First Joel and Misty do a comprehensive, rapid-fire rundown of the National Day holidays. So many opportunities!
Then we have another sneak peek for the 2024 CPM teacher conference featuring Ashley Boyd and John Hayes. They’ll be discussing how you can unlock potential and empower teachers. You don’t want to miss that!
But wait, there's more! They also begin a conversation with Dr. Sarah Powell from the University of Texas at Austin about her research on teaching strategies for solving word problems. She helps them understand the difficulties with teaching keywords and provides some suggestions on how teachers can help students draw independent connections rather than relying on keyword posters.
And, lastly, they have another check in from Maggie and Grahame as part of Join Them on Their Journey.
So grab your headphones and let's dive into an exciting episode!
https://education.utexas.edu/faculty/sarah_powell/
The More Math for More People Podcast is produced by CPM Educational Program.
Learn more at CPM.org
Twitter: @cpmmath
Facebook: CPMEducationalProgram
Email: cpmpodcast@cpm.org
First Joel and Misty do a comprehensive, rapid-fire rundown of the National Day holidays. So many opportunities!
Then we have another sneak peek for the 2024 CPM teacher conference featuring Ashley Boyd and John Hayes. They’ll be discussing how you can unlock potential and empower teachers. You don’t want to miss that!
But wait, there's more! They also begin a conversation with Dr. Sarah Powell from the University of Texas at Austin about her research on teaching strategies for solving word problems. She helps them understand the difficulties with teaching keywords and provides some suggestions on how teachers can help students draw independent connections rather than relying on keyword posters.
And, lastly, they have another check in from Maggie and Grahame as part of Join Them on Their Journey.
So grab your headphones and let's dive into an exciting episode!
https://education.utexas.edu/faculty/sarah_powell/
The More Math for More People Podcast is produced by CPM Educational Program.
Learn more at CPM.org
Twitter: @cpmmath
Facebook: CPMEducationalProgram
Email: cpmpodcast@cpm.org
Hello there, everyone. Today is the 3rd of October 2023 and this is episode 12 of season 3 of the More Math for More People podcast. So get out and make a difference today. Cheers.
Speaker 2:Hello, there, I'm. Joel and I'm Misty and you're listening to the More Math for More People podcast, an outreach of CPM educational program.
Speaker 1:We have a lot of conversations about math and math education on this podcast. We're passionate about continually improving the way math is taught and we hope that you learn something in every episode that helps you become better at what you do.
Speaker 2:And we hope that you have some fun and laugh as well. That always makes things a little more interesting.
Speaker 1:Yep, we're pretty passionate about having fun Joel.
Speaker 2:So please have a listen, and we think it'll be well worth it.
Speaker 1:Alright, joel. So here we are. It's our national day of, and I think we're gonna try something different today.
Speaker 2:I think we are, it's not national. Try something different day, but that is not the holiday, that's right.
Speaker 1:It would have been brilliant.
Speaker 2:So yeah. So usually when we look up these days, we pick one.
Speaker 1:I mean that's not the only one.
Speaker 2:Focus no, there are many holidays on each day. I see, I see, I see which is nice if you're a listener, because you're never gonna hear the same holiday twice at least. For what do we figure mathematically? 7.5?
Speaker 1:years or something, something.
Speaker 2:yeah, it's on average Alright, so I thought let's just read, let's just read through what the days are. If we have something to say about it, great.
Speaker 1:Okay, great, Alright. So today, what are? What is the menu of national day?
Speaker 2:It's the menu, so let's start with national cinnamon roll day.
Speaker 1:Oh, cinnamon roll day.
Speaker 2:Well that would be easy to celebrate.
Speaker 1:Just go get a cinnamon roll.
Speaker 2:I love cinnamon rolls. I like those Pillsbury ones and the can too.
Speaker 1:Oh, I used to have those in the music.
Speaker 2:My trick with those is for Valentine's Day, I reshape them into hearts. Oh, that's really sweet.
Speaker 1:What did you do this week? Each one is an individual heart. I'll roll together like hearts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like little individual heart.
Speaker 1:I used to yeah, I used to make those when I was a kid. Wish there was more frosting.
