPT Mike Wallus: As educators, we know that families and caregivers play an essential role in our students' success at school. With that in mind, what are some of the ways we can establish strong partnerships with caregivers and communicate about students' progress in asset-based ways? We'll explore these questions with MLC's [senior] assessment manager, Tisha Jones, on this episode of Rounding Up.  Welcome back to the podcast, Tisha. I think you are our first guest to appear three times. We're really excited to talk to you about assessment and families and caregivers.  Tisha Jones: I am always happy to talk to you, Mike, and I really love getting to share new ideas with people on your podcast.  Mike: So, we've titled this episode “Assessment as a Shared Journey with Families & Caregivers,” and I feel like that title—especially the words “shared journey”—say a lot about how you hope educators approach this part of their practice.  Tisha: Absolutely.  Mike: So, I want to start by being explicit about how we at The Math Learning Center think about the purpose of assessment because I think a lot of the ideas and the practices and the suggestions that you're about to offer flow out of that way that we think about the purpose.  Tisha: When we think about the purpose of assessment at The Math Learning Center, what sums it up best to me is that all assessment is formative, even if it's summative, which is a belief that you'll find in our Assessment Guide. And what that means is that assessment really is to drive learning. It's for the purpose of learning. So, it's not just to capture, “What did they learn?,” but it's, “What do they need?,” “How can we support kids?,” “How can we build on what they're learning?” over and over and over again. And so, there's no point where we're like, “OK, we've assessed it and now the learning of that is in the past.” We're always trying to build on what they're doing, what they've learned so far.  Mike: You know, I've also heard you talk about the importance of an asset-focused approach to assessment. So, for folks who haven't heard us talk about this in the past, what does that mean, Tisha?  Tisha: So that means starting with finding the things that the kids know how to do and what they understand instead of the alternative, which is looking for what they don't know, looking for the deficits in their thinking. We're looking at, “OK, here's the evidence for all the things that they can do,” and then we're looking to think about, “OK, what are their opportunities for growth?” Mike: That sounds subtle, but it is so profound a shift in thinking about what is happening when we're assessing and what we're seeing from students. How do you think that change in perspective shifts the work of assessing, but also the work of teaching?  Tisha: When I think about approaching assessment from an asset-based perspective—finding the things that kids know how to do, the things that kids understand—one, I am now on a mission to find their brilliance. I am just this brilliance detective. I'm always looking for, “What is that thing that this kid can shine at?” That's one, and a different way of thinking about it just to start with.  And then I think the other thing, too, is, I feel like when you find the things that they're doing, I can think about, “OK, what do I need to know? What can I do for them next to support them in that next step of growth?”  Mike: I think that sounds fairly simple, but there's something very different about thinking about building from something versus, say, looking for what's broken.  Tisha: For sure. And it also helps build relationships, right? If you approach any relationship from a deficit perspective, you're always focusing on the things that are wrong. And so, if we're talking about building stronger relationships with kids, coming from an asset-based perspective helps in that area too.  Mike: That's a great pivot point because if we take this notion that the purpose of assessment is to inform the ways that we support student learning, it really seems like that has a major set of implications for how and what and even why we would communicate with families and caregivers.  So, while I suspect there isn't a script for the type of communication, are there some essential components that you'd want to see in an asset-focused assessment conversation that an educator would have with a family or with their child's caregivers?  Tisha: Well, before thinking about a singular conversation, I want to back it up and think about—over the course of the school year. And I think that when we start the communication, it has to start before that first assessment. It has to start before we've seen a piece of kids' work. We have to start building those relationships with families and caregivers. We need to invite them into this process. We need to give them an opportunity to understand what we think about assessment. How are we approaching it? When we send things home, and they haven't heard of things like “proficiency” or “meeting current expectations”—those are common words that you'll see throughout the Bridges assessment materials—if parents haven't seen that, if families and caregivers haven't heard from you on what that means for you in your classroom at your school, then they have questions. It feels unfamiliar. It feels like, “Wait, what does this mean about how my child is doing in your class?”  And so, we want to start this conversation from the very beginning of the school year and continue it on continuously. And it should be this open invitation for them to participate in this process too, for them to share what they're seeing about their student at home, when they're talking about math or they're hearing how their student is talking about math. We want to know those things because that informs how we approach the instruction in class.  Mike: Let's talk about that because it really strikes me that what you're describing in terms of the meaning of proficiency or the meaning of meeting expectations—that language is likely fairly new to families and caregivers.  And I think the other thing that strikes me is, families and caregivers have their own lived experience with assessment from when they were children, perhaps with other children. And that's generally a mixed bag at best. Folks have this set of ideas about what it means when the teacher contacts them and what assessment means. So, I really hear what you're saying when you're talking about, there's work that educators need to do at the start of the year to set the stage for these conversations.  Let's try to get a little bit specific, though. What are some of the practices that you'd want teachers to consider when they're thinking about their communication?  Tisha: So, I think that starting at the very beginning of the year, most schools do some sort of a curriculum night. I would start by making sure that assessment is a part of that conversation and making sure that you're explaining what assessment means to you. Why are you assessing? What are the different ways that you're assessing? What are some things that [families and caregivers] might see coming home? Are they going to see feedback? Are they going to see scores from assessments? But how were you communicating progress? How do they know how their student is doing? And then also that invitation, right then and there, to be a part of this process, to hear from them, to hear their concerns or their ideas around feedback or the things that they've got questions about.  I would also suggest … really working hard to have that asset-based lens apply to parents and families and caregivers. I know that I have been that parent that was the last one to sign up for the parent teacher conferences, and I'm sending the apologetic email, and I'm begging for a special time slot. So, it didn't mean that I didn't care about my kids. It didn't mean that I didn't care about what they were doing. I was swamped. And so, I think we want to keep finding that asset-based lens for parents and caregivers in the same way that we do for the students.  And then making sure that you're giving them good news, not just bad news. And then making sure when you're sending any communication about how a student is doing, try to be concrete about what you're seeing, right? So, trying to say, “These are the things where I see your child's strengths. These are the strengths that I'm seeing from your student. And these are the areas where we're working on to grow. And this is what we're doing here at school, and this is what you can do to support them at home.” Mike: I was really struck by a piece of what you said, Tisha, when you really made the case for not assuming that the picture that you have in your mind as an educator is clear for families when it comes to assessment. So, really being transparent about how you think about assessment, why you're assessing, and the cadence of when parents or families or caregivers could expect to hear from you and what they could expect as well.  I know for a fact that if my teacher called my family when I was a kid, generally there was a look that came across their face when they answered the phone. And even if it was good news, they didn't think it was good news at the front end of that conversation.  Tisha: I've been there. I had my son's fifth grade teacher call me last year, and I was like, “Oh, what is this?” [laughs] Mike: One of the things that I want to talk about before we finish this conversation is homework. I want to talk a little bit about the purpose of homework. We're having this conversation in the context of Bridges in Mathematics, which is the curriculum that The Math Learning Center publishes. So, while we can't talk about how all folks think about homework, we can talk about the stance that we take when it comes to homework: what its purpose is, how we imagine families and caregivers can engage with their students around it.  Can you talk a little bit about our perspective on homework? How we think about its value, how we think about its purpose? And then we can dig a little bit into what it might look like at home, but let's start with purpose and intent.  Tisha: So, we definitely recognize that there are lots of different ideas about homework, and I think that shows in how we've structured homework through our Bridges units. Most of the time, it's set up so that there's a homework [assignment] that goes with every other session, but it's still optional. So, there's no formal expectation in our curriculum that homework is given on a nightly basis or even on an every-other-night basis. We really have left that up to the schools to determine what is best practice for their population. And I think that is actually what's really the most important thing is, understanding the families and caregivers and the situations that are in your building, and making determinations about homework that makes sense for the students that you're serving. And so, I think we've set homework up in a way that makes it so that it's easy for schools to make those decisions.  Mike: One of the things that I'm thinking about is that—again, I'm going to be autobiographical—when I was a kid, homework went back, it was graded, and it actually counted toward my grade at the end of the semester or the quarter or what have you. And I guess I wonder if a school or a district chose to not go about that, to not have homework necessarily be graded, I wonder if some families and caregivers might wonder, “What's the purpose?” I think we know that there can be a productive and important purpose—even if educators aren't grading homework and adding it to a percentage that is somehow determining students' grades, that it can actually still have purpose. How do you think about the purpose of homework, regardless of whether it's graded or not?  Tisha: So first off, I would just like to advocate not grading homework if I can.  Mike: You certainly can, yeah.  Tisha: [laughs] Mike: Let's talk about that.  Tisha: I think that, one, if we're talking about this idea of putting this score into an average grade or this percentage grade, I think that this is something that has so many different circumstances for kids at home. You have some students who get lots and lots of help. You get some students who do not have help available to them.  Another experience that has been very common when I was teaching was that I would get messages where it was like, “We were doing homework. The kid was in tears, I was in tears. This was just really hard.” And that's just not—I don't ever want that scenario for any student, for any family, for any caregiver, for anybody trying to support a child at home. I used to tell them, “If you are getting to the point where it's that level of frustration, please just stop and send me a message, write it on the homework. Just communicate something that [says,] ‘This was too hard' because that's information now that I can use.”  And so, for me, I think about [how] homework can be an opportunity for students to practice some skills and concepts and things that they've learned at home. It's an opportunity for parents, families, caregivers to see some of the things that the kids are working on at school.  Mike: What do you think is meaningful for homework? And I have kind of two bits to that. What do you think is meaningful for the child? And then, what do you think might be meaningful for the interaction between the child and their family or caregiver? What's the best case for homework? When you imagine a successful or a productive or a meaningful experience with homework at home between child and family and caregiver, what's that look like?  Tisha: Well, one of the things that I've heard families say is, “I don't know how to help my child with blank.” So, then I think it is, “Well, how do we support families and caregivers in knowing what [to] do with homework when we don't know how to tell them what to do?”  So, to me, it's about, how can we restructure the homework experience so that it's not this, “I have to tell you how to do it so you can get the right answer so you can get the grade.” But it's like, “How can I get at more of your thinking? How can I understand then what is happening or what you do know?” So, “We can't get to the answer. OK. So tell me about what you do know, and how can we build from there? How can we build understanding?” And that way it maybe will take some of the pressure off of families and caregivers to help their child get to the right answer.  Mike: What hits me is we've really come full circle with that last statement you made because you could conceivably have a student who really clearly understands a particular problem that might be a piece of homework, [who] might have some ideas that are on the right track, but ultimately perhaps doesn't get to a fully clear answer that is perfect. And you might have a student who at a certain point in time, maybe [for them] the context or the problem itself is profoundly challenging.  And in all of those cases, the question, “Tell me what you do know” or “Tell me what you're thinking” is still an opportunity to draw out the students' ideas and to focus on the assets. Even if the work as you described it is to get them to think about, “What are the questions that are really causing me to feel stuck?” That is a productive move for a family and a caregiver and a student to engage in, to kind of wonder about, “What's going on here that's making me feel stuck?” Because then, as you said, all assessment is formative.  Tisha: Mm-hmm. Mike: That homework that comes back is functioning as a formative assessment, and it allows you to think about your next moves, how you build on what the student knows, or even how you build on the questions that the student is bringing to you.  Tisha: And that's such a great point, too, is there's really more value in them coming back with an incomplete assignment or there's, I don't know, maybe “more value” is not the right way to say it. But there is value in kids coming back with an incomplete assignment or an attempted assignment, but they weren't sure how to get through all the problems—as opposed to a parent who has told their student what to do to get to all of the right answers. And so, now they have all these right answers, but it doesn't really give you a clear picture of what that student actually does understand.  So, I'd much rather have a student attempt the homework and stop because they got too stuck, because now I know that, than having a family [member] or a caregiver—somebody working with that student—feel like if they don't have all of the right answers, then it's a problem.  Mike: I think that's really great guidance, both for teachers as they're trying to set expectations and be transparent with families. But also I think it takes that pressure off of families or caregivers who feel like their work when homework shows up, is to get to a right answer. It just feels like a much more healthy relationship with homework and a much more healthy way to think about the value that it has.  Tisha: Well, in truth, it's a healthier relationship with math overall, right? That math is a process. It's not just—the value is not in just this one right answer or this paper of right answers, but it's really in, “How do we deepen our understanding?,” “How do we help students deepen their understanding and have this more positive relationship with math?” And I think that creating these homework struggles between families and caregivers and the children does not support that end goal of having a more positive relationship with math overall.  Mike: Which is a really important part of what we're looking for in a child's elementary experience.  Tisha: Absolutely.  Mike: I think that's a great place to stop. Tisha Jones, thank you so much for joining us. We would love to have you back at some time. It has been a pleasure talking with you.  Tisha: It's been great talking to you, too, Mike.  Mike: This podcast is brought to you by The Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation, dedicated to inspiring and enabling all individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability. © 2025 The Math Learning Center | www.mathlearningcenter.org  

After a poignant weekend in the boxing world, Sean and Lukie come together to honor the legacies of George Foreman, Colin Hart, and Livingstone Bramble. Their reflections delve into the evolving landscape of boxing and journalism, capturing the essence of a transforming era. The episode also recaps the exciting bouts from the past two weekends and offers an enticing preview of the thrilling fights on the horizon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Happy love celebration week!! In honor of how much we LOVE our patreon subscribers, Trace and Julian answer two winners of our Patreon polls! It takes two

Troy joins us for another movie draft as we select the best films from the 1990s. Indulge!You can find a complete list of all the picks (and see which streaming providers they are available on) here - https://letterboxd.com/lukebyron/list/movie-madness-1990s-draft-picks/Timestamps(00:00) Intro Music(00:14) Rules(04:27) TKs 1st Pick(11:30) Troys 1st Pick(16:50) Lukes 1st Pick(22:30) Lukes 2nd Pick(26:22) Troys 2nd Pick(30:37) TKs 2nd Pick(34:01) TKs 3rd Pick(35:56) Troys 3rd Pick(41:12) Lukes 3rd Pick(45:30) Lukes 4th Pick(54:05) Troys 4th Pick(59:00) TKs 4th Pick(01:01:00) TKs 5th Pick(01:04:35) Troys 5th Pick(01:08:00) Lukes 5th Pick(01:14:00) Lukes 6th Pick(01:19:00) Troys 6th Pick(01:23:00) TKs 6th Pick(01:31:00) TKs 7th Pick(01:32:30) Troys 7th Pick(01:36:32) Lukes 7th Pick(01:39:50) Lukes 8th Pick(01:46:08) Troys 8th Pick(01:48:40) TKs 8th Pick(01:51:04) TKs 9th Pick(01:56:04) Troys 9th Pick(01:58:47) Lukes 9th Pick(02:02:00) Lukes 10th Pick(02:04:00) Troys 10th Pick(02:08:00) TKs 10th Pick(02:09:35) Recapping the Draft and Rounding Up the Decade

Last stretch of the preseason! OSG and yours truly round up the news from the Dynamo: Jack McGlynn coming to Houston, reviewing their preseason results so far, Josh Wolff joining the technical staff, rumors, loans, and more. We also have some updates from Houston Dynamo 2 involving a new head coach and season schedule ahead of the 2025 MLS NEXT Pro season.Timestamps:2:46 Marcelo Santos appointed as head coach for Houston Dynamo 26:20 Dynamo 2 schedule released9:00 Kieran Sargeant loaned to Lexington SC in USL Championship for 202510:14 Jefferson Valverde loaned to Orense SC in Ecuador for 202511:25 Dynamo sign Jack McGlynn from Philadelphia Union in team's first-ever cash swap18:04 Junior Urso set to join Houston as a free agent20:30 Josh Wolff added to first-team technical staff23:32 Dynamo rumored to acquire academy rights to 16 y/o center back Gavin Wolff from Austin FC26:53 Preseason results from the Dynamo so far 33:30 Season 20 Jersey Unveiling and Season Kickoff Fan Fest are this weekCredits:⬢ Noodle Time is hosted by yours truly⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Andres Naranjo⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠OSG⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠!⬢ Intro/Outro music by Matt Houston. | Starfox - Armada [Matt Houston Remix]⬢ Support Foxtrot and read the blog on⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Ko-fi.com/DynamicFoxtrot⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.⬢ Follow the fox on Twitter (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@DynamicFoxtrot⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠), Instagram (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠@dynamicfoxtrot⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠), and Bluesky (⁠⁠⁠⁠@DynamicFoxtrot⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠)⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.⬢ Subscribe to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Foxtrot TV⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ on⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠GOLZTV⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠!⬢ Thumbnail photo provided by Houston Dynamo FC.

Angie Wong, Miami Republican Exec Committeewoman D17, Florida Delegate, Columnist, Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, fmr Asst Editor South China Morning Post. Homan rounding up illegals in South Florida. Eric Adams new legal problems

THE DEA IS ROUNDING UP BAD HOMBRES And I've got someone on the show today to talk about the massive roundup of drug and human dealing Tren De Aragua gang members at their own exclusive party this weekend. I'm talking to someone from DEA at 2:30 about it.