Speaker 2:There's never enough frosting. There's never enough frosting.
Speaker 1:Okay, what do we got next?
Speaker 2:National taco day.
Speaker 1:National taco day. Oh, that's interesting.
Speaker 2:I like tacos.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's easy too. Just go get some tacos or make some tacos.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and there's lots of versions of tacos. I don't even know if we have to get into them all, but.
Speaker 1:I think every culture has a version of a taco.
Speaker 2:I think that's probably true.
Speaker 1:A bready thing wrapped around.
Speaker 2:You can have breakfast tacos, lunch tacos, dinner tacos all sorts of stuff. Snack tacos Snack tacos.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right, so tacos, right. What else do we have?
Speaker 2:National vodka day.
Speaker 1:Oh wow, there's many kinds of vodka too.
Speaker 2:I would say celebrate after school today Probably be a good idea.
Speaker 1:Wait and eat your taco and cinnamon roll first and then have some vodka perhaps if that's your choice, that's what you're into that's pretty easy to figure out how to celebrate that also.
Speaker 2:Now this one. You might have to do a little effort.
Speaker 3:A little more effort, I should say than the others.
Speaker 2:Coffee with a cop day.
Speaker 1:Coffee with a cop.
Speaker 2:Yes, get your cup ready to go to the nearest restaurant and drink coffee with a cop.
Speaker 1:Wow, I just go to a restaurant and assume there's going to be policemen there.
Speaker 2:I know how would you know?
Speaker 1:I don't know. Okay, this one, I think All right so we could have coffee with a law enforcement officer.
Speaker 2:That's right. This one would be good for me. Improve your office day.
Speaker 1:Improve your office day. What are you going to? How are you going to improve your office?
Speaker 2:I think some organization. That's what it is. How is?
Speaker 1:it.
Speaker 2:It might help Functional. I have the one path to the door and maybe I can make two paths to the door there you go.
Speaker 1:So improve your office. You could choose who make it functional or make it fancy, or both.
Speaker 2:It's international walk to school day.
Speaker 1:Oh, okay. Do you have to walk across the border, a country to do that, or is it just?
Speaker 2:I think just around the world we walk to school.
Speaker 1:Everywhere around the world, we walk to school.
Speaker 2:Okay, but it's October, so is that summer vacation for the southern hemisphere?
Speaker 1:Spring down.
Speaker 2:there is fall here, so that makes sense, actually, science All right. Kindness to animals day.
Speaker 1:Kindness to animals. I like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm gonna be reasonably easy to do.
Speaker 2:It's a national golf lovers day.
Speaker 1:Oh national golf lovers day. That's right that would be hard to celebrate. What if I don't like golf?
Speaker 2:Well, I was gonna say I don't know if I'm a lover of golf Be nice to a person who loves golf. Yeah, it says hit the links and play around with. It says play around with your fellow sufferers. So maybe golf lovers feel like they're suffering.
Speaker 1:It's just like sarcastic day. Yeah wow, I did like it when we that time we went to top golf.
Speaker 3:That was fun.
Speaker 2:That was a good day. I could do that. That's true.
Speaker 1:And there's usually a top golf in lots of major cities. Yeah, there's one in Hillsborough.
Speaker 2:There you go. It is National Kale Day, so you could make the like the vegetable. Yes, not just like, but the vegetable.
Speaker 1:Do you like the vegetable?
Speaker 2:Kale made a big back in the day, Back in the day like a year ago or something. Yeah, I mean it wasn't, it's.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that Kale is one of those things that I can enjoy, but then, like you, get too much of it really quickly.
Speaker 2:It's National Pumpkin Seed Day.
Speaker 1:Pumpkin Seed. That's really early, because you're not gonna have pumpkin seeds till you do all your jack-o'-lanterns.
Speaker 2:That's true, I never have a pumpkin seed. Actually, until that jack-o'-lantern time, it is National Truckers Appreciation Day, which is truckers play an important role in our SNR.
Speaker 1:Oh, that makes sense because it's because it's because 10-4.
Speaker 2:Oh, come on, I did not even put that together. You are so wise that is good.
Speaker 1:All right.
Speaker 2:And then World Animal Day.
Speaker 1:World Animal Day, so you could be kind to animals.
Speaker 2:You can be, kind to animals. Well, it's not national, so you can be kind to animals anywhere and in the world you can celebrate animals. Sure, that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Cool.
Speaker 2:And that's the whole rundown. Those are your choices. Yeah, that's our choices.
Speaker 1:All right, well, there you go. They're all your choices. You have so many of a menu of things, that's right, so I hope you are keeping track.
Speaker 2:You can always rewind and listen again.
Speaker 1:Exactly. If you missed them, just rewind back, listen to them a little more carefully, write them down if you want. Figure out how you want to go celebrate.
Speaker 2:I like it.
Speaker 1:Sounds good, do do do, do, do do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Just a reminder that the registration for the 2024 CPM teacher conference is now open. You can find it most easily by logging in at mycpmorg and then going to shop and checking out the event registration. It has all the details on the location, the dates, the times, the prices, et cetera, both for the pre-conference and for the conference and for the social reception. So, and the early bird pricing goes through November 15th, so you'll want to get in on that. And here's your sneak peek session for this week. Enjoy, okay. So we're here today with another teacher conference sneak peek with Ashley Boyd and John Hayes, two of our professional learning team members who work and do a lot of the coaching work for us, and they're going to be doing a session titled Unlocking Potential Empowering Leaders or Coaches to Successfully Coach Resistant Adults. So I want to hear a little bit more about that. So welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, welcome Hello.
Speaker 3:Thank you for having us.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. Give us a little rundown of what your session is going to be about.
Speaker 4:So when we think about encountering resistance with it could be students or other adults in our educational field what we often perceive as resistance turns out to be fear, either our own fear or the person that we're interacting with. Their fear, and so it's usually derived from some sort of one of their core human needs that's being threatened. And we use Elena Aguilar's we use four of her steps to have a discussion about resistance.
Speaker 3:So yeah, so we'll start the session out by getting input from the participants on what they encounter in their field, from teachers, how that resistance actually manifests in their practice, and then we'll have some time to unpack it and come through a process to try to support that as conversations.
Speaker 2:Awesome.
Speaker 4:Do you have an idea of what resistance you're expecting, or what does resistance look like In our fields, which is actually and I are speaking from a coaching experience so often at a given day, a teacher might not want to interact with their coach, and that could be resistance. Another way that it could look is if they decide that they don't want to participate on that day, in terms of maybe they don't want to plan with you. All those things could be construed as resistance, and just trying to figure out what is the actual fear that is underlying the resistance is often the key to it.
Speaker 1:I really like that angle of it of looking at resistance as is really around fear. I think sometimes we can see other people's resistance and take it personally and that, oh, it's something about me or there's what do I need to do, and I can see that some part of it it's. Oh, that's something that's going on with them, something's going on in their body, their brain, their mind, around whatever is happening. And then how can I work with that? As opposed to trying to change, it Just creates more resistance, sometimes Right, absolutely.
Speaker 3:And then we can acknowledge our resistance first in that situation, so we can clearly see what's happening there.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it definitely helps us activate our compassion in terms of how we feel about that person that we're working with, and then it gives us a better reason to stay in the relationship longer so that we can see it through.
Speaker 1:Basically, Well, that sounds like an awesome session. I am excited about that. I might put it on my list to go and attend that one Absolutely as well. Yeah, and I'm just going to also put in a plug that John and Ashley are the facilitators for the Foundations for Coaching Pre-Conference. We have seven pre-conference sessions and they're doing one of them, so if you're interested in learning more about coaching teachers and working with our coaching model and working with teachers and coaching that, that is a pre-conference that you might want to check out.
Speaker 4:We would love to see you there, absolutely.
Speaker 1:So we're here today with Dr Sarah Powell. She is an associate professor in the Department of Special Education at the University of Texas at Austin and Associate Director of the Meadows Center for Preventing Educational Risk. Her research, teaching and service focus on mathematics, particularly for students who experience mathematics differently. So welcome to the podcast, sarah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, welcome. Thanks for joining.