Sue Kim and Myuriel Von Aspen, Building Productive Partnerships   ROUNDING UP: SEASON 3 | EPISODE 10 In this episode, we examine the practice of building productive student partnerships. We'll talk about ways  educators can cultivate joyful and productive partnerships and the role the educator plays once students are engaged with their partner.  BIOGRAPHIES Sue Kim is an advocate for children's thinking and providing them a voice in learning mathematics. She received her teaching credential and master of education from Biola University in Southern California. She has been an educator for 15 years and has taught and coached across TK–5th grade classrooms including Los Angeles Unified School District and El Segundo Unified School District as well as several other Orange County, California, school districts.  Myuriel von Aspen believes in fostering collaborative partnerships with teachers with the goal of advancing equitable, high-quality learning opportunities for all children. Myuriel earned a master of arts in teaching and a master of business administration from the University of California, Irvine and a bachelor of science in computer science from Florida International University. She currently serves as a math coordinator of the Teaching, Learning, and Instructional Leadership Collaborative. ​ RESOURCES Catalyzing Change in Early Childhood and Elementary Mathematics by National Council of Teachers of Mathematics Purposeful Play by Kristine Mraz, Alison Porcelli, and Cheryl Tyler  Hands Down, Speak Out: Listening and Talking Across Literacy and Math K–5 by Kassia Omohundro Wedekind and Christy Hermann Thompson TRANSCRIPT Mike Wallus: What are the keys to establishing productive student partnerships in an elementary classroom? And how can educators leverage the learning that happens in partnerships for the benefit of the entire class? We'll explore these and other questions with Sue Kim and Myuriel von Aspen from the Orange County Office of Education on this episode of Rounding Up.  Well, hi, Sue and Myuriel. Welcome to the podcast. Myuriel von Aspen: Hi, Mike.  Sue Kim: Thanks for having us. Mike: Thrilled to have you both.  So, I first heard you two talk about the power of student partnerships in a context that involved counting collections. And during that presentation, you all said a few things that I have been thinking about ever since. The first thing that you said was that neuroscience shows that you can't really separate emotions from the way that we learn. And I wonder what do you mean when you say that and why do you think it's important when we're thinking about student partnerships? Myuriel: Yes, absolutely. So, this idea comes directly from neuroscience research, the idea that we cannot build memories without emotions. I'm going to read to you a short quote from the NCTM [National Council of Teachers of Mathematics] publication Catalyzing Change in Early Childhood and Elementary Mathematics that says, “Emerging evidence from neuroscience strongly shows that one cannot separate the learning of mathematics content from children's views and feelings toward mathematics.”  So, to me, what that says is that how children feel has a huge influence on their ability to learn math and also on how they feel about themselves as learners of math. So, depending on how they feel, they might be willing to engage in the content or not. And so, as they're engaging in counting collections and they're enjoying counting and they feel joyful and they're doing this with friends, they will learn better because they enjoy it, and they care about what they're doing and what they're learning. Mike: You know, this is a nice segue to the other thing that has been on my mind since I heard you all talk about this because I remember you said that students don't think about a task like counting collections as work, that they see it as play. And I wonder what you think the ramifications of that are for how we approach student partnership? Sue: Yeah, you know, I've been in so many classrooms across TK through fifth [grade], and when I watch kids count collections, we see joy, we see engagement in these ways. But I've also been thinking about this idea of how play is even defined, in a way, since you asked that question that they think of it as play.  Kristine Mraz, teacher, author, and a consultant, has [coauthored] a book called Purposeful Play. And I remember this was the first time I hear about this reference about Vivian Paley, an American early childhood educator and researcher, stress through her career, the importance of play for children when she discovered in her work that play's actually a very complex activity and that it is indeed hard work. It's the work of kids. It's the work of what children do. That's their life, in a sense. And so, something I've been thinking about is how kids perceive play is different than how adults perceive play. And so, they take it with seriousness. There is a complex, very intentionality behind things that they do and say. And so, when we are in our session, and we reference Megan Franke, she says that when young people are engaging with each other's ideas, what they're able to do is mathematically important. But it's also important because they're learning to learn together. They're learning to hear each other. They're developing social and emotional skills as they try and navigate and negotiate each other's ideas. And I think for kids that this could be considered play, and I think that's so fascinating because it's so meaningful to them. And even in a task like counting, they're doing all these complex things. But as adults we see them, and we're like, “Oh, they're playing.” But they are really thinking deeply about some of these ideas while they're developing these very critical skills that we need to give opportunities for them to develop. Myuriel: I like that idea of leaning into the play that you consider maybe not as serious, but they are. Whether they're playing seriously or not, that you might take that opportunity to make it into a mathematical question or a mathematical reflection. Sue: I totally agree with you. And taking it back to that question that you asked, Mike, about, “How do we approach student partnerships then?” And I think that we need to approach it with this lens of curiosity while we let kids engage in these ways and opportunities of learning to hear each other and develop these social-emotional skills, like we said. And so, when you see kids that we think are “playing” or they're building a tower: How might we enter that space with a lens of curiosity? Because to them, I think it's serious work. We can't just think, “Oh, they're not really in the task” or “They're not doing what they were supposed to do.” But how do we lean into that space with a lens of curiosity as Megan reminded us to do, to see what mathematical things we can tap into? And I think that kids always rise to the occasion. Mike: I love that. So, let's talk about how educators can cultivate joyful and productive student partnerships. I'm going to guess that as is often the case, this starts by examining existing beliefs that I might have and some of my expectations. Sue: Yeah, I think it really begins with your outlook and your identity as a teacher. What's your outlook on what's actually possible for kids in your class? Do you believe that kids as young as 4-year-olds can take on this responsibility of engaging with each other in these intelligent ways? Unless we begin there and we really think and reflect and examine what our beliefs are about that, I think it's hard to go and move beyond that, if that makes sense.  And like what we just talked about, it's being open to the curiosity of what could be the capacity of how kids learn. I've seen enough 4-year-olds in TK classrooms doing these big things. They always blow my mind, blow my expectations, when opportunities are given to them and consistently given to them. And it's a process, right? They're not going to start on day one doing some of these more complex things. But they can learn from one another, and they also learn from you as a teacher because they are really paying attention. They are attending to some of these complex ideas that we put in front of them. Mike: Well, you hit on the question that I was thinking about. Because I remember you saying that part of nurturing partnerships starts with a teacher and perhaps a pair of children at a table. Can you all paint a picture of what that might look like for educators who are listening? Sue: Yeah, so actually in one of the most recent classrooms, I went in, and this teacher allowed me to partner with her in this work. She wanted to be able to observe and do it in a structured way so that she could pick up on some details of noticing the things that kids were doing. And so, she would have a collection out, or they got to choose. She was really good about offering choice to kids, another way to really engage them. And so, they would choose. They would come together. And then she started just taking some anecdotal notes on what she heard kids saying, what she saw them doing, what they had to actually navigate through some of the things, the stuck moments that came up.  From that, we were able to develop, “OK, what are some goals? We noticed Students A and B doing this and speaking in these ways. What might be the next step that we might want to put into a mini lesson or model out or have them actually share with the class what they were working on mathematically?” Whether it was organization, or how they decided they wanted to represent their count, how they counted and things like that.  And so, it was just this really natural process that took place that we were able to really lean into and leverage that kids really responded to because it wasn't someone else's work or a page from a textbook. It was their work, their collection that was meaningful to them and they had a true voice and a stake in that work. Mike: I feel like there have been points in time where my understanding of building groups was almost like an engineering problem, where you needed to model what you wanted kids to do and have them rehearse it so specifically. But I think what sits at the bottom of that approach is more about compliance. And what I loved about what you described, Sue, is a process where you're building on the mathematical assets that kids are showing you during their time together—but also on the social assets that they're showing you. So, in that time when you might be observing a pair or a partnership playing together, working together with something like counting collections, you have a chance to observe the mathematics that's happening. You also have a chance to observe the social assets that you see happening. And you can use that as a way to build for that group, but also to build for the larger group of children. And that just feels really profoundly different than, I think, how I used to think about what it was to build partnerships that were “effective.” Myuriel: You know, Mike, I think it's not only compliance. It's also that control. And what it makes me think about is, when we want to model ourselves what we want students to do, instead of—exactly what you said, looking at what they're doing and bringing that knowledge, those skills, that wisdom that's in the room from the students to show to others so that they feel like their knowledge counts. The teacher is not only the only authority or the only source of knowledge in the room—we bring so much, and we can learn from each other. So, I think it's so much more productive and so effective in developing the identity of students when you are showing something that they're doing to their peers versus you as an adult telling them what to do. Mike: Yeah. Are there any particular resources that you all have found helpful for crafting mini lessons as students are learning about how to become a partnership or to be productive in a partnership? Myuriel: Yes. One book that I love, it's not specific to counting collections, but it does provide opportunities for teachers to create micro-lessons when students are listening and talking to each other. It's Hands Down, Speak Out: Listening and Talking Across Literacy and Math K–5 by Kassia [Omohundro] Wedekind and Christy [Hermann] Thompson. And the reason why I love this book is because it provides, again, these micro-lessons depending on what the teacher is noticing, whether it is that the teacher is noticing that students need support listening to each other or maybe making their ideas clear. Or maybe students need to learn how to ask questions more effectively or even reflect on setting and reflecting on the goals that they have as partners. It does provide ideas for teachers to create those micro-lessons based on what the teacher is noticing. Sue: Yeah, I guess I want to add to that, Mike, as well, the resources that Myuriel said. But also, I think this is something I really learned along the process of walking alongside this teacher, was looking at partnerships through a mathematical lens and then a social lens. And so, the mini lesson could be birthed out of watching kids in one day. It might be a social lens thinking about, “They were kind of stuck because they wanted to choose different collections. What might we do about that?” And that kind of is tied to this problem-solving type of skill and goal that we would want kids to work on. That's definitely something that's going to come up as kids are working in partnerships. These partnerships are not perfect and pristine all the time. I think that's the nature of the job. And just as humans, they're learning how to get along, they're learning how to communicate and navigate and negotiate these things. And I think those are beautiful opportunities for kids and for teachers, then, to really lean into as goals, as mini lessons that can be out of this. And these mini lessons don't have to be long and drawn out. They can be a quick 5-, 10-minute thing. Or you can pause in the middle of counting and kind of spotlight the fact that “Mike and Brent had this problem, but we want to learn from them because they figured out how to solve it. And this is how. Let's listen to what happened.” So, these natural, not only places in a lesson that these opportunities for teaching can pop up, but that these mini lessons come straight from kids and how they are interacting and how they are taking up partnerships, whether it be mathematical or social. Mike: I think you're helping me address something that if I'm transparent about was challenging for me when I was a classroom teacher. I got a little bit nervous about what was happening and sometimes I would shut things down if I perceived partnerships to be, I don't know, overwhelming or maybe even messy. But you're making me think now that part of this work is actually noticing what are the assets that kids have in their social interactions in the way that they're playing together, collaborating together, the mathematics? And I think that's a big shift in my mind from the way that I was thinking about this work before. And I wonder, first of all, is this something that you all notice that teachers sometimes are challenged by? And two, how you talk to someone who's struggling with that question of like, “Oh my gosh, what's happening in my classroom?” Myuriel: Yes, I can totally understand how teachers might get overwhelmed. We hear this from, not only from teachers trying to do the work of counting collections, but even just using tools for students to problem-solve because it does get messy. I like the way Sue keeps emphasizing how it will be messy. When you have rich mathematical learning happening, and you're using tools and collections and you have 30 students having conversations, it definitely will get messy. But I would say that something that teachers can do to mitigate some of that messiness is to think about the logistics ahead of time and be intentional about what you are planning to do. So, some of the things that they may want to think about is: How are students going to access the counting collections? Where are you going to [put] the tools that they're going to be using? Where physically in the classrooms will students get together to have collections so that they have enough room to spread out and record and talk to each other? And just like Sue was mentioning: How do I partner students so that they do have a good experience, and they support each other? So, all of these things that might cost a bit of chaos if you don't think about them, you can actually think about each one of those ahead of time so that you do have a plan for each one of those.  Another thing that teachers may want to consider thinking about is, what do they want to pay attention to when they are facilitating or walking around? There's a lot that they need to pay attention to. Just like Sue mentioned, it is important for them to pay attention to something because you want to bring what's in the room to connect it and have these mini lessons of what students actually need. And also, thinking about after the counting collections: What worked and what didn't? And what changes do I want to make next time when I do this again? Just so that there is a process of improvement every time. Because as Sue had mentioned, it's not going to happen on day one. You are learning as a teacher, and the students are learning. So, everybody in that room is learning to make this a productive and joyful experience. Sue: Yeah, and another thing that I would definitely remind teachers about is that there's actually research out there about how important it is for kids to engage with one another's mathematical ideas. I'm so thankful that people are researching out there doing this work for us. And this goes along with what Myuriel was saying, but the expectations that we put on ourselves as teachers sometimes are too far. We're our biggest critique-ers of the work that we do. And of course we want things to go well, but to make it more low-risk for yourself. I think that when we lower those stakes, we're more prone to let kids take ownership of working together in these ways, to use language and communication that makes sense while doing math and using these cognitive abilities that are still in the process of developing. And I think they need to remember that it takes time to develop, and it's going to get there. And kids are going to learn. Kids are going to do some really big things with their understanding. But giving [yourself] space, the time to learn along with your students, I think is very critical so that you feel like it's manageable. You feel like you can do it again the next day. Mike: Tell me a little bit about how you have seen educators use things like authentic images or even video to help their students make sense of what it means to work in a partnership. What have you seen teachers do? Sue: Yeah. Not to mention how that is one sure way to get kids engaged. I don't know if you've been in a room full of first graders or kindergartners, but if you put a video image up that's them counting and showing how they are thinking about things, they are one-hundred-percent there with you. They love being acknowledged and recognized as being the doers and the sensemakers of mathematics. And it goes into this idea of how we position kids competently, and this is another way that we can do that. But capturing student thinking in photos or a short clip has really been a powerful tool to get kids to engage in each other's ideas in a deeper way. I think it allows teachers and students to pause and slow down and really focus in on the skill of noticing. I think people forget that noticing is a skill you have to teach. And you have to give opportunities for kids to actually do these things so they can see mathematically what's happening within the freeze-frame of this image, of this collection, and how we might ask questions to help facilitate and guide their thinking to think deeply about these ideas. And so, I've seen teachers use them with partners, and they may say, “Hey, here's one way that they were counting. How do you think they counted within the frame of this picture or this photo that we took?” And then kids will have these conversations. They'll engage mathematically what they think, and then they might show the video clip of the students actually counting. And they get to make predictions. They get to navigate the language around what they think. And it's just, again, been a really nice tool that has then branched out into whole-group discussions. So, you can use it with partnerships and engage certain kids in specific ways, but then being able to utilize that and leverage that in whole-group settings has really been powerful to see. Myuriel: I also recently observed a teacher with pictures, showing students different tools that different partners were using and having those discussions about, “Why did this tool work and why didn't this one?” or “What will you have to do if your collection gets bigger?” So, it is a great opportunity to really show from what they're using and having those discussions about what works and what doesn't, and “Why would I use this versus this?” from their own work. Mike: Myuriel, what you made me wonder is if you could apply this same idea of using video or images to help support some of those social goals that we were talking about for students as well. Myuriel: I think that you could. I can just imagine that if you see two students working together and supporting each other or asking some good questions and being curious, you could record them and then show that to the others to ask them what they're noticing. “How are these two students supporting each other in their learning?” Even “How are they being kind to each other when they make a mistake?” So, there is so much power in using video for not just the mathematical skills, but also for the social skills. Sue: Myuriel, when you're talking, you're reminding me about two particular students that we have watched, and we have recorded video around, actually, when they came to a disagreement.  There was this one instance when a couple of students came to a disagreement about what to call the next number of the sequence. And that was a really cool moment because we actually discovered, “Wow, these two peers had enough trust in each other to pause, to listen to both sides.” And then when it came time to actually call the number and the sequence, the other student actually trusted enough and listened to the reasoning of the other student to say, “OK, I'm going to go along with you, and I think that should be what the sequence is.” And it was just a really neat opportunity and—that this teacher actually showed in front of kids just to see what kids would say in response to that particular moment. Myuriel: It was actually one very cute, but very interesting moment when you see that second student who's listening to the other one. And actually at first she kind of argued with him a little bit about, “No, it's not this number.” But the second time around, when she counted, she paused right at that same spot where she had trouble before, and she set the number that he had suggested the earlier time so that you see that she's listening, she's considering someone else's ideas, and she's learning the correct sequence. Yes, that was really amazing to see. Sue: So, it's the sequence of numbers that they're working on, but think about all the social aspects of what is happening and developing, and I think that they're addressing it and that they're having to engage with [it]. It's [a] very complex situation that they're learning a lot of skills around in that very moment. Mike: You know, I wonder how an educator might think about their role once students are actually engaged with a partner. How do you all think about goals, or the role of the teacher, once students are working with a partner? Sue: I think that one of the things we're really thinking about and being more intentional about is: When do we actually interject, or when do we as teachers actually say something? When and how do we make those decisions? And for several years now, I've really taken on this notion that we are facilitators. Yes, we're teachers. But more than anything, we are facilitators of the students in our class, and we want to really give them the opportunity to work through some of these ideas. And we will have set up partnerships based on what we've seen and notes that we took as kids have been working. But it's an ever-innovated process, I think. And I think something that's always going to be on the forefront is that idea: How are we facilitating? How are we deciding when we want to say something or interject, and why? And what is it that we are trying to get kids to think about? Because I think we need to help students realize that they are always in the driver's seat of what they're doing, especially if they're in a partnership. And there are targeted things that we can have them maybe think about when we drop a question based on what we're noticing. Or maybe when they're stuck, and they're in the middle of negotiating something. But I really think that it starts there with us kind of thinking about: What is our role? Is it OK that we step back and we just watch even if they have to problem-solve through something that feels like, “Oh, I don't know if they're going to get through that moment.” But we've got to let them. We've got to give them opportunities to do that without having to rescue them every single time. Myuriel: And you're right, Sue, we've seen it so many times when if you just bite your tongue, 10 seconds later, it's happening, right? They're helping each other, and they get to the idea that you thought you had to bring up to them. But they were able to resolve it. So, if we only allow that time for them to process the idea or to revise their thinking or to allow the other partner to support their partner, it will happen. Sue: Yeah, and I think that doesn't mean that we can't set kids up. I've seen teachers launch the lesson with something a partner did before yesterday, and they will have referred to a protocol or something they're working on. And then as facilitators, we can then go out, and we might already be thinking about, “Oh, I want to be watching these two partnerships today”—having in mind, “OK, this is my target idea for them, my target goal for them.” So, there are definite ways that we can frame and decide who we want to watch and observe, but while in the balance of letting kids do what they're going to do and what the expectation of being surprised. Because kids always surprise us with their brilliance. Mike: Yeah, there's multiple things that came to mind as I was listening to you all talk about this. The first one is how it's possible to inadvertently condition kids to see the teacher coming and look and stop and potentially look for the teacher to say something. We actually do want to avoid that. We want to see their thinking.  The other piece is the difference between, as you said, potentially dropping a question and interjecting, as you said, Myuriel, biting your tongue and letting them persist through—whether it's an idea they're grappling with or a struggle for what to do next—that there's so much information in those moments that we can learn or that might help us think about what's next. It's a challenge, I think, because math culture in the United States is such that we're kind of trained to see something that looks like a mistake. “Let's get in there.” And I hear you giving people permission to say, “Actually, it's OK to step back and watch their thinking and watch them try to make sense of things because there's a big payoff there.” Sue: Absolutely. Yeah.  Myuriel: Yes. And, Mike, I think we as teachers—you feel the need of having to address every single “mistake” per either individual student or per partnership. And sometimes you feel like, “I have 30 students, how can I possibly do that?” And I think that's where the power of doing a share out from what you've observed, bringing everyone together, learning from what was in the room, right? Because just like Sue was saying, it's not that you don't ever set up kids with knowledge of what you've observed, but you bring the power. It's what you're bringing, what's in the room, what you've noticed. But you share it out, or you have students share it out, with everyone so that everyone is moving forward. Mike: I have a follow-up question for you all about goals for partnerships. I'm wondering how you think about the potential for partnerships as a way to help develop language, be it academic or social, for students. Are there particular practices that you imagine educators could take up if language development was one of their goals? Myuriel: I'm so glad you're asking that question because I don't think we can learn math without language. I don't think we can learn anything without language. And I think that working in partnerships provides such an authentic, meaningful way of developing language because students are in conversations with each other. And we know that conversation is one way that ideas develop conversations or even sharing your thinking. Sometimes we notice that as students are sharing their thinking, and they're listening to themselves, they catch themselves making a mistake, and they are able to revise their thinking based on what they are saying. So again, I think it is the perfect opportunity for students to mathematically learn counting sequence or socially learn how to negotiate and make sense of what they're going to represent, when they're counting, or to explain their thinking. And we know, of course, that one of the mathematical practices is justifying, explaining your thinking. So, it's important to provide those opportunities for students to do that in this kind of structural way. I also think that working in partnerships provides this opportunity for teachers to listen and notice if there's any language that students are starting to use that can be shared with others. So again, this idea that you hear it from someone in the room and that's going to help everybody else grow. Or that if students are doing something and you can name it, provide those terms to students. So, for example, just like I mentioned, somebody's explaining their thinking and through that they change their mind. They revised their thinking. Actually sharing that with the whole class and naming it: “Oh, they were revising their thinking” or sharing how they were explaining something with academic language so that others can also use that language as they're explaining their own thinking. So, I think that those are powerful ways to provide opportunities for everyone's academic language or social skills through language to be developed. Sue: Yeah, I think that another big idea that comes out of that language piece is just how kids are learning to make sense of how to be partners, especially our younger students, our younger mathematicians. They're really needing to figure out like, “Oh, what does it mean to take turns to speak about this and how I use my words in this way versus another?” And I think that's another big opportunity for kids to build those skills because we can't just assume that kids come into our classrooms knowing how to talk in these ways, how to address each other, how to engage respectfully, that they can disagree respectfully, even in partnerships. And we want them to have the time and space to be able to develop those skills through language as well. Mike: You know, I think the mental movie that I have for the point in time after children have engaged in any kind of partnership task, be it counting collections or something else, has really shifted. Because I think beforehand the way the movie ended was potentially sharing a student's representation if they had represented something on a piece of paper that showed what they had physically done with their things. And I still think that's valid and important, particularly if that's one of your goals.  But you're making me think a lot more about the potential of images of students at work as they're going through the process or video and how closing, or potentially opening the next time, with that really just kind of expands this idea of what's happening. Being able to look at a set of hands that are on a set of materials or in the process of moving materials or listening to language that's emerging from students in the form of a short video. There's a lot of richness that you could capture, and it's also a little bit more of a diverse way of showing what's going on. And it feels like another way to really position what you're doing—not just the output in the form of the paper representation—but what you're actually doing is valuable, and it's a contribution. And I think that just feels like there's a lot of potential in what you all are describing. Sue: I think you hit the nail on the head. We're trying, and it's hard work. But to be open to these ideas, to these possibilities. And like you said, it's positioning kids so drastically different than how we've been doing it for so many years. And how you're actually inviting kids to be contributors of this work that they are now. They have the knowledge. They are the ones that hold the knowledge in the room. And how we frame kids and what they're doing is I think very critical because kids learn from that, and kids have so many things to offer that we need to really be able to think about how we want to create those opportunities for kids. Myuriel: And, Mike, something that you said also made me think of just like we want to provide those opportunities for students to be creative and to show what they know. What you were talking about, having this new perspective, makes me think about also teachers being creative with how they use counting collections, right? There isn't just the one way. It doesn't mean that at the end of every counting collection, I have to have a share out right at the end and decide at that moment. I could start the day that way. I could start the next session that way. I could use a video. I could use a picture. I could have students share it. So, you can get creative. And I think that's the beauty also, because I think as a teacher, it's not only the students that are learning; you are learning along with them. Mike: That's a great place to stop. This has been an absolutely fabulous conversation. Thank you both so much for joining us. Myuriel: Thank you. Thank you so much for this opportunity. Sue: Thank you. Thanks for having us. Mike: This podcast is brought to you by The Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation, dedicated to inspiring and enabling all individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability. © 2025 The Math Learning Center | www.mathlearningcenter.org  

Happy New Year! Jake and Andrew ring in the New Year by talking a little college football before digging into all the latest Browns news, including Mike Vrabel's status, some roster moves from the team, some performances to highlight from their game against Miami, and some early thoughts on how to evaluate potential offensive changes coming in 2025 for the team. Thank you all for your support in 2024 and we look forward to a great 2025! Join and Support us by subscribing at BrownsFilmBreakdown.com! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Tech Latest podcast. Hosted by our tech coverage veterans, Katey Creel and Akito Tanaka, every Tuesday we will deliver the hottest trends and news from the sector. In this special year-end episode, Katey and Akito look back at the year's top tech stories, from supply chain shifts to EVs and the AI boom, as well as predict 2025's tech trends to watch. Find our tech coverage here, and register for our weekly #techAsia newsletter here. And for the Asian business, politics, economy and tech stories others miss, please subscribe to Nikkei Asia here. *After a short year-end break, Tech Latest will be back on Jan. 21 to bring you the freshest news from Asia's tech industry. Happy holidays!

I discuss my latest Substack, the rounding up of illegals and the dummies who indent on obstructing justice; a local teachers who is allegedly grooming students and the district that is covering it up; and I cover the lates in jab news and how the final results are in, that frankly we've known of from the start. Substack: https://theamericanclassroom.substack.com/p/molecular-communication Book Websites:  https://www.moneytreepublishing.com PROMO CODE: “AEFM” for 10% OFF https://armreg.co.uk  PROMO CODE: "americaneducationfm" for 15% off all books and products.  (I receive no kickbacks).

Listen to the top News from Australia in Hindi.

This episode is part of a new classroom resource series, written and recorded by ESOL teachers at Leeds City College. In this episode, Maya and David, two flatmates, are grocery shopping on a budget. Listen to them talk about rounding up numbers. Sound Effects from Pixabay

Bongani Bingwa speaks to Tshidi Madia, EWN Political Associate Editor about Cilliers Brink being voted out of the Tshwane mayoral office.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Bongani Bingwa speaks to Tshidi Madia, EWN Political Associate Editor about Cilliers Brink being voted out of the Tshwane mayoral office.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Doug Fifer is a 25-year veteran of the Anchorage P.D.  He's seen his share of homicides, suicides, financial scams, and sexual deviants.  In this episode, we learn about the unique challenges of working in law enforcement within a large, sparsely populated, rugged environment such as Alaska.  Few jurisdictions have to deal with 1600-pound grizzlies, towns inaccessible by road, near-perpetual darkness in winter, snowfall measured in feet, and a pandemic of alcoholism.  Doug Fifer will take us along with him to discuss hostage negotiations, homicide investigations, death notifications and more.  He has recently authored "Fifty Shades of True Crime."

It's not much of a show this week, but it's a show nonetheless! Join us as we have an existential crisis about why the news all feels so pointless at the moment, take solace in some nostalgia for kinda good not-songs, and plenty of our usual other antisocial nonsense. Listen, if you must! Has something we said, or failed to say, made you FEEL something? You can tell us all about it by joining the conversation on our Substack or you can send us an email here. Enjoy!Show RundownOpen — Remembering to remember things, especially Thom Brenneman6:36 — Why we're struggling to talk about the news today26:52 — The Billboard Hot 100 Game49:45 — Wrap-up! Reagan, and other chatterRelevant Linkage can be found by visiting https://brainiron.substack.com/, where, if you would like to support this and the other podcasting and blogging endeavors of the Brain Iron dot com media empire, you can also become a paying subscriber.

Thanks for listening to the Long Ball Futebol Podcast!Become a Long Ball Futebol Sócio for just £1 a month → https://www.patreon.com/LongBallFutebolThis week we round up every game from Jornada 3 of the 24/25 Primeira Liga season, including another massive win for Sporting, impressive performances from Porto and Braga, a first win for Arouca, Casa Pia's struggles, and much more!You can get in contact with the show on Twitter & Instagram @LongBallFutebol

The 101st edition of Tennessee 4-H Roundup has been taking place this week on the campus of University of Tennessee at Martin where more than 300 of the state's top 4-H'ers, staff and volunteers have gathered to celebrate the year's accomplishments.

#BRNAM #1758 | “Rounding Up” leads to checkout charity successes | Katie Kelting, Saint Louis University | #Tunein: broadcastretirementnetwork.com #JustTheFacts

Rounding Up Season 2 | Episode 18 – Counting Collections Guest: Danielle Robinson and Melissa Hedges Mike Wallus: Earlier this season, we released an episode focused on the complex and interconnected set of concepts that students engage with as they learn to count. In this follow-up episode, we're going to examine a powerful routine called “counting collections.” We'll be talking with Danielle Robinson and Dr. Melissa Hedges from the Milwaukee Public Schools about counting collections and the impact that this routine can have on student thinking.  Mike: Well, welcome to the podcast, Danielle and Melissa. I can't tell you how excited I am to talk with y'all about the practice of counting collections.  Danielle Robinson and Melissa Hedges: Thanks for having us. Yes, we're so excited to be here. Mike: I want to start this conversation by acknowledging that the two of you are actually part of a larger team of educators who really took this work on counting collections. You introduced it in the Milwaukee Public Schools. And, Melissa, I think I'll start with you. Can you take a moment to recognize the collaborators who have been a part of this work? Melissa: Absolutely. In addition to Danielle and myself, we are fortunate to work with three other colleagues: Lakesha King, Krista Beal, and Claire Madden. All three are early childhood coaches that actively support this work as well. Mike: So, Danielle, I wonder for some folks if we can help them see this practice more clearly. Can you spend time unpacking, what does counting collections look like in a classroom? If I walked in, what are some of the things that I might see? Danielle: Yeah, I think what's really amazing about counting collections is there might be some different ways that you might see counting collections happening in the classroom. When you walk into a classroom, you might see some students all over. Maybe they're sitting at tables, maybe they're on the carpet. And what they're doing is they're actually counting a baggie of objects. And really their job is to answer this question, this very simple but complicated question of, “How many?” And they get to decide how they want to count. Not only do they get to pick what they want to count, but they also get to pick their strategy of how they actually want to count that collection. They can use different tools. They might be using bowls or plates. They might be using 10-frames. They might be using number paths. You might see kiddos who are counting by ones. Danielle: You might see kids who are making different groupings. At times, you might also see kiddos [who] are in stations, and you might see a small group where a teacher is doing counting collections with a few kiddos. You might see them working with partners. And I think the beautiful piece of this and the unique part of counting collections within Milwaukee Public Schools is that we've been able to actually pair the counting trajectory from Doug Clements and Julie Sarama with counting collections where teachers are able to do an interview with their students, really see where they're at in their counting so that the kids are counting a just right collection for them—something that's not too easy, something that's not too hard, but something that is available for them to really push them in their understanding of counting. So, you're going to see kids counting different sizes. And we always tell the teachers it's a really beautiful moment when you're looking across the classroom and as a teacher, you can actually step back and know that every one of your kids are getting what they need in that moment. Because I think oftentimes, we really don't ever get to feel like that, where we feel like, “Wow, all my kids are getting what they need right now, and I know that I am providing the scaffolds that they need.” Mike: So, I want to ask you a few follow-ups, if I might, Danielle. Danielle: Yeah, of course.  Mike: There's a bit of language that you used initially where I'm paraphrasing. And tell me where I get this wrong. You use the language “simple yet complicated,” I think. Am I hearing that right? Danielle: I did. I did, yeah. Mike: Tell me about that. Danielle: I think it's so interesting because a lot of times when we introduce this idea of counting collections with our teachers, they're like, “Wait a minute, so I'm supposed to give this baggie of a bunch of things to my students, and they just get to go decide how they want to count it?” And we're like, “Yeah, that is absolutely what we're asking you to do.” And they feel nervous because this idea of the kids, they're answering how many, but then there's all these beautiful pieces a part of it. Maybe kids are counting by ones, maybe they're deciding that they want to make groups, maybe they're working with a partner, maybe they're using tools. It's kind of opened up this really big, amazing idea of the simple question of how many. But there's just so many things that can happen with it. Mike: There's two words that kept just flashing in front of my eyes as I was listening to you talk. And the words were access and differentiation. And I think you didn't explicitly say those things, but they really jump out for me in the structure of the task and the way that a teacher could take it up. Can you talk about the way that you think this both creates access and also the places where you see there's possibility for differentiation? Danielle: For sure. I'm thinking about a couple classrooms that I was in this week and thinking about once we've done the counting trajectory interview with our kiddos, you might have little ones who are still really working with counting to 10. So, they have collections that they can choose that are just at that amount of about 10. We might have some kiddos who are really working kind of in that range of 20 to 40. And so, we have collections that children can choose from there. And we have collections all the way up to about 180 in some cases. So, we kind of have this really nice, natural scaffold within there where children are told, “Hey, you can go get this just right color for you.” We have red collections, blue collections, green and yellow. Within that also, the children get to decide how they want to count. Danielle: So, if they are still really working on that verbal count sequence, then we allow them to choose to count by ones. We have tools for them, like number paths to help do that. Maybe we've got our kiddos who are starting to really think about this idea of unitizing and making groups of 10s. So, then what they might do is they might take a 10-frame and they might fill their 10-frame and then actually pour that 10-frame into a bowl, so they know that that bowl now is a collection of 10. And so, it's this really nice idea of helping them really start to unitize and to make different groupings. And I think the other beautiful piece, too, is that you can also partner. Students can work together and actually talk about counting together. And we found that that really supports them, too, of just that collaboration piece, too. Mike: So, you kind of started poking around the question that I was going to ask Melissa.   Danielle and Melissa: ( laugh ) Mike: You said the word “unitizing,” which is the other thing that was really jumping out because I taught kindergarten and first grade for about eight years. And in my head, immediately all of the different trajectories that kids are on when it comes to counting, unitizing, combining … those things start to pop out. But, Melissa, I think what you would say is there is a lot of mathematics that we can build for kids beyond say K–2, and I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about that. Melissa: Absolutely. So before I jump to our older kids, I'm just going to step back for a moment with our kindergarten, first- and second-graders. And even our younger ones. So, the mathematics that we know that they need to be able to count collections, that idea of cardinality, one-to-one correspondence, organization—Danielle did a beautiful job explaining how the kids are going to grab a bag, figure out how to count, it's up to them—as well as this idea of producing a set, thinking about how many, being able to name how many. The reason why I wanted to go back and touch on those is that we know that as children get older and they move into third, fourth, and fifth grade, those are understandings that they must carry with them. And sometimes those ideas aren't addressed well in our instructional materials. So, the idea of asking a first- and second-grader to learn how to construct a unit of 10 and know that 10 ones is one 10 is key, because when we look at where place value tends to fall apart in our upper grades. My experience has been it's fifth grade, where all of a sudden we're dealing with big numbers, we're moving into decimals, we're thinking about different size units, we've got fractions. There's all kinds of things happening.  Melissa: So, the idea of counting collections in the early elementary grades helps build kids' number sense, provides them with that confidence of magnitude of number. And then as they move into those either larger collections or different ways to count, we can make beautiful connections to larger place values. So, hundreds, thousands, ten thousands. Sometimes those collections will get big. All those early number relationships also build. So, those early number relationships, part-whole reasoning that numbers are composed and decomposed of parts. And then we've just seen lots really, really fun work about additive and multiplicative thinking. So, in a third-, fourth-, fifth-grade classroom, what I used to do is dump a cup full of lima beans in the middle of the table and say, “How many are there?” And there's a bunch there. So, they can count by ones. It's going to take a long time. And then once they start to figure out, “Oh wait, I can group these.” “Well, how many groups of five do you have?” And how we can extend to that from that additive thinking of five plus five plus five plus five to then thinking about and extending it to multiplicative thinking. So, I think the extensions are numerous.  Mike: There's a lot there that you said, and I think I wanted to ask a couple follow-ups. First thing that comes to mind is, we've been interviewing a guest for a different podcast … and this idea that unitizing is kind of a central theme that runs really all the way through elementary mathematics and certainly beyond that. But I really am struck by the way that this idea of unitizing and not only being able to unitize, but I think you can physically touch the units, and you can physically re-unitize when you pour those things into the cup. And it's giving kids a bit more space with the physical materials themselves before you step into something that might be more abstract. I'm wondering if that's something that you see as valuable for kids and maybe how you see that play out? Melissa: Yes, it's a great question. I will always say when we take a look at our standard base 10 blocks, “The person that really understands the construction of those base 10 blocks is likely the person [who] invented them.” They know that one little cube means one, and that all of a sudden these 10 cubes are fused together and we hold it up and we say, “Everybody, this is 10 ones. Repeat, one 10. What we find is that until kids have multiple experiences and opportunities over time to construct units beyond one, they really won't do it with deep understanding. And again, that's where we see it fall apart when they're in the fourth and fifth grade. And they're struggling just to kind of understand quantity and magnitude. So, the idea and the intentionality behind counting collections and the idea of unitizing is to give kids those opportunities that to be quite honest—and no disrespect to the hardworking curriculum writers out there—it is a tricky, tricky, tricky idea to develop in children through paper and pencil and workbook pages. Melissa: I think we have found over time that it's the importance of going, grabbing, counting, figuring it out. So, if my collection is bears, does that collection of 10 bears look the same as 10 little sharks look the same as 10 spiders? So, what is this idea of 10? And that they do it over and over and over and over again. And once they crack the code—that's the way I look at it—once our first- and second-graders crack the code of counting collections, they're like, “Oh, this is not hard at all.” And then they start to play with larger units. So, then they'll go, “Oh, wait, I can combine two groups of 10. I just found out that's 20. Can I make more 20s?” So, then we're thinking about counting not just by ones, not just by 10s, but by larger units. And I think that we've seen that pay off in so many tremendous ways. And certainly on the affective side, when kids understand what's happening, there's just this sense of joy and excitement and interest in the work that they do, and I actually think they see themselves learning. Mike: Danielle, do you want to jump in here?  Danielle: I think to echo that, I just recently was speaking with some teachers. And the principal was finally able to come and actually see counting collections happening. And what was so amazing is these were K–5 kiddos, 5-year-olds who were teaching the principal about what they were doing. This was that example where we want people to come in, and the idea is what are you learning? How do you know you've learned it, thinking about that work of Hattie? And these 5-year-olds were telling him exactly what they were learning and how they were learning it and talking about their strategies. And I just felt so proud of the K–5 teacher who shared that with me because her principal was blown away and was seeing just the beauty that comes from this routine. Mike: We did an episode earlier this year on place value, and the speaker did a really nice job of unpacking the ideas around it. I think what strikes me, and at this point I might be sounding a bit like a broken record, is the extent to which this practice makes place value feel real. These abstract ideas around unitizing. And I think, Melissa, I'm going back to something you said earlier where you're like, “The ability to do this in an abstract space where you potentially are relying on paper and pencil or even drawing, that's challenging.” Whereas this puts it in kids' hands, and you physically re-unitize something, which is such a massive deal. This idea that one 10 and 10 ones have the same value even though we're looking at them differently, simultaneously. That's such a big deal for kids, and it just really stands out for me as I hear you all talk. Melissa: I had the pleasure of working with a group of first-grade teachers the other day, and we were looking at student work for a simple task that the kids were asked to do. I think it was 24 plus seven, and so it was just a very quick PLC. Look at this work. Let's think about what they're doing. And many of the children had drawn what the teachers referred to as sticks and circles or sticks and dots. And I said, “Well, what do those sticks and dots mean?” Right? “Well, of course the stick is the 10 and the dot is the one.” And I said, “There's lots of this happening,” I said, “Let's pause for a minute and think, ‘To what degree do you think your children understand that that line means 10 and that dot means one? And that there's some kind of a connection, meaningful connection for them just in that drawing.'” It got kind of quiet, and they're like, “Well, yep, you're right. You're right. They probably don't understand what that is.” And then one of the teachers very beautifully said, “This is where I see counting collections helping.” It was fantastic. Mike: Danielle, I want to shift and ask you a little bit about representation. Just talk a bit about the role of representing the collection once the counting process and that work has happened. What do you all ask kids to do in terms of representation and can you talk a little bit about the value of that? Danielle: Right, absolutely. I think one thing that as we continue to go through in thinking about this routine and the importance of really helping our students make sense and count meaningfully, I think we will always go back to our math teaching framework that's been laid out for us through “Taking Action,” “Principles to Action,” “Catalyzing Change.” And really thinking about the power of using multiple representations. And how, just like you said, we want our students to be able to be physically unitizing, so we have that aspect of working with our actual collections. And then how do we help our students understand that “You have counted your collection. Now what I want you to do is, I want you to actually visually represent this. I want you to draw how you counted.” And so, what we talk about with the kids is, “Hey, how you have counted. If you have counted by ones, I should be able to see that on your paper. I should be able to look at your paper, not see your collection and know exactly how you counted. If you counted by tens, I should be able to see, ‘Oh my gosh, look, that's their bowl. I see their bowls, I see their plates, I see their tens inside of there.'”  Danielle: And to really help them make those connections moving back and forth between those representations. And I think that's also that piece, too, for them that then they can really hang their hat on. “This is how I counted. I can draw a picture of this. I can talk about my strategy. I can share with my friends in my classroom.” And then that's how we like to close with our counting collections routine is really going through and picking a piece of student work and really highlighting a student's particular strategy. Or even just highlighting several and being like, “Look at all this work they did today. Look at all of this mathematical thinking.” So, I think it's a really important and powerful piece, especially with our first- and second-graders, too. We really bring in this idea of equations, too. So, this idea of, “If I've counted 73, and I've got my seven groups of 10, I should have 10 plus 10 plus 10, right? All the way to 70. And then adding my three.” So, I think it's just a continuous idea of having our kids really developing that strong understanding of meaningful counting, diving into place value. Mike: I'm really struck by the way that you described the protocol where you said you're asking kids to really clearly make sure that what they're doing aligns with their drawing. The other piece about that is it feels like one, that sets kids up to be able to share their thinking in a way where they've got a scaffold that they've created for themself. The other thing that it really makes me think about is how if I'm a teacher and I'm looking at student work, I can really use that to position that student's idea as valuable. Or position that student's thinking as something that's important for other people to notice or attend to. So, you could use this to really raise a student's ideas status or raise the student status as well. Does that actually play out in a reality? Danielle: It does actually. So, a couple of times what I will do is I will go into a classroom. And oftentimes it can be kind of a parent for which students may just not have the strongest mathematical identity or may not feel that they have a lot of math agency in the space. And so, one thing that I will really intentionally do and work with the teacher to do is, “You know what? We are going to share that little one's work today. We're going to share that work because this is an opportunity to really position that child as a mathematician and to position that child as someone who has something to offer. And the fact that they were able to do this really hard work.” So, that is something that is very near and dear to us to really help our teachers think of these different ways to ensure that this is a routine that is for all of our children, for each and every child that is in that space. So, that is absolutely something that we find power in and seek to help our teachers find as well. Mike: Well, I would love for each of you to just weigh in on this next question. What has really come to mind is how different this experience of mathematics is from what a lot of adults and unfortunately what a lot of kids might experience in elementary school. I'm wondering if both of you would talk a bit about what does this look like in classrooms? How does this impact the lived experience of kids and their math identities? Can you just talk a little bit about that? Melissa: I can start. This is Melissa. So, we have four beliefs on our little math team that we anchor our work around every single day. And we believe that mathematics should be humanizing, healing, liberating and joyful. And so, we talk a lot about when you walk into a classroom, how do you know that mathematics instruction is humanizing, which means our children are placed at the center of this work? It's liberating. They see themselves in it. They're able to do it. It's healing. Healing for the teacher as well as for the student. And healing in that the student sees themselves as capable and able to do this, and then joyful that it's just fun and interesting and engaging. I think, over time, what we've seen is it helps us see those four beliefs come to life in every single classroom that's doing it. When that activity is underway and children are engaged and interested, there's a beautiful hum that settles over the room. And sometimes you have to remind the teacher step back, take a look at what is happening. Melissa: Those guys are all engaged. They're all interested. They're all doing work that matters to them because it's their work, it's their creation. It's not a workbook page, it's not a fill in the blank. It's not a do what I do. It's, you know what? “We have faith in you. We believe that you can do this,” and they show us time and time again that they can.  Danielle: I'll continue to echo that. Where for Milwaukee Public Schools and in the work that we are seeking to do is really creating these really transformative math spaces for, in particular, our Black and brown children. And really just making sure that they are seeing themselves as mathematicians, that they see themselves within this work, and that they are able to share their thinking and have their brilliance on display. And also, to work through the mathematical processes, too, right? This routine allows you to make mistakes and try a new strategy.  Danielle: I had this one little guy a couple months ago, he was working in a pretty large collection, and I walked by him and he was making groups of two, and I was like, “Oh, what are you working on?” And he's like, “I'm making groups of two.” And I thought to myself, I was like, “Oh boy, that's going to take him a long time” cause they had a really big collection. And I kind of came back around and he had changed it and was making groups of 10. So, it really creates a space where they start to calibrate and they are able to engage in that agency for themselves. I think the last piece I'd like to add is to really come to it from the teacher side as well … is that what Melissa spoke about was those four beliefs. And I think what we've also found is that county collections has been really healing for our teachers, too. We've had teachers who have actually told us that this helped me stay in teaching. I found a passion for mathematics again that I thought I'd lost. And I think that's another piece that really keeps us going is seeing not only is this transformative for our kids, cause they deserve the best, but it's also been really transformative for our teachers as well to see that they can teach math in a different way.  Mike: Absolutely, and I think you really got to this next transition point that I had in mind when I was thinking about this podcast, which is, listening to the two of you, it's clear that this is an experience that can be transformative mathematically and in terms of what a child or even a teacher's lived experience with mathematics is. Can you talk a little bit about what might be some very first steps that educators might take to get started with this? Danielle: Absolutely. I think one thing, as Melissa and I were kind of thinking about this, is someone who is like, “Oh my gosh, I really want to try this.” I think the first piece is to really take stock of your kiddos. If you're interested in diving into the research of Clements and Sarama and working with the county trajectory, we would love for you to Google that and go to learningtrajectories.org. But I think the other piece is to even just do a short little interview with your kids. Ask each of your little ones, “Count as high as you can for me and jot down what you're noticing.” Give them a collection of 10 of something. It could be counters, it could be pennies. See how they count that group of 10. Are they able to have that one-to-one? Do they have that verbal count sequence? Do they have that cardinality? Can they tell you that there is 10 if you ask them again, “How many?”? Danielle: If they can do that, then go ahead and give them 31. Give them 31 of something. Have them count and kind of just see the range of kiddos that you have and really see where is that little challenge I might want to give them. I think another really nice piece is once you dive into this work, you are never going to look at the dollar section different. You are always just start gathering things like pattern blocks. I started with noodles. That is how I started counting collections in my classroom. I used a bunch of erasers that I left over from my prize box. I use noodles, I use beads, bobby pins, rocks, twigs. I mean, start kind of just collecting. It doesn't have to be something that you spend your money on. This can be something that you already use, things that you have. I think that's one way that you can kind of get started. Then also, procedures, procedures, procedures, like go slow to go fast. Once you've got your collections, really teach your kids how to respect those collections. Anchor charts are huge. We always say, when I start this with 4-year-olds, our first lesson is, “This is how we open the bag today. This is how we take our collections out.” So, we always recommend go slow to go fast, really help the kids understand how to take care of the collections, and then they'll fly from there.  Mike: So, Melissa, I think this is part two of that question, which is, when you think about the kinds of things that helped you start this work and sustain this work in the Milwaukee Public Schools, do you have any recommendations that you think might help other folks? Melissa: Yeah. My first entry point into learning about counting collections other than through an incredibly valued colleague [who] learned about it at a conference, was to venture into the TED. I think it's TED, the teacher resource site, and that was where I found some initial resources around how do we do this? We were actually getting ready to teach a course that at the time Danielle was going to be a student in, and we knew that we wanted to do this thing called counting collection. So, it's like, “Well, let's get our act together on this.” So, we spent a lot of time looking at that. There's some lovely resources in there. And since the explosion of the importance of early mathematics has happened in American mathematical culture, which I think is fantastic, wonderful sites have come up. One of our favorites that we were talking about is Dreme. D-R-E-M-E, the Dreme website. Fantastic resources. Melissa: The other one Danielle mentioned earlier, it's just learningtrajectories.org. That's the Clements and Sarama research, which, 15 years ago, we were charged as math educators to figure out how to get that into the hands of teachers, and so that's one of the ways that they've done that. A couple of books that come to mind is the [“Young Children's Mathematics: Cognitively Guided Instruction in Early Childhood Education”]. Fantastic. If you don't have it and you're a preschool teacher and you're interested in math, get it. And then of course, the “Choral Counting & Counting Collections” book by Franke, Kazemi, Turrou. Yeah, so I think those are some of the big ones. If you want just kind of snippets of where to go, go to the Dreme, D-R-E-M-E, and you'll get some lovely, lovely hits. There's some very nice videos. Yeah, just watch a kid count ( laughs ). Mike: I think that's a great place to stop. I can't thank you two enough for joining us. It has really been a pleasure talking with both of you. Danielle: Thank you so much.  Melissa: Thanks for your interest in our work. We really appreciate it. Mike: With the close of this episode, we are at the end of season two for Rounding Up, and I want to just thank everyone who's been listening for your support, for the ways that you're taking these ideas up in your own classrooms and schools. We'll be taking the summer off to connect with new speakers, and we'll be back with season three this fall. In the meantime, if you have topics or ideas that you'd like for us to talk about, let us know. You can reach out to us at mikew@mathlearningcenter.org. What are some things you'd like us to talk about in the coming year? Have a great summer. We'll see you all in the fall.  Mike: This podcast is brought to you by The Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation, dedicated to inspiring and enabling all individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability. © 2024 The Math Learning Center | www.mathlearningcenter.org