Speaker 4:Yeah, thank you so much, Misty. Thank you, Joel.
Speaker 5:Nice to meet you.
Speaker 1:So the reason we invited you on the podcast is that in back in March of 2020, to, you and a couple of your colleagues published an article in the elementary school journal that reported on your study of using keywords to decide which operation to use to get the right answer and word problems. This is one of my least favorite things to hear teachers talking about.
Speaker 5:Yeah, I know A lot of people do this right. A lot of people do this right Of means multiple yeah.
Speaker 1:So you and your colleagues took a look at this strategy to see if it's very effective, right? How do you? Yeah, tell us how you approach that idea and what motivated you to take a look at.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 5:So a little bit like what you just said. You've heard of this before, and me too. So I'm a former teacher and now I'm a researcher who does a lot of work in the space of word problem solving, thinking about what are the most effective ways to help supports when students are solving setting up and solving word problems, and one of the things that I would see in a lot of classrooms, or I would hear a lot of people talk about, were, specifically, keyword posters. So I would see these keyword posters in classrooms, sometimes even in hallways, where when I talk about a keyword poster, it's a bunch of different math terms organized by operation. So these are a bunch of words that mean addition, or these are a bunch of words that mean division and so on. And so, as a person who spends a lot of time thinking about better or more improved ways to help students with their word problem solving, I always said don't rely on keywords, and there are articles out there about this. There's a lot of teacher focused articles that say don't use keywords, instead, do all of these other things, and so one of the things I wanted to do is put my money where my this. I'm a researcher. This article came out in 2022. We did this around 2020, 2021.
Speaker 5:Something interesting was happening during those years where I might have not been spending as much time in school-based settings, and so I said, well, let's actually figure out if this is a problem. And so what we did is we collected a large number of released items from standardized tests across grades three through eight. So the nice thing is that most states release their items that are on their interviewer mathematics tests, and so we collected all of those, put those into a database and then we started to identify well, what types of word problems are these? So there were a lot of word problems that give students a direction to do something. For example, find the two shapes that are quadrilaterals. That's really just what I would consider a directive word problem. So we didn't consider those in our analysis.
Speaker 5:But then we looked at the other half of word problems, which many people refer to as routine word problems, and these are word problems that are a story and students have to extract information from that story and then typically answer a question. That is at the end of the story, and those types of word problems are the word problems that almost all of us. You said word, you said the word or the term word problem. And so we collected those and then we broke them into two categories first, single step word problems and then multi step word problems. And then what we did is we started to go through and highlight all of the key words that appeared in those word problems and then, eventually, we solved each of the word problems according to their key word.
Speaker 5:So, for example, if we saw total in a word problem, we would add the numbers in that word problem to see if that would give us the correct answer to the word problem, because often when you look at a keyword poster, total is in the addition space. So we did that. You can imagine it was very cult to do that, Because as adults we look at the word problems and we can say, oh, we don't have to add to solve this problem. Oh, I need to subtract or multiply. We go against any reservations that we had and we would say, wait, it says total, that means we need to add. Or this problem says share, that means we need to divide.
Speaker 1:And so then what we were able to do is calculate a percentage of the time where the keyword, I'll say, works and then the percentage of the time where the keyword doesn't work, and so that's how we got started on the study Because, as you're saying that I'm thinking about, these key words are things that, yes, if I saw a total in the word problem, even as an adult, my first thought might be around oh, there's a total, there's a thing I'm going to add, and so they are not something that's just magical. They do relate to mathematical operations and things that, as adults, we know most of the time, maybe some part of the time, depending on how clear the wording of the question is.
Speaker 5:It's a cue, right, it's an important word I'll say word or term, because times, these are two word terms. It's an important cue to what's going on in this story and often in math we're really trying to help students understand the concepts that underlie these word problems, and so that word total tells you a whole lot about what's going on there. So in that story you're not comparing them and in that story something's not changing, but in that story you have a total. Now, sometimes in a word problem you are asked to find the total. Other times in a word problem, you may be given the total and you have to find one of the parts, but that word total, it's a real good, or maybe it says all together.