Rounding Up Season 2 | Episode 16 – Strengthening Tasks Through Student Talk Guests: Dr. Amber Candela and Dr. Melissa Boston Mike Wallus: One of the goals I had in mind when we first began recording Rounding Up was to bring to life the best practices that we aspire to in math education and to offer entry points so that educators would feel comfortable trying them out in their classrooms. Today, we're talking with Drs. Amber Candela and Melissa Boston about powerful but practical strategies for supporting student talk in the elementary math classroom.  Welcome to the podcast, Amber and Melissa. We're really excited to be talking with you today. Amber Candela: Thank you for having us.  Melissa Boston: Yes, thank you. Mike: So we've done previous episodes on the importance of offering kids rich tasks, but one of the things that you two would likely argue is that rich tasks are necessary, but they're not necessarily sufficient, and that talk is actually what makes the learning experience really blossom. Is that a fair representation of where you all are at? Melissa: Yes. I think that sums it up very well. In our work, which we've built on great ideas from Smith and Stein, about tasks, and the importance of cognitively challenging tasks and work on the importance of talk in the classroom. Historically, it was often referred to as “talk moves.” We've taken up the term “discourse actions” to think about how do the actions a teacher takes around asking questions and positioning students in the classroom—and particularly these talk moves or discourse actions that we've named “linking” and “press”—how those support student learning while students are engaging with a challenging task. Mike: So I wonder if we could take each of the practices separately and talk through them and then talk a little bit about how they work in tandem. And Melissa, I'm wondering if you could start unpacking this whole practice of linking. How would you describe linking and the purpose it plays for someone who, the term is new for them? Melissa: I think as mathematics teachers, when we hear linking, we immediately think about the mathematics and linking representations or linking strategies. But we're using it very specifically here as a discourse action to refer to how a teacher links student talk in the classroom and the explicit moves a teacher makes to link students' ideas.  Sometimes a linking move is signaled by the teacher using a student's name, so referring to a strategy or an idea that a student might've offered. Sometimes linking might happen if a teacher revoices a student's idea and puts it back out there for the class to consider. The idea is in the way that we're using linking, that it's links within the learning community, so links between people in the classroom and the ideas offered by those people, of course. But the important thing here that we're looking for is how the links between people are established in the verbal, the explicit talk moves or discourse actions that the teacher's making. Mike: What might that sound like? Melissa: So that might sound like, “Oh, I noticed that Amber used a table. Amber, tell us how you used a table.” And then after Amber would explain her table, I might say, “Mike, can you tell me what this line of Amber's table means?” or “How is her table different from the table you created?” Mike: You're making me think about those two aspects, Melissa, this idea that there's mathematical value for the class, but there's also this connectivity that happens when you're doing linking. And I wonder how you think about the value that that has in a classroom.  Melissa: We definitely have talked about that in our work as well. I'm thinking about how a teacher can elevate a student's status in mathematics by using their name or using their idea, just marking or identifying something that the student said is mathematically important that's worthy of the class considering further. Creating these opportunities for student-to-student talk by asking students to compare their strategies or if they have something to add on to what another student said. Sometimes just asking them to repeat what another student said so that there's a different accountability for listening to your peers. If you can count on the teacher to revoice everything, you could tune out what your peers are saying, but if you might be asked to restate what one of your classmates had just said, now there's a bit more of an investment in really listening and understanding and making sense. Mike: Yeah, I really appreciate this idea that there's a way in which that conversation can elevate a student's ideas, but also to raise a student's status by naming their idea and positioning it as important. Melissa: I have a good example from a high school classroom where a student [...] was able to solve the contextual problem about systems of equations, so two equations, and it was important for the story when the two equations or the two lines intersected. And so one student was able to do that very symbolically. They created a graph, they solved the system of equations where another student said, “Oh, I see what you did. You found the difference in the cost per minute, and you also found the difference in the starting point, and then one had to catch up to the other.”  And so the way that the teacher kind of positioned those two strategies, one had used a sensemaking approach based really in the context. The other had used their knowledge of algebra. And by positioning them together, it was actually the student who had used the algebra had higher academic status, but the student who had reasoned through it had made this breakthrough that was really the aha moment for the class. Mike: That is super cool.  Amber, can we shift to press and ask you to talk a little bit about what press looks like? Amber: Absolutely. So how Melissa was talking about linking is holding students accountable to the community; press is more around holding students accountable to the mathematics.  And so the questions the teacher is going to ask is going to be more related specifically to the mathematics. So, “Can you explain your reasoning?” “How did you get that answer?” “What does this x mean?” “What does that intersection point mean?” And so the questions are more targeted at keeping the math conversation in the public space longer. Mike: I thought it was really helpful to just hear the example that Melissa shared. I'm wondering if there's an example that comes to mind that might shed some light on this. Amber: So when I'm in elementary classrooms and teachers are asking their kids about different problems, and kids will be like, “I got 2.” OK, “How did you get 2?” “What operation did you use?” “Why did you use addition when you could have used something else?”  So it's really pressing at the, “Yes, you got the answer, but how did you get the answer?” “How does it make sense to you?”, so that you're making the kids rather than the teacher justify the mathematics that's involved. And they're the ones validating their answers and saying, “Yes, this is why I did this because…” Mike: I think there was a point when I was listening to the two of you speak about this where, and forgive me if I paraphrase this a little bit, but you had an example where a teacher was interacting with a student and the student said something to the effect of, “I get it” or “I understand.” And the teacher came back and she said, “And what do you understand?” And it was really interesting because it threw the justification back to the student. Amber: Right. Really what the linking and press does, it keeps the math actionable longer to all of the peers in the room. So it's having this discussion out loud publicly. So if you didn't get the problem fully all the way, you can hear your peers through the press moves, talk about the mathematics, and then you can use the linking moves to think through, “Well, maybe if Mike didn't understand, if he revoices Melissa's comment, he has the opportunity to practice this mathematics speaking it.” And then you might be able to take that and be like, “Oh, wait, I think I know how to finish solving the problem now.” Mike: I think the part that I want to pull back and linger on a little bit is [that] part of the purpose of press is to keep the conversation about the mathematics in the space longer for kids to be able to have access to those ideas. I want y'all to unpack that just a little bit. Amber: Having linking and press at the end is holding the conversation longer in the classroom. And so the teacher is using the press moves to get at the mathematics so the kids can access it more. And then by linking, you're bringing in the community to that space and inviting them to add: “What do you agree [with]?” “Do you disagree?” “Can you revoice what someone said?” “Do you have any questions about what's happening?” Melissa: So when we talk about discourse actions, the initial discourse action would be the questions that the teacher asks. So there's a good task to start with. Students have worked on this task and produced some solution strategies. Now we're ready to discuss them. The teacher asks some questions so that students start to present or share their work and then it's after students' response [that] linking and press come in as these follow-up moves to do what Amber said: to have the mathematics stay in the public space longer, to pull more kids into the public space longer.  So we're hoping that by spending more time on the mathematics, and having more kids access the mathematics, that we're bringing more kids along for the ride with whatever mathematics it is that we're learning. Mike: You're putting language to something that I don't know that I had before, which is this idea that the longer we can keep the conversation about the ideas publicly bouncing around—there are some kids who may need to hear an idea or a strategy or a concept articulated in multiple different ways to piece together their understanding. Amber: And like Melissa was saying earlier, the thing that's great about linking is oftentimes in a classroom space, teachers ask a question, kids answer, the teacher moves on. The engagement does drop. But by keeping the conversation going longer, the linking piece of it, you might get called on to revoice, so you need to be actively paying attention to your peers because it's on the kids now. The math authority has been shared, so the kids are the ones also making sense of what's happening. But it's on me to listen to my peers because if I disagree, there's an expectation that I'll say that. Or if I agree or I might want to add on to what someone else is saying.  So oftentimes I feel like this pattern of teacher-student-teacher-student-teacher-student happens, and then what can start to happen is teacher-student-student-student-teacher. And so it kind of creates this space where it's not just back and forth, it kind of popcorns more around with the kids. Mike: You are starting to touch on something that I did want to talk about, though, because I think when I came into this conversation, what was in my head is, like, how this supports kids in terms of their mathematical thinking. And I think where you two have started to go is: What happens to kids who are in a classroom where link and press are a common practice? And what happens to classrooms where you see this being enacted on a consistent basis? What does it mean for kids? What changes about their mathematical learning experience? Melissa: You know, we observe a lot of classrooms, and it's really interesting when you see even primary grade students give an answer and immediately say, you know, “I think it's 5 because …,” and they provide their justification just as naturally as they provide their answer or they're listening to their peers and they're very eager to say, “I agree with you; I disagree with you, and here's why” or “I did something similar” or “Here's how my diagram is slightly different.”  So to hear children and students taking that up is really great. And it just—a big shift in the amount of time that you hear the teacher talking versus the amount of time you hear children talking and what you're able to take away as the teacher or the educator formatively about what they know and understand based on what you're hearing them say. And so [in] classrooms where this has become the norm, you see fewer instances where the teacher has to use linking and press because students are picking this up naturally. Mike: As we were sitting here and I was listening to y'all talk, Amber, the thing that I wanted to come back to is [that] I started reflecting on my own practice and how often, even if I was orchestrating or trying to sequence, it was teacher-student-teacher-student-teacher-student. It bounced back to me, and I'm really kind of intrigued by this idea, teacher-student-student-student-teacher—that the discourse, it's moving from a back and forth between one teacher, one student, rinse and repeat, and more students actually taking up the discourse. Am I getting that right? Amber: Yes. And I think really the thought is we always want to talk about the mathematics, but we also have to have something for the community. And that's why the linking is there because we also need to hold kids accountable to the community that they're in as much as we need to hold them accountable to the mathematics. Mike: So, Amber, I want to think about what does it look like to take this practice up? If you were going to give an educator a little nudge or maybe even just a starting point where teachers could take up linking and press, what might that look like? If you imagined kind of that first nudge or that first starting point that starts to build this practice? Amber: We have some checklists with sentence stems in [them], and I think it's taking those sentence stems and thinking about when I ask questions like, “How did you get that?” and “How do you know this about that answer?”, that's when you're asking about the mathematics. And then when you start to ask, “Do you agree with what so-and-so said? Can you revoice what they said in your own words?”, that's holding kids accountable to the community and just really thinking about the purpose of asking this question. Do I want to know about the math or do I want to build the conversation between the students? And then once you realize what you want that to be, you have the stem for the question that you want to ask. Mike: Same question, Melissa. Melissa: I think if you have the teacher who is using good tasks and asking those good initial questions that encourage thinking, reasoning, explanations, even starting by having them try out, once a student gives you a response, asking, “How do you know?” or “How did you get that?” and listening to what the student has to say. And then as the next follow-up, thinking about that linking move coming after that. So even a very formulaic approach where a student gives a response, you use a press move, hear what the student has to say, and then maybe put it back out to the class with a linking move. You know, “Would someone like to repeat what Amber just said?” or “Can someone restate that in their own words?” or whatever the linking move might be. Mike: So if these two practices are new to someone who's listening, are there any particular resources or recommendations that you'd share with someone who wants to keep learning? Amber: We absolutely have resources. We wrote an article for the NCTM's MTLT [Mathematics Teacher: Learning and Teaching PK-12] called “Discourse Actions to Promote Student Access .” And there are some vignettes in there that you can read through and then there [are] checklists with sentence stems for each of the linking and press moves. Melissa: Also, along with that article, we've used a lot of the resources from NCTM's Principles to Actions [Professional Learning] Toolkit.   that's online, and some of the resources are free and accessible to everyone. Amber: And if you wanted to dig in a bit more, we do have a book called Making Sense of Mathematics to Inform Instructional Quality. And that goes in-depth with all of our rubrics and has other scenarios and videos around the linking and press moves along with other parts of the rubrics that we were talking about earlier. Mike: That's awesome. We will link all of that in our show notes.  Thank you both so much for joining us. It was a real pleasure talking with you. Amber: Thanks for having us.  Melissa: Thank you. Mike: This podcast is brought to you by The Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation, dedicated to inspiring and enabling all individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability. © 2024 The Math Learning Center | www.mathlearningcenter.org References and Resources: NCTM: https://pubs.nctm.org/view/journals/mtlt/113/4/article-p266.xml#:~:text=Discourse%20actions%20provide%20access%20to,up%20on%20contributions%20from%20students ERIC: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1275372 https://www.nctm.org/PtAToolkit/ https://www.nctm.org/uploadedFiles/Conferences_and_Professional_Development/Annual_Meetings/LosAngeles2022/Campaigns/12-21_PtA_Toolkit.pdf?utm_source=nctm&utm_medium=web&utm_campaign=LA2022&utm_content=PtA+Toolkit

Bryony and Michael round up the eleventh season of Cleaning Up this week. They explore the themes running through the episodes, from theories of change to innovation, and discuss the things that surprised them, the moments they liked (or didn't) and reasons for optimism for the transition.  Links: Ep149: Material World - Ed Conway: https://www.cleaningup.live/material-world-ep149-ed-conway/ Ep150: Selling Sustainability - Solitaire Townsend: https://www.cleaningup.live/selling-sustainability-ep150-solitaire-townsend/Ep151: Redesigning Mining - Mark Cutifani: https://www.cleaningup.live/redesigning-mining-ep151-mark-cutifani/ Ep152: Can We Have a Habitable Planet? - David Wallace-Wells: https://www.cleaningup.live/can-we-have-an-habitable-planet-ep152-david-wallace-wells/ Ep153: Shedding Light on Energy's Dirty Secrets - Lauri Myllyvirta: https://www.cleaningup.live/shedding-light-on-energys-dirty-secrets-ep153-lauri-myllyvirta/ Ep154: Green Heat (And Cooling) Under Our Feet - Tamsin Lishman: https://www.cleaningup.live/green-heat-and-cooling-under-our-feet-ep154-tamsin-lishman/ Ep155: Extreme Electrochemistry - Prof. Donald Sadoway: https://www.cleaningup.live/extreme-electrochemistry-for-a-sustainable-future-ep155-prof-donald-sadoway/ Ep156: A Magnificent Woman And Her Flying Machines - Bonny Simi: https://www.cleaningup.live/a-magnificent-woman-and-her-flying-machines-ep156-bonny-simi/ A11: The Five Horsemen of the Transition: https://www.cleaningup.live/audioblog-11-net-zero-will-be-harder-than-you-think-and-easier-part-i-harder-1/ A12: The Five Superheroes of the Transition: https://www.cleaningup.live/audioblog-12-net-zero-will-be-harder-than-you-think-and-easier-part-ii-easier/Ep157: The Methane Hunters - Sebastien Biraud & Sharon Wilson: https://www.cleaningup.live/the-methane-hunters-ep157-dr-sebastien-biraud-sharon-wilson/Ep 158: Absolutely Electrifying - Saul Griffith: https://www.cleaningup.live/absolutely-electrifying-ep158-saul-griffith/

It's March, the month of daffodils, pussy willow and lambs - what better time to pay a visit to Twig Farm!Paula Steer is one of a new breed of shepherdesses blazing a trail across social media. Paula's been farming sheep farm at Twig Farm in Devon for the past twenty years, following in the footsteps of her great-great grandmother Lily Warne. Despite battling a brain tumour this irrepressible female sheep farmer is also writing her memoirs. I started by asking her how she made the leap from accountancy to sheep…To visit Paula's divine shop, Lily Warne Wool, click here  

Hi! It's Leah the dog walker, host of FitPet Boston Talks. Today, I discussed a recent situation with a loose dog off leash in the woods. I helped a fellow dog walker catch her dog back after being on the run for about an hour.  @fitpetboston FitPet Boston Talks is a production of FitPet Boston LLC 

Rounding Up Season 2 | Episode 13 – Rough Draft Math Guest: Dr. Amanda Jansen Mike Wallus: What would happen if teachers consistently invited students to think of their ideas in math class as a rough draft? What impact might this have on students' participation, their learning experience, and their math identity? Those are the questions we'll explore today with Dr. Mandy Jansen, the author of “Rough Draft Math,” on this episode of Rounding Up.  Mike: Well, welcome to the podcast, Mandy. We are excited to be talking with you.  Mandy Jansen: Thanks, Mike. I'm happy to be here.  Mike: So, I'd like to start by asking you where the ideas involved in “Rough Draft Math” originated. What drove you and your collaborators to explore these ideas in the first place?  Mandy: So, I work in the state of Delaware. And there's an organization called the Delaware Math Coalition, and I was working in a teacher study group where we were all puzzling together—secondary math teachers—thinking about how we could create more productive classroom discussions. And so, by productive, one of the ways we thought about that was creating classrooms where students felt safe to take intellectual risks, to share their thinking when they weren't sure, just to elicit more student participation in the discussions. One way we went about that was, we were reading chapters from a book called “Exploring Talk in School” that was dedicated to the work of Doug Barnes. And one of the ideas in that book was, we could think about fostering classroom talk in a way that was more exploratory. Exploratory talk, where you learn through interaction. Students often experience classroom discussions as an opportunity to perform. "I want to show you what I know.” And that can kind of feel more like a final draft. And the teachers thought, “Well, we want students to share their thinking in ways that they're more open to continue to grow their thinking.” So, in contrast to final draft talk, maybe we want to call this rough draft talk because the idea of exploratory talk felt like, maybe kind of vague, maybe hard for students to understand. And so, the term “rough draft talk” emerged from the teachers trying to think of a way to frame this for students.  Mike: You're making me think about the different ways that people perceive a rough draft. So, for example, I can imagine that someone might think about a rough draft as something that needs to be corrected. But based on what you just said, I don't think that's how you and your collaborators thought about it, nor do I think that probably is the way that you framed it for kids. So how did you invite kids to think about a rough draft as you were introducing this idea?  Mandy: Yeah, so we thought that the term “rough draft” would be useful for students if they have ever thought about rough drafts in maybe language arts. And so, we thought, “Oh, let's introduce this to kids by asking, ‘Well, what do you know about rough drafts already? Let's think about what a rough draft is.'” And then we could ask them, “Why do you think this might be useful for math?” So, students will brainstorm, “Oh yeah, rough draft, that's like my first version” or “That's something I get the chance to correct and fix.” But also, sometimes kids would say, “Oh, rough drafts … like the bad version. It's the one that needs to be fixed.” And we wanted students to think about rough drafts more like, just your initial thinking, your first ideas; thinking that we think of as in progress that can be adjusted and improved. And we want to share that idea with students because sometimes people have the perception that math is, like, you're either right or you're wrong, as opposed to something that there's gradients of different levels of understanding associated with mathematical thinking. And we want math to be more than correct answers, but about what makes sense to you and why this makes sense. So, we wanted to shift that thinking from rough drafts being the bad version that you have to fix to be more like it's OK just to share your in-progress ideas, your initial thinking. And then you're going to have a chance to keep improving those ideas.  Mike: I'm really curious, when you shared that with kids, how did they react? Maybe at first, and then over time? Mandy: So, one thing that teachers have shared that's helpful is that during a class discussion where you might put out an idea for students to think about, and it's kind of silent, you get crickets. If teachers would say, “Well, remember it's OK to just share your rough drafts.” It's kind of like letting the pressure out. And they don't feel like, “Oh wait, I can't share unless I totally know I'm correct. Oh, I can just share my rough drafts?” And then the ideas sort of start popping out onto the floor like popcorn, and it really kind of opens up and frees people up. “I can just share whatever's on my mind.” So that's one thing that starts happening right away, and it's kind of magical that you could just say a few words and students would be like, “Oh, right, it's fine. I can just share whatever I'm thinking about.”  Mike: So, when we were preparing for this interview, you said something that has really stuck with me and that I've found myself thinking about ever since. And I'm going to paraphrase a little bit, but I think what you had said at that point in time was that a rough draft is something that you revise. And that leads into a second set of practices that we could take up for the benefit of our students. Can you talk a little bit about the ideas for revising rough drafts in a math classroom?  Mandy: Yes. I think when we think about rough drafts in math, it's important to interact with people thinking by first, assuming those initial ideas are going to have some merit, some strength. There's going to be value in those initial ideas. And then once those ideas are elicited, we have that initial thinking out on the floor. And so, then we want to think about, “How can we not only honor the strengths in those ideas, but we want to keep refining and improving?” So inviting revision or structuring revision opportunities is one way that we then can respond to students' thinking when they share their drafts. So, we want to workshop those drafts. We want to work to revise them. Maybe it's peer-to-peer workshops. Maybe it's whole-class situation where you may get out maybe an anonymous solution. Or a solution that you strategically selected. And then work to workshop that idea first on their strengths, what's making sense, what's working about this draft, and then how can we extend it? How can we correct it, sure. But grow it, improve it. Mandy: And promoting this idea that everyone's thinking can be revised. It's not just about your work needs to be corrected, and your work is fine. But if we're always trying to grow in our mathematical thinking, you could even drop the idea of correct and incorrect. But everyone can keep revising. You can develop a new strategy. You can think about connections between representations or connections between strategies. You can develop a new visual representation to represent what makes sense to you. And so, just really promoting this idea that our thinking can always keep growing. That's sort of how we feel when we teach something, right? Maybe we have a task that we've taught multiple times in a row, and every year that we teach it we may be surprised by a new strategy. We know how to solve the problem—but we don't have to necessarily just think about revising our work but revising our thinking about the ideas underlying that problem. So really promoting that sense of wonder, that sense of curiosity, and this idea that we can keep growing our thinking all the time.  Mike: Yeah, there's a few things that popped out when you were talking that I want to explore just a little bit. I think when we were initially planning this conversation, what intrigued me was the idea that this is a way to help loosen up that fear that kids sometimes feel when it does feel like there's a right or a wrong answer, and this is a performance. And so, I think I was attracted to the idea of a rough draft as a vehicle to build student participation. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the impact on their mathematical thinking, not only the way that you've seen participation grow, but also the impact on the depth of kids' mathematical thinking as well.  Mandy: Yes, and also I think there's impact on students' identities and sense of self, too. So, if we first start with the mathematical thinking. If we're trying to work on revising—and one of the lenses we bring to revising, some people talk about lenses of revising as accuracy and precision. I think, “Sure.” But I also think about connectedness and building a larger network or web of how ideas relate to one another. So, I think it can change our view of what it means to know and do math, but also extending that thinking over time and seeing relationships. Like relationships between all the different aspects of rational number, right? Fractions, decimals, percents, and how these are all part of one larger set of ideas. So, I think that you can look at revision in a number of different grain sizes.  Mandy: You can revise your thinking about a specific problem. You can revise your thinking about a specific concept. You can revise your thinking across a network of concepts. So, there's lots of different dimensions that you could go down with revising. But then this idea that we can see all these relationships with math … then students start to wonder about what other relationships exist that they hadn't thought of and seen before. And I think it can also change the idea of, “What does it mean to be smart in math?” Because I think math is often treated as this right or wrong idea, and the smart people are the ones that get the right idea correct, quickly. But we could reframe smartness to be somebody who is willing to take risk and put their initial thinking out there. Or someone who's really good at seeing connections between people's thinking. Or someone who persists in continuing to try to revise. And just knowing math and being smart in math is so much more than this speed idea, and it can give lots of different ways to show people's competencies and to honor different strengths that students have.  Mike: Yeah, there are a few words that you said that keep resonating for me. One is this idea of connections. And the other word that I think popped into my head was “insights.” The idea that what's powerful is that these relationships, connections, patterns, that those are things that can be become clearer or that one could build insights around. And then, I'm really interested in this idea of shifting kids' understanding of what mathematics is away from answer-getting and speed into, “Do I really understand this interconnected bundle of relationships about how numbers work or how patterns play out?” It's really interesting to think about all of the ramifications of a process like rough draft work and how that could have an impact on multiple levels.  Mandy: I also think that it changes what the classroom space is in the first place. So, if the classroom space is now always looking for new connections, people are going to be spending more time thinking about, “Well, what do these symbols even mean?” As opposed to pushing the symbols around to get the answer that the book is looking for.  Mike: Amen. Mandy: And I think it's more fun. There are all kinds of possible ways to understand things. And then I also think it can improve the social dimension of the classroom, too. So, if there's lots of possible connections to notice or lots of different ways to relationships, then I can try to learn about someone else's thinking. And then I learn more about them. And they might try to learn about my thinking and learn more about me. And then we feel, like, this greater connection to one another by trying to see the world through their eyes. And so, if the classroom environment is a space where we're trying to constantly see through other people's eyes, but also let them try to see through our eyes, we're this community of people that is just constantly in awe of one another. Like, “Oh, I never thought to see things that way.” And so, people feel more appreciated and valued.  Mike: So, I'm wondering if we could spend a little bit of time trying to bring these ideas to life for folks who are listening. You already started to unpack what it might look like to initially introduce this idea, and you've led me to see the ways that a teacher might introduce or remind kids about the fact that we're thinking about this in terms of a rough draft. But I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about, how have you seen educators bring these ideas to life? How have you seen them introduce rough draft thinking or sustain rough draft thinking? Are there any examples that you think might highlight some of the practices teachers could take up?  Mandy: Yeah, definitely. So, I think along the lines of, “How do we create that culture where drafting and revising is welcome in addition to asking students about rough drafts and why they might make sense of math?” Another approach that people have found valuable is talking with students about … instead of rules in the classroom, more like their rights. What are your rights as a learner in this space? And drawing from the work of an elementary teacher in Tucson, Arizona, Olga Torres, thinking about students having rights in the classroom, it's a democratic space. You have these rights to be confused, the right to say what makes sense to you, and represent your thinking in ways that make sense to you right now. If you honor these rights and name these rights, it really just changes students' roles in that space. And drafting and revising is just a part of that.  Mandy: So different culture-building experiences. And so, with the rights of a learner brainstorming new rights that students want to have, reflecting on how they saw those rights in action today, and setting goals for yourself about what rights you want to claim in that space. So then, in addition to culture building and sustaining that culture, it has to do—right, like Math Learning Center thinks about this all the time—like, rich tasks that students would work on. Where students have the opportunity to express their reasoning and maybe multiple strategies because that richness gives us so much to think about.  And drafts would a part of that. But also, there's something to revise if you're working on your reasoning or multiple strategies or multiple representations. So, the tasks that you work on make a difference in that space. And then of course, in that space, often we're inviting peer collaboration.  Mandy: So, those are kinds of things that a lot of teachers are trying to do already with productive practices. But I think the piece with rough draft math then, is “How are you going to integrate revising into that space?” So eliciting students' reasoning and strategies—but honoring that as a draft. But then, maybe if you're having a classroom discussion anyway, with the five practices where you're selecting and sequencing student strategies to build up to larger connections, at the end of that conversation, you can add in this moment where, “OK, we've had this discussion. Now write down individually or turn and talk. How did your thinking get revised after this discussion? What's a new idea you didn't have before? Or what is a strategy you want to try to remember?” So, adding in that revision moment after the class discussion you may have already wanted to have, helps students get more out of the discussion, helps them remember and honor how their thinking grew and changed, and giving them that opportunity to reflect on those conversations that maybe you're trying to already have anyway, gives you a little more value added to that discussion.  Mandy: It doesn't take that much time, but making sure you take a moment to journal about it or talk to a peer about it, to kind of integrate that more into your thought process. And we see revising happening with routines that teachers often use, like, math language routines such as stronger and clearer each time where you have the opportunity to share your draft with someone and try to understand their draft, and then make that draft stronger or clearer. Or people have talked about routines, like, there's this one called “My Favorite No,” where you get out of student strategy and talk about what's working and then why maybe a mistake is a productive thing to think about, try to make sense out of. But teachers have changed that to be “My Favorite Rough Draft.” So, then you're workshopping reasoning or a strategy, something like that. And so, I think sometimes teachers are doing things already that are in the spirit of this drafting, revising idea. But having the lens of rough drafts and revising can add a degree of intentionality to what you already value. And then making that explicit to students helps them engage in the process and hopefully get more out of it.  Mike: It strikes me that that piece that you were talking about where you're already likely doing things like sequencing student work to help tell a story, to help expose a connection. The power of that add-on where you ask the question, “How has your thinking shifted? How have you revised your thinking?” And doing the turn and talk or the reflection. It's kind of like a marking event, right? You're marking that one, it's normal, that your ideas are likely going to be refined or revised. And two, it sets a point in time for kids to say, “Oh yes, they have changed.” And you're helping them capture that moment and notice the changes that have already occurred even if they happened in their head.  Mandy: I think it can help you internalize those changes. I think it can also, like you said, kind of normalize and honor the fact that the thinking is continually growing and changing. I think we can also celebrate, “Oh my gosh, I hadn't thought about that before, and I want to kind of celebrate that moment.” And I think in terms of the social dimension of the classroom, you can honor and get excited about, “If I hadn't had the opportunity to hear from my friend in the room, I wouldn't have learned this.” And so, it helps us see how much we need one another, and they need us. We wouldn't understand as much as we're understanding if we weren't all together in this space on this day and this time working on this task. And so, I love experiences that help us both develop our mathematical understandings and also bond us to one another interpersonally.  Mike: So, one of the joys for me of doing this podcast is getting to talk about big ideas that I think can really impact students' learning experiences. One of the limitations is, we usually spend about 20 minutes or so talking about it, and we could talk about this for a long time, Mandy. I'm wondering, if I'm a person who's listening, and I'm really interested in continuing to learn about rough draft math, is there a particular resource or a set of resources that you might recommend for someone who wants to keep learning? Mandy: Thank you for asking. So, like you said, we can think about this for a long time, and I've been thinking about it for seven or eight years already, and I still keep growing in my thinking. I have a book called “Rough Draft Math: Revising to Learn” that came out in March 2020, which is not the best time for a book to come out, but that's when it came out. And it's been really enjoyable to connect with people about the ideas. And what I'm trying to do in that book is show that rough draft math is a set of ideas that people have applied in a lot of different ways. And I think of myself kind of as a curator, curating all the brilliant ideas that teachers have had if they think about rough drafts and revising a math class. And the book collects a set of those ideas together.  Mandy: But a lot of times, I don't know if you're like me, I end up buying a bunch of books and not necessarily reading them all. So, there are shorter pieces. There's an article in Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School that I co-wrote with three of the teachers in the Delaware Teacher Study Group, and that is at the end of the 2016 volume, and it's called “Rough-Draft Talk.” And that's only 1,800 words. That's a short read that you could read with a PLC or with a friend. And there's an even shorter piece in the NCTM Journal, MTLT, in the “Ear to the Ground” section. And I have a professional website that has a collection of free articles because I know those NCTM articles are behind a paywall. And so, I can share that. Maybe there's show notes where we can put a link and there's some pieces there.  Mike: Yes, absolutely. Well, I think that's probably a good place to stop. Thank you again for joining us, Mandy. It really has been a pleasure talking with you.  Mandy: Thank you so much, Mike. Mike: This podcast is brought to you by The Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation, dedicated to inspiring and enabling all individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability. © 2024 The Math Learning Center | www.mathlearningcenter.org