Speaker 5:These are the terms that we need to be talking about and need to be digging into to figure out well what is really going on in this word problem. Many of these terms will help you with that. But the problem lies when we say things like oh, whenever you see this, maybe it's share, that means you divide. Or whenever you see difference, that means you subtract. As I like to think about it now, especially after doing this research article, there's really no single word or term that always means the same operation. And in fact I do think and I wonder if you all have had this experience too that people who write a lot of the word problems, both in textbooks and specifically on standardized tests. They know this whole keyword trick and so many times the keyword means something else than you would think it means, because they know kids are going to fall into that trap. Well, have you all seen?
Speaker 5:that I don't know if I've noticed it, but yeah, Well now your eyes are open. I know, Joel, you're just going to pay attention to it all the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it is true, though. I know when we were working on some of our books for the middle school, particularly around writing equations from situations, from word problems, the part of the things that we actually had a couple lessons on how do you just write an expression for this part, and whether I say it's five more than something else, or these together, how I use that more, could mean the opposite thing.
Speaker 5:That's right, exactly, exactly Five more Right?
Speaker 1:yeah, those have different meanings and, interestingly, we did intentionally put things in there like that, because we do want kids to be able to see different ways and think about it different ways, and the flip side to that is that then, using a keyword as the end, all I'm going to do, that and it's a shortcut to thinking then can defeat the purpose of leading kids in the wrong direction.
Speaker 5:Yeah, and really I like how you defeats the purpose, because what is the purpose to problem solving? A lot of people would have a lot of different responses to that Me. It's thinking about well, how might I tackle some math problems in real life, and word problems start to give me an entry into that. And if I have keyword poster where I just play a matching game oh, I see the word per, oh, I see that that's under this operation I really don't have to deeply read the problem, I don't have to understand it. I don't really have to do a lot of reasoning. I just match that word to the operation and then I do whatever the poster tells me to do. And the thing words is that I don't want to say that anyone is doing the wrong thing here. Like I don't believe that this is just that teachers are using these posters. There's some of that. So I do see these keyword posters in classrooms and every time I talk with teachers about this I say, well, now just go back and rip it up and we'll start over and have a different approach to our word problem solving.
Speaker 5:But I also think that students come to their own interpretation of keywords on their own. So from a teacher perspective. Maybe teachers are explicitly teaching keywords tied to operations, but probably more often than not students are implicitly making these connections. And where this comes from is when we look at words. Maybe the first 50 word problems that a student ever solved in kindergarten and first grade they were asking them to put amounts together for a total, and so all of them might be like how many does Misty have in all? Or how many does Joel have in all? So if every word problem that they see has in all, and every time they had to put those amounts together, I think students start to make the connection on their own, whether or not that keyword poster is hanging in the classroom or not, because they'll say, oh, that's interesting, every time I see in all that and I solved all those problems really well. Then they go to second grade and then that strategy totally falls apart, Even if a teacher never explicitly taught it to them they've picked that out along the way.
Speaker 1:We give them a lot of problems like that. They recognize the pattern. They're figuring something out and then realizing it may not always work.
Speaker 5:There's a lot of things in math that are like that, a lot of things in your life that are like that, but it seems to particularly ring true when it comes to something like this Well, and I wanted to add on to what you were saying to you about that.
Speaker 1:I think that teachers are doing this. If they are explicitly teaching, they are doing it with good intention. The intent is to help. The intent is to make it easier, which has its own pluses and minuses at times, but it is for good intention.
Speaker 5:Well, they see that word problem solving is really hard for a lot of students, and it's hard when students already have some difficulties with math, or maybe students struggle with reading, or maybe they struggle with language.
Speaker 5:But word problem solving is hard, even if students haven't typically in the past struggled with.
Speaker 5:And so, yeah, as a teacher, thinking, well, what are some resources that I can do to make this easier for my kids or make it more accessible for them? These are things that teachers are doing that are like that's right, you should be helping your students. But then sometimes there's a strategy for example, the keyword strategy, when it's tied to operations that really isn't going to help your students in the short term that much and then in the long term, as we learned in our study, really starts to fall apart. So, as we think about teaching math along the continuum right that I'm not just teaching second grade math, but I'm teaching second grade math so that students do well in third grade, fifth grade and beyond then we need to think about well, is this a strategy that's going to fall apart next year as kids go to third grade? The answer to that is probably yes. So maybe I shouldn't use that strategy and instead rely on some things that are going to have long term potential for helping students with their word problem solving.