Series 2, Episode 15: P and I round off the year and discuss where we are now and what we are hoping for the next stage of our journey. I discuss some weird text messages I received which threw me into a spin and P thinks about how she's going to get out there and meet new people.

Rounding Up Season 2 | Episode 8 – It's a Story, Not a Checklist! Guest: Dr. John Staley Mike Wallus: There's something magical about getting lost in a great story. Whether you're reading a book, watching a movie, or listening to a friend, stories impart meaning, and they capture our imagination. Dr. John Staley thinks a lot about stories. On this episode of Rounding Up, we'll talk with John about the ways that he thinks that the concept of story can impact our approach to the content we teach and the practices we engage in to support our students.  Well, John, welcome to the podcast. We're really excited to talk with you today. John Staley: I'm glad to be here. Thank you for the invitation, and thank you for having me. Mike: So when we spoke earlier this year, you were sharing a story with me that I think really sets up the whole interview. And it was the story of how you and your kids had engaged with the themes and the ideas that lived in the Harry Potter universe. And I'm wondering if you could just start by sharing that story again, this time with the audience. John: OK. When I was preparing to present for a set of students over at Towson University and talking to them about the importance of teaching and it being a story. So the story of Harry Potter really began for me with our family—my wife, Karen, and our three children—back in '97 when the first book came out. Our son Jonathan was nine at that time and being a reader and us being a reading family, we came together. He would read some, myself and my wife would read some, and our daughter Alexis was five, our daughter Mariah was three. So we began reading Harry Potter. And so that really began our journey into Harry Potter. Then when the movies came out, of course we went to see the movies and watch some of those on TV, and then sometimes we listened to the audio books. And then as our children grew, because Harry Potter took, what, 10 years to develop the actual book series itself, he's 19 now, finally reading the final book. By then our three-year-old has picked them up and she's begun reading them and we're reading. So we're through the cycle of reading with them.  But what they actually did with Harry Potter, when you think about it, is really branch it out from just books to more than books. And that right there had me thinking. I was going in to talk to teachers about the importance of the story in the mathematics classroom and what you do there. So that's how Harry Potter came into the math world for me, [chuckles] I guess you can say. Mike: There's a ton about this that I think is going to become clear as we talk a little bit more.  One of the things that really struck me was how this experience shaped your thinking about the ways that educators can understand their role when it comes to math content and also instructional practice and then creating equitable systems and structures. I'm wondering if we can start with the way that you think this experience can inform an educator's understanding for content. So in this case, the concepts and ideas in mathematics. Can you talk about that, John? John: Yeah, let's really talk about the idea of what happens in a math classroom being a story. The teaching and learning of mathematics is a story that, what we want to do is connect lesson to lesson and chapter to chapter and year to year.  So when you think about students' stories, and let's start pre-K. When students start coming in pre-K and learning pre-K math, and they're engaging in the work they do in math with counting and cardinality initially, and as they grow across the years, especially in elementary, and they're getting the foundation, it's still about a story. And so how do we help the topics that we're taught, the grade level content become a story? And so that's the connection to Harry Potter for me, and that's what helped me elevate and think about Harry Potter because when you think about what Harry Potter and the whole series did, they've got the written books. So that's one mode of learning for people for engaging in Harry Potter.  Then they went from written books to audiobooks, and then they went from audiobooks to movies. And so some of them start to overlap, right? So you got written books, you got audiobooks, you got movies—three modes of input for a learner or for an audience or for me, the individual interested in Harry Potter, that could be interested in it. And then they went to additional podcasts, Harry Potter and the Sacred Text and things like that. And then they went to this one big place called Universal Studios where they have Harry Potter World. That's immersive. That I can step in; I can put on the robes; I can put the wand in my hand. I can ride on, I can taste, so my senses can really come to play because I'm interactive and engaged in this story. When you take that into the math classroom, how do we help that story come to life for our students? Let's talk one grade. So it feels like the content that I'm learning in a grade, especially around number, around algebraic thinking, around geometry, and around measurement and data. Those topics are connected within the grade, how they connect across the grade and how it grows. So the parallel to Harry Potter's story—there's, what, seven books there? And so you have seven books, and they start off with this little young guy called Harry, and he's age 11. By the time the story ends, he's seven years later, 18 years old. So just think about what he has learned across the years and how what they did there at Hogwarts and the educators and all that kind of stuff has some consistency to it. Common courses across grade levels, thinking, in my mind, common sets of core ideas in math: number, algebra, thinking, geometry, measurement of data. They grow across each year. We just keep adding on.  So think about number. You're thinking with base ten. You then think about how fractions show up as numbers, and you're thinking about operations with whole numbers, base ten, and fractions. You think about decimals and then in some cases going into, depending if you're K–8 or K–5, you might even think about how this plays into integers. But you think about how that's all connected going across and the idea of, “What's the story that I need to tell you so that you understand how math is a story that's connected?” It's not these individual little pieces that don't connect to each other, but they connect somehow in some manner and build off of each other. Mike: So there are a couple of things I want to pick up on here that are interesting. When you first started talking about this, one of the things that jumped out for me is this idea that there's a story, but we're not necessarily constrained to a particular medium. The story was first articulated via book, but there are all of these ways that you can engage with the story. And you talked about the immersive experience that led to a level of engagement. John: Mm-hmm. Mike: And I think that is helping me make sense of this analogy—that there's not necessarily one mode of building students' understanding. We actually need to think about multiple modes. Am I picking up on that right? John: That's exactly right. So what do I put in my tool kit as an educator that allows me to help tap into my students' strengths, to help them understand the content that they need to understand that I'm presenting that day, that week, that month, that I'm helping build their learning around? And in the sense of thinking about the different ways Harry Potter can come at you—with movies, with audio, with video—I think about that from the math perspective. What do I need to have in my tool kit when it comes to my instructional practices, the types of routines I establish in the classroom?  Just think about the idea of the mathematical tools you might use. How do the tools that you use play themselves out across the years? So students working with the different manipulatives that they might be using, the different mathematical tools, a tool that they use in first grade, where does that tool go in second grade, third grade, fourth grade, as they continue to work with whole numbers, especially with doing operations, with whatever the tool might be? Then what do you use with fractions? What tools do you use with decimals? We need to think about what we bring into the classroom to help our students understand the story of the mathematics that they're learning and see it as a story. Is my student in a more concrete stage? Do they need to touch it, feel it, move it around? Are they okay visually? They need to see it now, they're at that stage. They're more representational so they can work with it in a different manner or they're more abstract. Hmm. Oh, OK. And so how do we help put all of that into the setting? And how are we prepared as classroom teachers to have the instructional practices to meet a diverse set of students that are sitting in our classrooms? Mike: You know, the other thing you're making me think about, John, is this idea of concepts and content as a story. And what I'm struck by is how different that is than the way I was taught to think about what I was doing in my classroom, where it felt more like a checklist or a list of things that I was tracking. And oftentimes those things felt disconnected even within the span of a year.  But I have to admit, I didn't find myself thinking a lot about what was happening to grade levels beyond mine or really thinking about how what I was doing around building kindergartners' understanding of the structure of number or ten-ness. John: Mm-hmm. Mike: How that was going to play out in, say, fifth grade or high school or what have you. You're really causing me to think how different it is to think about this work we're doing as story rather than a discrete set of things that are kind of within a grade level. John: When you say that, it also gets me thinking of how we quite often see our content as being this mile-wide set of content that we have to teach for a grade level. And what I would offer in the space is that when you think about the big ideas of what you really need to teach this year, let's just work with number. Number base ten, or, if you're in the upper elementary, number base ten and fractions. If you think about the big ideas that you want students to walk away with that year, those big ideas continue to cycle around, and those are the ones that you're going to spend a chunk of your time on. Those are the ones you're going to keep bringing back. Those are the ones you're going to keep exposing students to in multiple ways to have them make sense of what they're doing. And the key part of all of that is the understanding, the importance of the vertical nature as to what is it I want all of my students sitting in my classroom to know and be able to do, have confidence in, have their sense of agency. Like, “Man, I can show you. I can do it, I can do it.” What do we want them to walk away with that year? So that idea of the vertical nature of it, and understanding your learning progressions, and understanding how number grows for students across the years is important. Why do I build student understanding with a number line early? So that when we get the fractions, they can see fractions as numbers. So later on when we get the decimals, they can see decimals as numbers, and I can work with it. So the vertical nature of where the math is going, the learning progression that sits behind it, helps us tell the story so that students, when they begin and you are thinking about their prior knowledge, activate that prior knowledge and build it, but build it as part of the story.  The story piece also helps us think about how we elevate and value our students in the classroom themselves. So that idea of seeing our students as little beings, little people, really, versus just us teaching content. When you think about the story of Harry Potter, I believe he survived across his time at Hogwarts because of relationships. Our students make it through the math journey from year to year to year to year because of relationships. And where they have strong relationships from year to year to year to year, their journey is a whole lot better. Mike: Let's make a small shift in our conversation and talk a little bit about this idea of instructional practice. John: OK.  Mike: I'm wondering how this lived experience with your family around the Harry Potter universe, how you think that would inform the way that an educator would think about their own practice? John: I think about it in this way. As I think about myself being in the classroom—and I taught middle school, then high school—I'm always thinking about what's in my tool kit. I think about the tools that I use and the various manipulatives, the various visual representations that I need to have at my fingertips. So part of what my question would be, and I think about it, is what are those instructional strategies that I will be using and how do I fine-tune those? What are my practices I'm using in my routines to help it feel like, “OK, I'm entering into a story”?  Harry Potter, when you look at those books, across the books, they had some instructional routines happening, some things that happen every single year. You knew there was going to be a quidditch match. You knew they were going to have some kind of holiday type of gathering or party or something like that. You knew there was going to be some kind of competition that happened within each book that really, that competition required them to apply the knowledge and skills from their various courses that they learned. They had a set of core courses that they took, and so it wasn't like in each individual course that they really got to apply. They did in some cases, they would try it out, they'd mess up and somebody's nose would get big, ears would get big, you know, change a different color. But really, when they went into some of those competitions, that's when the collection of what they were learning from their different courses, that's when the collection of the content. So how do we think about providing space for students to show what they know in new settings, new types of problems? Especially in elementary, maybe it's science application type problems, maybe they're doing something with their social studies and they're learning a little bit about that. As an educator, I'm also thinking about, “Where am I when it comes to my procedural, the conceptual development, and the ability to think through and apply the applications?” And so I say that part because I have to think about students coming in, and how do I really build this? How do I strike this balance of conceptual and procedural? When do I go conceptual? When do I go procedural? How do I value both of them? How do I elevate that? And how do I come to understand it myself? Because quite often the default becomes procedural when my confidence as a teacher is not real deep with building it conceptually. I'm not comfortable, maybe, or I don't have the set of questions that go around the lesson and everything. So I've got to really think through how I go about building that out. Mike: That is interesting, John, because I think you put your finger on something. I know there have been points in time during my career when I was teaching even young children where we'd get to a particular idea or concept, and my perception was, “Something's going on here and the kids aren't getting it.” But what you're causing me to think is often in those moments, the thing that had changed is that I didn't have a depth of understanding of what I was trying to do. Not to say that I didn't understand the concept myself or the mathematics, but I didn't have the right questions to draw out the big ideas, or I didn't have a sense of, “How might students initially think about this and how might their thinking progress over time?” So you're making me think about this idea that if I'm having that moment where I'm feeling frustrated, kids aren't understanding, it might be a point in time where I need to think to myself, “OK, where am I in this? How much of this is me wanting to think back and say, what are the big ideas that I'm trying to accomplish? What are the questions that I might need to ask?” And those might be things that I can discover through reflection or trying to make more sense of the mathematics or the concept. But it also might be an opportunity for me to say, “What do my colleagues know? Are there ways that my colleagues are thinking about this that I can draw on rather than feeling like I'm on an island by myself?” John: You just said the key point there. I would encourage you to get connected to someone somehow. As you go through this journey together, there are other teachers out there that are walking through what they're walking through, teaching the grade level content. And that's when you are able to talk deeply about math. Mike: The other thing you're making me think about is that you're suggesting that educators just step back from whether kids are succeeding or partially succeeding or struggling with a task and really step back and saying, like, “OK, what's the larger set of mathematics that we're trying to build here? What are the big ideas?” And then analyzing what's happening through that lens rather than trying to think about, “How do I get kids to success on this particular thing?” Does that make sense? Tell me more about what you're thinking. John: So when I think about that one little thing, I have to step back and ask myself the question, “How and where does that one thing fit in the whole story of the unit?" The whole story of the grade level. And when I say the grade level, I'm thinking about those big ideas that sit into the big content domains, the big idea number. How does this one thing fit into that content domain? Mike: That was lovely. And it really does help me have a clearer picture of the way in which concepts and ideas mirror the structures of stories in that, like, there are threads and connections that I can draw on from my previous experience to understand what's happening now. You're starting to go there.  So let's just talk about where you see parallels to equitable systems and structures in the experience that you had with Harry Potter when you were in that world with your family. John: First, let's think about this idea of grouping structures. And so when you think about the idea of groups and the way groups are used within the classroom, and you think about the equitable nature of homogeneous, heterogeneous, random groupings, truly really thinking about that collectively. And I say collectively in this sense, when you think about the parallel to the Harry Potter story, they had a grouping structure in place. They had a random sorting. Now who knows how random it was sometimes, right? But they had a random sorting the minute the students stepped into the school. And they got put into one of the four houses. But even though they had that random sorting then, and they had the houses structured, those groups, those students still had opportunities as they did a variety of things—other than the quidditch tournaments and some other tournaments—they had the opportunity where as a collection of students coming from the various houses, if they didn't come together, they might not have survived that challenge, that competition, whatever it was. So the idea of grouping and grouping structures and how we as educators need to think about, “What is it really doing for our students when we put them in fixed groups? And how is that not of a benefit to our students? And how can we really go about using the more random grouping?”  One of the books that I'm reading is Building Thinking Classrooms [in Mathematics: Grades K–12: 14 Teaching Practices for Enhancing Learning]. And so I'm reading Peter [Liljedahl]'s book and I'm thinking through it in the chapter when he talks about grouping. I think I read that chapter and highlighted and tapped every single page in it multiple times because it really made me think about what's really happening for our students when we think about grouping. So one structure and one part to think about is, “What's happening when we think we're doing our grouping that's not really getting students engaged in the lesson, keeping them engaged, and benefiting them from learning?” Another part, and I don't know if this is a part of equitable systems and structures or just when I think about equity work: One of the courses that they had to take at Hogwarts was about the history of wizarding. I bring that up in this space because they learned about the history of what went on with wizards and what went on with people. And to me, in my mindset, that's setting up and showing the importance of us sharing the history and bringing the history of our students—their culture, their backgrounds, in some cases their lived experiences—into the classroom. So that's us connecting with our students' culture and being culturally responsive and bringing that into the classroom. So as far as an equitable structure, the question I would ask you to think about is, “Do my students see themselves in my mathematics classroom?”  And I say it that way versus “in the mathematics,” because some people will look at the problems in the math book and say, “Oh, I don't see them there. I don't see, oh, their names, their culture, their type of foods.” Some of those things aren't in the written work in front of you. But what I would offer is the ability for me as the educator to use visuals in my classroom, the ability for me to connect with the families in my classroom and learn some of their stories, learn some of their backgrounds—not necessarily learn their stories, but learn about them and bring that in to the space—that's for me to do. I don't need a textbook series that will do that for me. And as a matter of fact, I'm not sure if a textbook series can do that for you, for all the students that you have in your classroom or for the variety of students that you have in your classroom, when we think about their backgrounds, their culture, where they might come from. So thinking about that idea of cultural responsiveness, and really, if you think about the parallel in the Harry Potter series, the history of wizarding and the interaction, when you think about the interaction piece between wizards and what they call Muggles, right? That's the interactions between our students, learning about other students, learning about other cultures, learning about diverse voices. That's teaching students how to engage with and understand others and learn about others and come to value that others have voice also. Mike: I was just thinking, John, if I were to critique Hogwarts, I do wonder about the houses. Because in my head, there is a single story that the reader comes to think about anyone who is in Harry's house versus, say, like Slytherin house. John: Yes. Mike: And it flattens anyone who's in Slytherin house into bad guys, right? John: Mm-hmm. Mike: And so it makes me think there's that element of grouping where as an educator, I might tell a single story about a particular group, especially if that group is fixed and it doesn't change. But there's also, like, what does that do internally to the student who's in that group? What does that signal to them about their own identity? Does that make sense? John: That does make sense. And so when you think about the idea of grouping there at Hogwarts, and you think about these four fixed groups, because they were living in these houses, and once you got in that house, I don't think anybody moved houses. Think about the impact on students. If you put them in a group and they stay in that group and they never change groups, you will have students who realize that the way you did your groups and the way you named your groups and the way they see others in other groups getting more, doing different, and things like that. That's a nice caution to say the labels we put on our groups. Our kids come to internalize them and they come to, in some cases, live up to the level of expectations that we set for “just that group.” So if you're using fixed groups or thinking about fixed groups, really I'd offer that you really get into some of the research around groups and think, “What does it do for students?” And not only what does it do for students in your grade, but how does that play out for students across grades? If that student was in the group that you identified as the “low group” in grade 2, [exhales] what group did they show up in grade 3? How did that play with their mindset? Because you might not have said those words in front of students, but our students pick up on being in a fixed group and watching and seeing what their peers can do and what their peers can't do, what their group members can do and what their group can't do. As our students grow from grades 2 to 3, 4, 5, that really has an impact. There's somewhere between grade 3 and 5 where students' confidence starts to really shake. And I wonder how much of it is because of the grouping and types of grouping that is being used in the classroom that has me in a group of, “Oh, I am a strong doer [of mathematics]” or, “Oh, I'm not a good doer of mathematics.” And that, how much of that just starts to resonate with students, and they start to pick that up and carry that with them, an unexpected consequence because we thought we were doing a good thing when we put 'em in this group. Because I can pull them together, small group them, this and that. I can target what I need to do with them in that moment. Yeah, target what you need to do in that moment, but mix them up in groups. Mike: Just to go back and touch on the point that you started with. Building Thinking Classrooms has a lot to say about that particular topic among others, and it's definitely a book that, for my money, has really caused me to think about a lot of the practices that I used to engage in because I believed that they were the right thing to do. It's a powerful read. For anyone who hasn't read that yet, I would absolutely recommend it. John: And one last structure that I think we can speak to. I've already spoken to supports for students, but the idea of a coherent curriculum is I think an equitable structure that systems put in place that we need to put in place that you need to have in place for your students. And when I say a coherent curriculum, I'm thinking not just your one grade, but how does that grow across the grades? It's something for me, the teacher, to say, “I need to do it my way, this way…”. But it's more to say, “Here's the role I play in their pre-K to 12 journey.” Here's the chapter I'm going to read to them this year to help them get their deep understanding of whichever chapter it was, whichever book it happened to be of.  In the case of the parallel of Harry Potter, here's the chapter I'm doing. I'm the third grade chapter, I'm the fourth grade chapter, I'm the fifth grade chapter. And the idea of that coherent curriculum allows the handoff to the next and the entry from the prior to be smoother. Many of the curriculums, when you look at them, a K–5 curriculum series will have those coherent pieces designed in it—similar types of tools, similar types of manipulatives, similar types of question prompts, similar types of routines—and that helps students build their confidence as they grow from year to year. And so to that point, it's about this idea of really thinking about how a coherent curriculum helps support equity because you know your students are getting the benefit of a teacher who is building from their prior knowledge because they've paid attention to what came before in this curriculum series and preparing them for where they're going. And that's quite often what the power of a coherent curriculum will do.  The parallel in the Harry Potter series, they had about five to seven core courses they had to take. I think about the development of those courses. Boom. If I think about those courses as a strand of becoming a wizard, [laughs] how did I grow from year to year to year to year in those strands that I was moving across? Mike: Okay, I have two thoughts. One, I fully expect that when this podcast comes out, there's going to be a large bump in whoever is tracking the sale of the Harry Potter series on Amazon or wherever it is.  John: [laughs] Mike: But the other question I wanted to ask you is what are some books outside of the Harry Potter universe that you feel like you'd recommend to an educator who's wanting to think about their practice in terms of content or instructional practices or the ways that they build equitable structure? John: When I think about the works around equitable structure, I think about The Impact of Identity and K–8 Mathematics: Rethinking Equity-Based Practices by Julia Aguirre, Karen Mayfield-Ingram, and Danny Martin as being one to help step back and think about how am I thinking about what I do and how it shows up in the classroom with my students.  Another book that I just finished reading: Humanizing Disability in Mathematics Education[: Forging New Paths]. And my reason for reading it was I continue to think about what else can we do to help our students who are identified, who receive special education services? Why do we see so many of our students who sit in an inclusive environment—they're in the classroom on a regular basis; they don't have an IEP that has a math disability listed or anything along those lines—but they significantly underperform or they don't perform as well as their peers that don't receive special education services. So that's a book that got me just thinking and reading in that space.  Another book that I'm reading now, or rereading, and I'll probably reread this one at least once a year, is Motivated[: Designing Mathematics Classrooms Where Students Want to Join In] by Ilana [Seidel] Horn. And the reason for this one is the book itself, when you read it, is written with middle schools' case stories. Part of what this book is tackling is what happens to students as they transition into middle school. And the reason why I mentioned this, especially if you're elementary, is somewhere between third grade and fifth grade, that process of students' self-confidence decreasing their beliefs in themselves as doers of math starts to fall apart. They start to take the chips in the armor. And so this book, Motivated itself, really does not speak to this idea of intrinsic motivation. “Oh, my students are motivated.” It speaks to this idea of by the time the students get to a certain age, that upper fifth grade, sixth grade timeframe, what shifts is their K, 1, 2, 3, “I'm doing everything to please my teacher.” By [grades] 4 or 5, I'm realizing, “I need to be able to show up for my peers. I need to be able to look like I can do for my peers.” And so if I can't, I'm backing out. I'm not sharing, I'm not volunteering, I'm not “engaging.”  So that's why I bring it into this elementary space because it talks about five pieces of a motivational framework that you can really push in on, and not that you push in on all five at one time. [chuckles] But you pick one, like meaningfulness, and you push in on that one, and you really go at, “How do I make the mathematics more meaningful for my students, and what does it look like? How do I create that safe space for them?” That's what you got to think about. Mike: Thanks. That's a great place to stop. John Staley, thank you so much for joining us. It's really been a pleasure. John: Thank you for having me. Mike: This podcast is brought to you by The Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation, dedicated to inspiring and enabling individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability. ©2023 The Math Learning Center - www.mathlearningcenter.org

Michele Swinick joins this episode of The Jeff Dornik Show to discuss her 5 point plan to fix the rigged elections and ensure that the duly elected President is installed into the White House when all is said in done after the 2024 Election. But to do that, we've got to get to work immediately to fix our voting systems. Michele Swinick is the Host of The Save My Freedom Movement & TV show on Brighteon.TV. She was an Election Judge On November 8th in Mari-Corruption County, Anarchy Arizona and has spent the last 14 months investigating what really happened. The truth has never been told & it will shock America. She's the ONLY person in the country who knows how our election system actually operates & is THE Election Fraud Prevention Expert. She's now Exposing the Corruption to Take Back Arizona, America & Our Unconstitutional Elections while Rounding Up the Warriors & Everyone Who Wants to Become One, to Create a Take Action Army & Win the Spiritual & Ground Game Battle by Implementing The 5 Point PRAY-PLAN-TAKE ACTION Strategy that starts with Re-Electing GOD 2024! Subscribe to The Jeff Dornik Show on Rumble to get a reminder to tune in LIVE everyday at 1pm ET. Stock up on long-term storage beef before prices SKYROCKET. 10+ year shelf life, premium cuts, all-American, no mRNA jabs. Promo code “JEFF15” at https://freedomfirstbeef.com Start your day with a steaming hot cup of freedom... Freedom First Coffee, baby! It's the real deal – 100% organic and fire-roasted to perfection. And oh, the taste! Pure bliss. Sip it and feel the liberation course through your veins. This ain't just any ordinary coffee, it's like a sip of pure freedom. So seize the day and satisfy your cravings with every bold, flavorful sip. Get your daily dose of freedom, get your Freedom First Coffee now using code JEFF to save 10%! https://freedomfirstcoffee.com Sign up for pickax, the social media platform that protects free speech, is not beholden to Big Tech, has algorithms that amplify your voice and provides monetization opportunities for content creators. https://pickax.com Subscribe to The Jeff Dornik Show on Substack to get all of Jeff's shows, interviews and articles directly to your email inbox. Become a paid subscribe to get access to his weekly exclusive show for paid subscribers only. Subscribe at https://jeffdornik.substack.com.

News Roundup - Dave Ross' tribute to moms, seniors are consuming cannabis at a "higher" rate these days, and a British man is partying like it's 1949.//SPD releases video of two hit and run episodes where the drivers actually filmed their crimes.//Fareed Zakira of CNN comments on the state of college campuses.

Jessica Fuentes, William Sarradet, and Brandon Zech discuss recent shows they've seen across Texas, the opening of new galleries in Houston, Austin, and Wimberley, and the art news that's been making headlines this fall. "In a lot of ways, Jeremy Strick's retirement from the Nasher Sculpture Center isn't surprising — we've talked recently about how we're kind of at a turning point where organizations across Texas are starting to see a certain generation retire or step back and new people come in to lead. It will be interesting to see what will happen next for the museum." See related readings here: https://glasstire.com/2023/11/19/art-dirt-rounding-up-fall-art-news-exhibitions-weve-loved If you enjoy Glasstire and would like to support our work, please consider donating. As a nonprofit, all of the money we receive goes back into our coverage of Texas art. You can make a one-time donation or become a sustaining, monthly donor here: https://glasstire.com/donate

News Roundup - a school program that bridges generations, the cost of a Thanksgiving dinner is increasing (again), Kennewick's mayor resigned after his supposed "investigation" of sex trafficking, loneliness can be as bad as 15 cigarettes a day for your health.//Guest: Micki Gamez on service issues with the WA State Ferry system.//Biden's age & the 2024 campaign.

Rounding Up Season 2 | Episode 5 – Horizontal Enrichment Guest: Tisha Jones Mike Wallus: At their best, programs with titles such as “gifted and talented” seek to provide enrichment to a subset of learners. That said, these initiatives sometimes have unintended consequences, sending messages about which students are, or are not, capable doers of mathematics. What if there was a way educators could offer problems that extend grade-level learning to each and every student? Today we'll explore the concept of horizontal enrichment with Tisha Jones, MLC's senior manager of assessment.  Mike: Well, thanks for joining us, Tisha. I am excited to explore this idea of horizontal enrichment. Tisha Jones: I am excited to be here and talk about it. Mike: So, we're using the term “horizontal enrichment,” and I think we should define the term and talk about, what do we mean when we say that? Tisha: When we're talking about horizontal enrichment, we are looking at how do we enrich the curriculum, but on grade level. So, not trying to accelerate into the next grade level. But how do we help them go deeper with the content that is at their developmental level currently? Mike: That's really interesting because when I was teaching, I would've said enrichment and acceleration are exactly the same thing, which, I think, leads me to the next question, which is: What are the features of a task that might be designed with horizontal enrichment in mind? Tisha: So, I like to think about horizontal enrichment as an opportunity to engage the practice standards. So, how do we help kids do more of the things that we think being a [mathematician] actually is? So, how can we get them more invested in problem-solving? How can we get them using tools? How can we get them thinking creatively in math and not just procedurally. And, of course, we try to do that on a daily basis in math, but when we're enriching, we want to give them tasks that raise the ceiling of their thinking, where they can approach things in lots of different ways and push their thinking in ways that maybe they haven't, where they can apply the concepts that they're using to solve interesting and novel problems. Mike: I think that's really helpful because you're really clarifying for me, one way that we could “enrich” kids would be to teach them procedures that they might learn in a grade or several grades that are of beyond where they're at right now. But what you're suggesting is that enrichment really looks like problem-solving and novelty and creativity. And we can do that with grade-level ideas. Am I making sense of that correctly? Tisha: Absolutely, and I get excited because I also think that it's fun working a problem where the path is not clear-cut to get to the answer and try some things out and see what happens and look at how can I learn from what I did to make new decisions to try to get to where I'm going? To me, that's bringing in the joy of doing math. Mike: So, this is interesting. I think that maybe the best way to unpack these ideas might be to look at a specific task. So, I'm wondering, is there a specific task that you could help us take a look at more closely? Tisha: Absolutely. So, we're going to take a look at a task from third grade, and it comes out of Concept Quests, which is a supplemental resource that's published by Math Learning Center, and this task is called “The Lasagna Task.” So, I'm just going to read it and then we can talk about what is it asking kids to do. So, it says, “You need to assume that you like lasagna and would like as much lasagna as possible. For each of the ‘Would you rather…?' scenarios below, justify your reasoning with equations, pictures, or both.” So, that's the setup for the kids. And then there's three “Would you rather…?” scenarios. So, the first is, “Would you rather: a.) share three lasagnas between two families or share four lasagnas between three families? b.) Would you rather share four lasagnas between six families or share three lasagnas between four families?” And the last one is, “c.) Would you rather share five lasagnas between three families or share six lasagnas between four families?” Mike: Ahh, this is so great. There's so much to unpack here to step back and try to analyze this. What are some things that you would want us to notice about the way this task is set up for kids? Tisha: So, there's a few things. The first thing is, I love that there's this progression of questions, of scenarios. I think what's also really important is, when you're looking at this on the page, there's no front-loading here. No, “Well, let me tell you about how to do this.” This is just, “I'm going to give you this problem, and I'm going to ask you to just take a stab at it, give it a shot.” So, what we want kids to do is start to learn, how do you approach a problem? What is your first step? What things do you do to make sense of what it's asking? Do you draw a picture? Do you start with numbers? Do you try to find important information? How do you even get started on a problem? And that's so important, right? That's a huge part of the process of problem-solving. And when we front-load for kids, we take away their opportunities to work on those skills. Mike: So, there's a couple things that jump out for me when I've been reading the text of what you were reading aloud to the group. One bit is this language at the end where it says, “For each of the ‘Would you rather…?' scenarios below, justify your reasoning with equations, pictures, or both.” And that language just pops out for me. I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about the choice of that language in the way that this is set up for kids. Tisha: Ahh, I love that language. So, I think this is amazing for kids because as a teacher, we've all had kids that come up to us and they hand us their paper and they say, “Is this right?” And when we ask them to justify their response, I think we're putting the responsibility back on them to be able to come up to me and say, “I think this is right because of this.” So now, who is owning what they did? The kids are owning what they did, right? And they're owning it because they've gone through this process of trying to prove it not just to somebody else but to themselves. If you're justifying it, you should be able to go back through and say, “Well, because I did this and this is this and because I did this next step and this is how this worked out, this is why I know my answer is correct.” And I love that kids can own their own answers and their own work to be able to determine whether it makes sense or not. Mike: I'm going to read a part of this again because I just think it's worth lingering on and spending a little bit of time thinking about how this question structure impacts kids or has the potential to impact kids. So, I'm going to read it again for the audience: “Would you rather: a.) share three lasagnas between two families or share four lasagnas between three families?” So, listeners, just pause for a second and think about the mathematics in that question, and then also think about what mathematics might come out of it. What is it about the structure of that question that creates space for kids to solve problems, encounter novelty, and make decisions? Well, Tisha, since we can't hear their answer, I would love it if you could share a little bit of your thinking. What is it about the design that you think creates those conditions for kids? Tisha: So, while there is an implied operation, it's not necessarily an obvious operation, right? I think that it is something that easily lends itself to drawing a picture, which, I think, when students start modeling the scenario, they now have … that opens up all kinds of creativity, right? They're going to model in the way that they're seeing it in their head. They're not focused on trying to divide this number by that number. They may not even, at first, realize that they're working with fractions. But by the end of it, because it's something that they can model, there's still a lot of room for them to be able to find success on this task, which I think is really important. Mike: It seems like there's also opportunities for teachers to engage with kids because there's a fair number of assumptions that live inside of this question structure, right? Like three lasagnas for two families, four lasagnas for three families, but we haven't talked about how large those families are, how many people are in each family. Tisha: How much lasagna there is ( chuckles ). Mike: Yeah! Right? Tisha: Absolutely. So, I think it's also fair to say that maybe a kid would decide that the four lasagnas between three families, those are going to need to be bigger pans of lasagna. So, how are they bringing in their world experience with feeding people and having to make these decisions? There's nothing in here that says that the lasagnas have to be the same size or that the families have to be the same size. So, as they're justifying the way that they would go as a teacher, I'm looking for: Is their justification, a sound justification? Mike: Well, the thing that I started to think about, too, is, if you did introduce the variable that, “Oh, this family has three members and this family has, say, 12. Well, how many lasagnas would you need in order to give an equal share to the family with 12 versus the family with three?” There's a lot of ways as a teacher that I can continue to adapt and play with the ideas and really press kids to examine their own assumptions and their own logic. Tisha: Absolutely, yeah. So, I think that's a really great point, too, is that, there's a lot of room to even extend these problems further. Would your answer change if you knew that one family was a family of six people, so you can even push their thinking even further than what's just on the paper. Mike: I keep going back to this notion of justification. And we've talked about the structure of the problems as a way to differentiate for kids, to really press them on justification. But the other side of the coin is, as an educator, [it] really gives me a chance to understand my students' thinking and then continue to make moves or offer tasks that either shine a light on the blind spots that they have or extend some of the ideas in interesting and productive ways. Tisha: Yes, I would agree with that. Mike: So, I want to play with a couple more questions, Tisha. One of the ones that we touched on right at the beginning was this idea that a task can be characterized as enriching and challenging, and yet it can still be at a student's grade level. And I think that really stands out for me, and I suspect it probably might be a challenging idea for educators to get their heads around, especially if you've been a teacher, and for the majority of your career, acceleration and enrichment have meant the same thing. Can you unpack this just a little bit for the audience, this idea of enrichment? Tisha: So, I like to think about enrichment as, how do we help our students think more deeply? There's so much room within a school year for a particular concept, for example. Like, let's say with fractions. There's a lot of room for students to think about things in ways they haven't thought about or ways that maybe we don't ask them to think about things in the curriculum; that, if we don't give them the opportunity, they're not going to, right? With enrichment, it's like we're giving them more opportunities to apply what they're learning about concepts. The other thing that I think is really important about enrichment is that it isn't just for the kids that may be characterize as being your high-level students. Because enrichment is still important. Problem-solving is still important for all kids. No matter where they are computationally, we want to make sure that all kids are getting opportunities to be problem-solvers, to apply their thinking in ways that work for them and not just the ways that we're asking them to through our curriculum. Acceleration, I think, often applies when kids are just well beyond grade level—but enrichment is really for every single kid. Mike: Yeah, I think you answered, at least partly, the question that I was going to pose next, which was a question about access. Because at least with Concepts Quests, which is the MLC supplemental resource, we would describe this as a tool that should be made available to all students, not a particularly small subset of students. And I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit more about the case for that. Tisha: So, if we go back to our lasagna problem, once our kids have had opportunities to read it and make sense out of it, at that point, I truly believe that there is an entry point in these problems for any kid. These are not dependent on computation. So, a student can draw pictures. I believe that all of my students that I've had throughout my years of teaching were capable of drawing a picture to model a problem. Then, I really believe that a good problem can have an entry point for every student. Mike: The other thing that you're really making me think about is, how much we've equated the idea of enrichment, acceleration. We've fused those ideas, and we've really associated it with procedure and calculation versus problem-solving and thinking creatively. Tisha: I think that happens a lot. I think that's a lot of how people think about math. You know, it's who can do it fast, who can get there? But what I think our goal is, is to create students who are not just able to be calculators, but who are able to apply their understandings of multiplication, addition, subtraction, division. They can apply them to novel problems. Mike: Yeah, and the real world isn't designed with a set of “Free set, here's what you should do, repeat directions.” Tisha: ( laughs ) I would love some of those. Where can I find them? Mike and Tisha: ( laugh) Mike: This has been fascinating, and I think we could and probably should do more work on Rounding Up talking about these versions of enrichment that are available for all kids. And I have a suspicion that this conversation is going to cause a lot of folks to reassess, reevaluate, and reflect on how they've understood the idea of enrichment. I'm wondering if we can help those folks out. If I'm an educator who's really interested in exploring the idea of horizontal enrichment in more detail, where might I get started? Or, perhaps, where are there some resources out there that might contain the types of problems that you introduced us to today? Tisha: Well, of course, I have to say Concept Quests. We've put a lot of work into creating some really great tasks. But some other places where you can find tasks that are engaging and help kids to think more deeply are “Open Middle” and “NRICH” and “YouCubed” are just a few resources that I can think of off the top of my head. Mike: Ahh, those are great ones. Tisha, thank you so much for joining us. It's really been a pleasure to have this conversation. Tisha: This has been so fun. Mike: This podcast is brought to you by The Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation, dedicated to inspiring and enabling individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability. © 2023 The Math Learning Center | www.mathlearningcenter.org