Speaker 2:So what would be a recommendation then, like what is the strategy? Stay away from keywords. What did your study find?
Speaker 5:Yeah, good question. So there are two strategies that we see time and time again in the research literature.
Speaker 1:Oh no, that's all we have time for today. So you're going to need to tune in next podcast to find out what those strategies are and to learn more from Dr Sarah Powell for some alternate ways to help kids with problem solving other than teaching them keywords. So tune in, then and find out what those strategies are. See you soon. Bye. Here is our next installment of Join them on their Journey. Enjoy.
Speaker 7:Hey, cpm there's Graham here reporting, as we're coming up on midterms, on how things are going with CPM. I came down with COVID two weeks ago still recovering but coming out of it and had an interesting experience with having a substitute and working with the CPM curriculum. I was wondering how that was going to work and I was pretty happy with what happened. I was able to use two Desmos activities with my ninth grade students and I think that went well having them work in teams and record their thoughts on each activity that they did there and then with my tenth grade classes, I actually just assigned problems from the textbook and told them that I would check one of their table mates, chosen at random, when I got back. That went well in one class and in another class I ended up checking individual work, as some people did not maybe understand my expectations for working together in a group, but I thought that was a good thing that happened. I had a situation where a student that did not do the work did feel bad because the assignment said that everybody would be getting the same grade based on one person's assignment. So I really appreciate the encouragement of collaborative learning. However, to try to be fair, I did end up looking at other people's work, and that student said that she would get back to me when she had completed the work. So I think it was a good thing and I thought it was interesting to see how it went having students work through problems without me being present.
Speaker 7:There were some things that I wanted to touch on. For example, I wanted to make sure students recorded triangle theorems, and that did not necessarily get covered. However, that has come up since, and so I really like the spiral review as that's come up and shown me that we need more practice with those types of problems. Another thing that's come up is I had my first meeting with my principal, who would like to see more guided direct instruction, as he has mentioned Short of.
Speaker 7:He would like to see more explicit note taking, and I found myself a little frustrated that I had to explain how CPM works and the mixed practice idea. He was concerned about students needing help with homework and I thought it was helpful that students had homework help as a support. Also, a parent support is helpful. I expressed my frustration to a teacher who has been taught CPM for many years and she reminded me that we will always have this chance to explain what the research shows and why problem-based learning and collaborative learning are beneficial to students, and that was a good reminder to me that I should always have an explanation and research to refer to for parents, teachers, administrators and definitely students. I think one thing that I appreciate is the structure of CPM, but also the encouragement and the explanation of the benefits of this type of learning, which I think is going well. I'm seeing great collaboration and more students engaging in discourse than I have before. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 6:It's Maggie, and this is where I am on my journey. I am prepping for one of my favorite lessons From Core Connections 3, it is called the Algebra Walk and it happens on Day 3. It is also, luckily, still in the Inspiring Connections. It is about four weeks in, so still within Chapter 1, but a little bit further in, and so in this lesson the students are graphing themselves as ordered pairs that are part of a function. So they come in and they have to solve an ordered pair. So you give them the x, they find the y for a given function, and then you do a classroom activity where the students are on a very large coordinate plane and they form a function, and so the rest of the students are investigating the patterns that is made by these, and it's a memorable moment because they'll reference it throughout the year. So when they are investigating the table, the graph and the rule for a function, they'll reference oh yeah, remember when we plotted ourselves an ordered pair and went outside, and I think it's that kinesthetic learning that is really impactful. So the objective and the goal for the lesson is always very fruitful for the students, but it was also just a big moment for myself as I was prepping for it. So it is like a heavier prep lesson, which is it was a learning lesson.
Speaker 6:So it was five years ago when I was transitioning to CPM. I was coming back from a tourniquet leave and my department had gone in the direction of CPM and so, as I've mentioned before, I was a little hesitant at first. Just because it's a new curriculum, it's a lot of prep. Specifically on this day three, I noticed that it was more, and so what I would do to prep for my lessons is I would watch the video. So in Core Connections 3, there was a video for the teachers that would give suggestions on how to run the lesson, would give some extensions, or what I thought was really helpful from the videos was that the person would share any maybe missed opportunities or ones to look out for for when the students might get confused, and so in my mind it was so helpful because as you can prep for the lesson, you can predict those moments. But having a teacher kind of share watch out for this, it's almost like you would have then already taught it.
Speaker 6:I think anytime you do one lesson, the second time you can anticipate and you can foresee some challenge moments. So when I was prepping for the original lesson, I was watching the videos and I noticed or that what they shared was that you should take a ribbon that's about 10 foot long tape, equal increments as the tick marks. And I remember thinking this is a lot of work for just this one lesson, and so I'm prepping for it the day of the lesson comes. I'm psyched when you put I think, if you put a little bit more effort into the lessons, I find that I'm very invested in it. So I was really invested in this whole algebra walk to pan out, and the suggestion would be is that you would go to maybe a gym and have the people who are graphing on the coordinate plane come out to the floor and everyone else in the class is up above, and so they can really see the pattern of what's happening, and then the students would sketch what the graph looked like. There's about five or six functions that they're graphing, so different students come down and graph their ordered pair, and the last one is a quadratic. So by the end of the day the students can see these specific ordered pairs that are based off of this function can form a straight line, and then the last one is a quadratic. So they're starting to pick up the linear function and so I'm prepping for it, I'm taping this ribbon, I'm ready to go for the day of, and I grab, I instruct the students and then I grab my ribbon to head outside.
Speaker 6:And what happened in that moment, which I didn't realize until I got outside, is that I had balled it up and made knots, so all the tape stuck together. So I'm out in our amphitheater because we don't have a gem and the amphitheaters open to a lot of different classrooms and hallways and it just so happens that my head of school and my department chair walk by Now I think anytime you're outside a classroom and they're like oh, this is great, you're really getting the students to see themselves as mathematicians plotting themselves. But I couldn't get the tape unstuck and the ribbon and in my head I was like panicking, being like, oh my God, this is the worst lesson ever. So eventually, after a moment or two, I was able to get it undone. But I swore to myself never again am I ever gonna work with ribbon. It, just it work. Ribbon tape didn't work. So the lesson went fine, went smoothie. I think I got to the where I wanted the students to get to but I swore never again.
Speaker 6:So I basically chucked that ribbon and started from scratch for the next lesson or for the next class coming in which I transitioned to chalk.
Speaker 6:Now, chalk was a lot easier.
Speaker 6:You do have to prep before Hayden, and not everyone at our school loves the idea of having a huge coordinate plane of chalk in the middle of our Amputeeer, although good news is that it comes off very easily with a little bit of water.
Speaker 6:And as I'm prepping for this lesson that I love and I will be doing my lovely chalk exhibit, and so I think about the adjustments that we need to make as teachers to make it work for us. So, yes, you wanna hit those objectives for the day and make sure that the lesson goes through as it should, but it's okay to tweak things to make it work for you, make it work for your school, make it work for the students. And so inspiring connections. So far has been a lot of prep work more so for me, in my opinion, than the core connections, and so what I've been trying to grapple with is what kind of prep is manageable for me, what can I do, what can I make simpler, but still make sure that the lesson goes as it should, and so prep work is key, but making sure that it adjusts for you Until next time.
Speaker 1:See you later, so that's all we have time for on this episode of the More Math for More People podcast. What day will that be, joel?
Speaker 2:It'll be October 17th, international Pronouns Day, and so we'll go ahead and we'll take a look at pronouns have meant to us as a group, as a world, and talk about what pronouns are, why they're there, and it'll be a great discussion to think about International Pronouns Day. We'll also visit with some more of our teacher conference sessions and follow some more teachers on their journey as we think about going forward through the year. So I hope you join us then on October 17th. Have a great day you.