Nick Hopwood, CFP® and Jim Pilat, CFP® of Peak Wealth Management talk about businesses that ask you to "round up" for donations. This tactic has become increasingly popular among businesses, including supermarkets, gas stations, and restaurants. Essentially, when you make a purchase, the business will give you the option to "round up" to the nearest dollar or another amount, with the difference going towards a charitable cause. While this may seem like a simple way to give back, some people are skeptical of the practice and question whether businesses are using this as a way to boost their own public image and profits. We will be discussing the pros and cons of "round up" donations, whether they actually make a difference, and the ethical considerations businesses should take into account when implementing these programs. — Peak Wealth Management is a financial planning and wealth management firm in Plymouth, MI. We believe by providing education and guidance, we inspire our clients to make great decisions so they can Retire With Peace of Mind. Stay Connected With Us: Podbean: findingtruewealth.podbean.com YouTube: / @peakwealthmgmt Apple: rb.gy/1jqp6 (Trust the Plan Podcast) Facebook: Facebook.com/PeakWealthManagement Twitter: Twitter.com/nhopwood1 www.peakwm.com

Andrew and Iain are still riding the waves of Europe's emphatic win in Rome where they discuss, along with Eddie, how Europe dominated on the first day and how, at one point, they almost looked like losing it on the last. They talk about the USA's attitude and some unruly fan behaviour as well as why there are so few golf courses in Greece and Eddie remembers a round with the 7th richest person in the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Andrew and Iain are still riding the waves of Europe's emphatic win in Rome where they discuss, along with Eddie, how Europe dominated on the first day and how, at one point, they almost looked like losing it on the last. They talk about the USA's attitude and some unruly fan behaviour as well as why there are so few golf courses in Greece and Eddie remembers a round with the 7th richest person in the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's show is a special one. It's a peek inside our My Harp Mastery membership. You'll be hearing part of a recording of one of our Monday calls. On this call, our topic was three skills that are vital for your harp playing success, in particular memorizing, practicing for flow and continuity, and sharing music with friends. These skills may not sound very exciting, but I really want to share this call with you because I talk about ways to look at your harp playing that may be very different from the way you usually think about your practice and playing. It was an eyeopener for some of our My Harp Mastery members, and I hope it will inspire you as well. Because this is a recording of a call, you'll hear me reference some materials that our members have access to but which I can't share with you here on the podcast. Also, I am talking about these three skills in relation to one of our My Harp Mastery resources, the Scale of Success. This is a curriculum that we offer inside the My Harp Mastery membership to help harpists of all kinds of levels round out their skill set so they can be more confident harpists.  I hope you enjoy the call! Links to things I think you might be interested in that were mentioned in the podcast episode:  Join me at Finish Camp on August 2nd! Register here for Finish Camp! Related resource “What Do You Need to Know?”  blog post Harpmastery.com Get involved in the show! Send your questions and suggestions for future podcast episodes to me at podcast@harpmastery.com  LINKS NOT WORKING FOR YOU? FInd all the show resources here: https://www.harpmastery.com/blog/Episode-115 

The Blue Beetle kills one of the gang holding up payrolls, but he also learns the first name of the leader of the gang. The head of the gang is surprisingly revealed by the Blue Beetle. The gangster then commits suicide! --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/iloveoldtimeradio/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/iloveoldtimeradio/support

Scott Stern is a scholar, author & public interest lawyer who was launched into a 7-year investigation into the buried history of The American Plan, the mass incarceration of women during the First World War deemed “suspicious” all for the sake of containing venereal disease. And the laws that permitted the round-up….still exist today. You'll hear why no one has ever heard of this, how women were identified & medicated, financial incentives for incarceration, quarantine & hospital payoffs & what Dave Ramsey & rapper TI have in common.If you like this episode, you'll also like episode 164: SHOULD WE CARE ABOUT IRAN?Guest: https://twitter.com/scottwstern?lang=en | https://www.scottwstern.com/ | https://a.co/d/hxmWRY4Host:  https://www.meredithforreal.com/  | https://www.instagram.com/meredithforreal/  | meredith@meredithforreal.com | https://www.youtube.com/meredithforreal  | https://www.facebook.com/meredithforrealthecuriousintrovertSponsors: Ready to shop better hydration, use my special link https://zen.ai/meredithforrealthecuriousintrovert1 to save 20% off anything you order | https://uwf.edu/university-advancement/departments/historic-trust/ | https://www.ensec.net/

Rounding Up Season 1 | Episode 20 – Work Places Guest: Lori Bluemel Mike Wallus: When I meet someone new at a gathering and tell them that I work in math education, one of the most common responses I hear is, “I was never good at math in school.” When I probe a bit further, this belief often originated in the person's experience memorizing basic facts. How can we build students' fluency with facts, encourage flexible thinking, and foster students' confidence? That's the topic we'll explore in this episode of Rounding Up.  Mike: One of the challenges that we face in education can be letting go of a practice—even if the results are questionable—when the alternative is unclear. In elementary math, this challenge often arises around building computational fluency. We know that speed tests, drill and kill, and worksheets, those are all ineffective practices. And even worse, they can impact students' math identity. So, today we're going to spend some time unpacking an alternative, a component of the Bridges in Mathematics curriculum called Work Places. We're doing this not to promote the curriculum, but to articulate an alternative vision for ways that students can develop computational fluency. To do that, we're joined by Lori Bluemel, a curriculum consultant for The Math Learning Center.  Mike: Lori, welcome to the podcast. It's great to have you with us. Lori: Thank you. It's good to be here. Mike: Well, let's just start with a basic question: If I'm a listener who's new to the Bridge's curriculum, can you describe what a Work Place is? Lori: The simple answer would be that it's math activities or games that are directly focusing on the skills or the ideas and concepts that students are working on during Problems & Investigations. The best aspect, or the feature about Work Places, is that teachers have an opportunity to be like a fly on the wall as they're listening into their students and learning about what strategies they're using and the thinking process that they're going through. Mike: How do you think practicing using a Work Place differs from the version of practice that children have done in the past? What changes for the child or for the learner? Lori: Well, I always felt like a piece of paper was pretty static. There wasn't a lot of interaction. You could run through it so quickly and be finished with it without really doing a lot of thinking and processing—and with absolutely no talking. Whereas during Work Places, you're discussing what you're doing. You're talking to your partner. You're listening to your partner. You're hearing about what they're doing and the different methods or strategies that they're using. And [there's] nothing at all static about it because you're actively working together to work through this game or this activity. Mike: That is so fascinating. It makes me think of a book that I was reading recently about thinking classrooms, and one of the things that they noted was, there's data that suggests that the more talk that's happening in a classroom, the more learning that's actually happening. It really connects me to what you just said about Work Places. Lori: Yeah, and I feel like that's the big difference between Work Places and doing a worksheet on your own. You can do it completely isolated without any outside interaction, whereas Work Places, it's very interactive, very collaborative. Mike: Yeah. So, as a former classroom teacher who used Work Places on a daily basis, how did you set up norms and routines to make them successful for students? Lori: Well, I actually went through several different methods, or routines, before I landed on one that really worked well for me. One that worked best for me is, at the beginning of the year when we first started doing Work Places, I would take that very first Work Place time, and we would just have a class meeting and talk about what we're doing in Work Places. Why would we even have Work Places? We would create an anchor chart, and we'd have one side that would say “Students.” The other side would say “Teachers.” And then we would talk about the expectations. And the students would come up with those. Then we would talk about me as the teacher, what do they think I should be doing? And again, that would come up with all different ideas. And then we always came back to that final thought of, “We need to be having fun.” Mike: Hmm.  Lori: Math needs to be fun during Work Places. And then we would start in, and students would go to Work Places. They would choose their partner, and then they would get started. And that first few times we did Work Places, I always just kind of watched and listened and walked around. And if I felt like things needed to be slightly different, maybe they weren't talking about math or they weren't really playing the Work Place, then we would call a class meeting. And everyone would freeze, and we'd go to our meeting spot, and we would talk about what I saw. And we would also talk about what was going well and what they personally could do to improve. And then we'd go back to Work Places and try it again. Needless to say, a lot of times those first few times at Work Places they didn't play the games a lot because we were setting up expectations. But in the long run, it made Work Places run very smoothly throughout the rest of the year. Mike: Yeah. The word that comes to mind as I listen to you talk, Lori, is investment.  Lori: Um-hm.  Mike: Investing the time to help set the norms, set the routines, give kids a vision of what things look like, and the payoff is productive math talk. Lori: Exactly. And that was definitely the payoff. They needed reminders on occasion, but for the most part, they really understood what was expected. Mike: I think it's fascinating that you talked about your role and asked the kids to talk about that. I would love if you could say more about why you asked them to think about your role when it came to Work Places. Lori: I wanted them to realize that I was there to help them. But at the same time, I was there to help their peers as well. So, if I was working with a small group, I wanted them to understand that they might need to go to another resource to help them answer a question. They needed to make sure that I was giving my attention to the, the small group or the individual that I was working with at that time. So, by talking about what was expected from me, my hope was that they would understand that there were times when they might have to wait a minute, or they might go to another resource to find an answer to their question, or to help them with the situation that they were in. And that seemed to be the case. I think I alleviated a lot of those interruptions just by talking about expectations. Mike: So, I want to return to something that you said earlier, Lori, 'cause I think it's really important. I can imagine that there might be some folks who are listening who are wondering, “What exactly is the teacher doing while students are engaged in Work Places?”  Lori: Um-hm.  Mike: And I wanted to give you an opportunity to really help us understand how you thought about what your main focus was during that time. So, children are out, they're engaged with the Work Places. How do you think about what you want to do with that time? Lori: OK. So, I often look at the needs of my students and, and think about “What have I seen during Problems & Investigations? What have I seen during Work Places previously? And where do I focus my time?” And then I kind of gravitate towards those students that I want to listen in on. So, I want to again, be like that fly on the wall and just listen to them, maybe ask a few questions, some clarifying questions about what they're doing, get an idea of what strategies or the thinking that they're going through as they're processing the problem. And then from there, I can start focusing on small groups, maybe adjust the Work Place so that they can develop that skill at a deeper level. It helps me during that time to really facilitate my students' practice; help students make the most of their practice time so that as they're going through the Work Place, it's not just a set of rules and procedures that they're following. That they're really thinking about what they're doing and being strategic with those skills as well. So that's my opportunity to really help and focus in on my small groups and provide the support that students need. Or maybe I want them to advance their skills, go a little bit deeper so that they are working at a little bit different level. Mike: You know, I'm really interested in this idea that Work Places present an opportunity to listen to students' thinking in real time. I'm wondering if you can talk about an experience where you were able to tuck in with a small group and listen to their thinking and use what you learned to inform your teaching. Lori: ( chuckles ) One experience kind of stands out to me more than others just because it helped me understand that I need to not assume that my students are thinking about, or thinking in a specific way. So, there was one student, they were playing the Work Place game in grade 3, Loops & Groups, and she had spun a six and rolled, I think, a six as well. So, her problem was to solve six times six. And this student had actually been in front of the class just a few days before, and several times actually when I had worked with her, had solved a problem similar to this by thinking of it as three times six and three times six, which is a great strategy. But what I really wanted this student to develop was some flexibility.  Lori: So, I asked her to explain her thinking, and I fully expected her to solve it: “Oh, yeah. I thought of it as three times six and three times six. And when I add those two together, I get 36.” And she totally shocked me. ( laughs ) She said, “Oh, I, I thought of it as five times six, and I know what five times six is. That's 30. And if I just add one more set of six, I get 36. So, she had already developed another strategy, which was not what I was expecting. With that, her partner was a little bit confused and said, “I don't understand how you could do that.” So, I asked this little girl if she could use tile maybe to explain her thinking to her friends. So, we got out the tile. She set it up and she explained this thinking to her partner. And her partner was still a little bit unsure, not really sure she could use that with her own thinking. But what it did was, in the future, just days later, that partner started trying that particular strategy. So, it taught me several things. First of all, don't assume. You don't always know what students are thinking. And also, students are their peers' best teachers. It really encouraged her partner to try that method just a few days later. Mike: We kind of zoomed really in on a pair of children and, and kind of the impact. The other thing that it makes me think is, by doing the fly on the wall, you as a teacher get a better sense of kind of the themes around thinking that are happening across the classroom. Lori: Yeah. You definitely do get that, that perspective. And I think the questioning that you use also will help draw that out. Asking students to explain their thinking: “How did you solve the problem? How could you check your work? Is there a different strategy that you could use that would help you make sure that the answer you came up with, the first strategy you used, was correct?” Those kinds of questions always seem to really help students kind of pull out that thinking and be able to explain what they were doing. Mike: Lori, thank you so much for joining us today. It has really been a pleasure to have you on the podcast and to be able to talk about this. Lori: You bet. Thank you for having me. It was fun. Mike: I want to thank all of you who've listened in during the first season of Rounding Up. We're going on a short break this summer, but we'll be back for Season 2 in September. Before we go, we're wondering what topics you'd like us to explore, what guests you'd like to hear from, and what questions you'd like us to take up in Season 2. This week's episode includes a link you can use to share your ideas with us. Let us know what you're thinking about, and we'll use your ideas to inform the topics we consider in Season 2.  Mike: This podcast is brought to you by The Math Learning Center and the Maier Math Foundation, dedicated to inspiring and enabling individuals to discover and develop their mathematical confidence and ability. © 2023 The Math Learning Center | www.mathlearningcenter.org

Message by Pastor Stacey Shiflett Text: Matthew 18:11-14 June 11, 2023 - 11AM

The gang does some retrospective work on older video games, like Wind Waker being 20 years old or Street Fighter's journey from then to now. Also, Chris goes into some fighting game technical jargon, and Dave looks at things from a new perspective.

Musa joins Ian on a late Sunday reaction podcast to Arsenal's defeat to Brighton. He and Ryan begin with a recap of the weekend's action elsewhere around Europe, beginning with Barcelona clinching the La Liga title with a win over city rivals Espanyol (06:46). Feyenoord won their first Eredivisie in six years (10:05), Napoli was on the beach (13:32), there were loads of Bundesliga goals (17:39) and Chelsea Women got their third FA Cup in a row in front of a record crowd (23:01). They then get into a Premier League roundup (28:33) and chat about Brighton's win over Arsenal, Manchester City's win at Everton and the title race being all but over (37:13). Hosts: Ryan Hunn and Musa Okwonga Producer: Ryan Hunn Additional Production: Jonathan Fisher Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On episode 237 of the PC Update, let me be your Carly baby. And just like that Dex fell even harder for Sonny. The boat docked before they did. This episode covers GH episodes from April 17th - 21st, 2023. *Music provided by Scott Holmes (song name - Electronic Vibes).

In Episode 1325, Sean Woodley goes solo to break down the Toronto Raptors' wild weekend of games against the Minnesota Timberwolves, Boston Celtics and New York Knicks that continues the trend of the Raptors being truly maddening and befuddling as a team. Off the top, Sean digs into his big takeaway from the weekend, which is that the Raptors continue to be the most maddening and hard to figure out teamc he's ever watched, with some quick thoughts on why the rumoured Gary Trent Jr. for Jakob Poeltl deal is simply not one he'd make. Next, Sean looks at a really strong week of play from Precious Achiuwa, whose rim protection numbers are among the league's very best, and whose offensive mistakes are starting to be more regularly replaced by thrilling offensive triumphs. He's the real deal, and could be the one who ties the whole team together going forward. Lastly, Sean runs through the Good (Precious' coast-to-coast possessions), the Bad (the idea of trading Fred VanVleet, maybe) and the Hmm (getting a look at the team without O.G. Anunoby) before rounding out the show.Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors!Built BarBuilt Bar is a protein bar that tastes like a candy bar. Go to builtbar.com and use promo code “LOCKEDON15,” and you'll get 15% off your next order.PrizePicksFirst time users can receive a 100% instant deposit match up to $100 with promo code LOCKEDON. That's PrizePicks.com – promo code; LOCKEDONLinkedInLinkedIn Jobs helps you find the qualified candidates you want to talk to, faster. Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com/LOCKEDONNBAFanDuelMake Every Moment More. Place your first FIVE DOLLAR bet to get ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS in Free Bets – win or lose! Visit Fanduel.com/LockedOn today to get startedFANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN)  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Things discussed: Brandon Naurato: Seems like a Marcus Freeman hire: will keep the recruiting going, could work out for a very long time. Worried about Warde Manuel's role. Appearance is that he wanted to keep Pearson, and the refusal of the department to explain their timeline only adds to speculation. Basketball phonebooks: Want to believe that Kobe Bufkin is now Kobe Buffkin. QB competition: It's a fan thing because we want to know when JJ is going to lead us to a natty, but the program has been clear that McNamara remains the starter. These guys are on a football team together, and that's how they're going to approach it: the primary goal is to win, not to start. Bruce Feldman's freaks. Michigan makes sure they are well represented by giving Feldman video and numbers. Still means something that they keep getting guys on there. Where's the pass rush coming from? They're going to have to do it the Ravens way. Linebackers: Don't compare Colson to Bush; he's more like Year 2 McGrone. He's also their best pass-rusher, but to use him that way they need to drop someone else into coverage. Minter vs Macdonald.

Ricky Williams joins for a conversation about how football made his uncomfortable and Elon Musk's astrological chart. Then, the polls! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices