More Math for More People
CPM Educational Program is a non-profit publisher of math textbooks for grades 6-12. As part of its mission, CPM provides a multitude of professional learning opportunities for math educators. The More Math for More People podcast is part of that outreach and mission. Published biweekly, the hosts, Joel Miller and Misty Nikula, discuss the CPM curriculum, trends in math education and share strategies to shift instructional practices to create a more inclusive and student-centered classroom. They also highlight upcoming CPM professional learning opportunities and have conversations with math educators about how they do what they do. We hope that you find the podcast informative, engaging and fun. Intro music credit: JuliusH from pixabay.com.
More Math for More People
Episode 4.02: Where Joel and Misty talk about spelling bees and continue their conversation with Dr. Amanda Jansen
It's another interesting podcast with Joel and Misty!
First, they learn about the Scripps Spelling Bee and Misty's former spelling bee prowess as a child...
Then, they have part 2 of our conversation with Dr. Mandy Jansen about rough draft thinking in the math classroom! If you missed part 1, please tune in to the May 14 podcast (here).
Connect with Dr Jansen on X: @MandyMathEd
Our final installment of Join Them on Their Journey will be next episode.
Then it's a new Math Joke of the Podcast! If you want to send us a math joke, please submit it to cpmpodcast@cpm.org or reach out through the link below.
Send Joel and Misty a message!
The More Math for More People Podcast is produced by CPM Educational Program.
Learn more at CPM.org
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Email: cpmpodcast@cpm.org
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Speaker 2:All right, so here we are. It's already May 28th 2024.
Speaker 1:What is the national day today? Joel I-T-I-S-T-H-E, it's Scripps Spelling Bee Day's.
Speaker 2:Scripps Spelling Bee Day.
Speaker 1:Scripps Spelling.
Speaker 2:Bee Day. All right, excellent, I see that it makes sense why you were being so cryptic. Yes, exactly, I see that now. I didn't see it at the time, so okay, so I have questions. Yeah, first of all, what is Scripps? Is that a place? Is that a thing? Is that a person? What is that?
Speaker 1:So this is interesting in our world today. This is an AI overview, but Scripps may refer to the EW Scripps Company, an American broadcasting company that shares news, information and entertainment across various platforms.
Speaker 2:Okay, so it is a national spelling bee and it is run by the EW Scripps company. Got it. So Scripps is a company. Now that we've nailed that part down, that was useful, have you ever been in a spelling bee Joel?
Speaker 1:I feel like no, I do not ever remember being in a spelling bee. How about you?
Speaker 2:Okay, I have been in a spelling bee. How about you? Okay, I have been in a spelling, bee.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:In fact, I won the spelling bee in fourth grade in my school In the fourth grade we had. I don't know why the spelling bee was. I think it was just for the fourth grade. That was where you really focused on spelling a lot yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't know if there were ones at other grades also. I don't know if there were ones at other grades also. I don't remember. But I remember for the fourth grade and you had competition within your classroom to decide who was going to go to the school-wide one, because there were four fourth grades or something right, fourth grade classrooms, and so then me and a couple of people in my class went to the school-wide one.
Speaker 2:And so there was a dozen people or whatever, and you always you had to say the word, spell the word, say the word, and you could go back and change it until you said the word the second time. That was the rules. It's probably still the rules, maybe, and I remember that. And then if everybody missed the word on your round, then you, they all got to back up again. Right, they couldn't just be the last one standing, you had to actually spell the word right. And so that happened. We all spelled one word wrong I don't remember what it was. And then so we there was like three of us left or something so then we had like all got to stand back up again, oh my gosh.
Speaker 2:And then it was down to just me and one other person, and I remember the word I won on yeah, it was not to me a very hard word to spell. It was acre but my the other person, who was actually probably the best speller like he was the one that we were all trying to like beat. He missed it and I was like I know how to spell the word.
Speaker 1:And so I got a little tiny A-C-R-E, right, yes, Okay, yes and yeah, I got a little metal.
Speaker 2:You know that. Had said it was the first place in the spelling bee. You could have gone to a regional for the scripts. Yeah, I would. Those words are way too hard. Oh, Do you still? Have the medal oh yeah, it's in my scrapbook. Okay, from my elementary time I have many of my things like. I'm sure I have my timed multiplication facts, test certificates and other ridiculous things in there. But yes, I still have it.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's fantastic.
Speaker 2:So what else can you tell us about the script spelling? The other that I know the words they spell are really hard.
Speaker 1:I agree with you. My experience with spelling is not that great really. I mean, I'm very grateful that the technology we have today helps me with my spelling, things like that. But for the scripts, let's see, here's the word considered to be most difficult in the spelling bee Okay. Here's the most difficult word.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Subret.
Speaker 2:Subret Mm-hmm difficult word. Okay. Subret, subret Mm-hmm. Hmm, okay.
Speaker 1:Any questions that you have.
Speaker 2:Yeah, can you define the word for me?
Speaker 1:Yes, an actress or other female performer playing a lively, flirtatious role in a play or opera.
Speaker 2:Mm. Subret Does it have any information on the word origin?
Speaker 1:No, it says it's a noun.
Speaker 2:It doesn't tell me if it's like French or something.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's the couple.
Speaker 2:Are you going to make me try to spell it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're going to ask me, it is French, it is French.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's going to make it hard because. French has lots of extra letters in it for no reason. I'm going to guess it ends in B-R-E-T-T-E. That's all I'm going to guess.
Speaker 1:Yes, that's right.
Speaker 2:The Sue part. I'm like hmm, Is it like S-O-U?
Speaker 1:Come on, are you looking this up? Are you on this up? Are you on the computer right now? No, I'm not. That's exactly how to you just spelled it. How is that? The hardest word that doesn't even make sense I disagree.
Speaker 2:That is not the hardest word. If I could spell it, it's not the hardest word. I've heard some of the words that are long and they're complicated and they don't they mean. Like considered bees that you found under a rock while hiking in the appellations, like and the kids are like, oh yeah of course, anyway. All right, wait so the script spelling bee is when exactly joel is it coming up? Did we already miss it?
Speaker 1:well, it's. It's today, may 28th.
Speaker 2:Oh, oh, it is on May 28th.
Speaker 1:Well, yes, so I see what you're saying, I understand now. It takes place from May 28th to May 30th.
Speaker 2:Oh, okay, so it's over a few days, so it starts today, that's right. So you should go look it up, see if you can find it.
Speaker 1:That past, if you're listening to the podcast late.
Speaker 2:I think I'm going to host my own spelling bee to celebrate Cool. You're just going to compete with yourself. You're going to ask Wendell questions.
Speaker 1:Wendell's a good speller.
Speaker 2:Alright, well, we can, you know. Hopefully you beat Wendell. I'm pulling for you, Joel. Thank you, enjoy Scripps, spelling Bee Day, Mm-hmm. So here we have the second part of our conversation with Dr Mandy Jansen from the University of Delaware, talking about rough draft thinking in math classes. If you haven't listened to part one, go back to the May 14th podcast episode and listen to part one of our conversation and then come back here. If you have listened to part one, enjoy. So I want to shift us a little bit. As you had mentioned before, we started recording that you've been doing some of your research and some of your things. You've been looking at connecting some of your ideas to the CPM curriculum conference in February this year.
Speaker 3:And in preparation for that, I met with two experienced colleagues who have used CPM for a long time. One colleague works in California, her name is Claire Verity, and another colleague works in Wisconsin and her name is Lisa Hennessy. So thanks to them.
Speaker 1:Shout out.
Speaker 3:I always feel as if my role is to learn from the wisdom of others and then share it broadly. So that's one step in that direction. So what they shared with me were connections that they observed between Rough Draft, math and C, and it really expanded my own thinking. Everything from starting with the overall anchors, like the pillars of learning and the guiding principles of CPM. So of course, with the pillars, with collaborative learning, anytime we interact with people we can learn from them. So then in that process you're drafting and you're revising just in that collaborative learning space.
Speaker 3:Already, whether or not we intentionally talk about it that way, it's what's happening. So the collaboration that's built in in problem-based learning, you're working on tasks that are rich, that have lots of opportunities to generate different strategies and representations and conceptual connections, and that activity of drafting and revising supports productive struggle and perseverance in the context of that problem-based space. And then, like we've already mentioned, the mixed space practice, where you're having opportunities to re-engage and think about content over time. Revising is directly connected to that. So teachers who have access to CPM are already set up with a system where drafting and revising is built in.
Speaker 3:But if you think about intentionally, with drafting and revising, you can communicate messages to students that are complementary with the curriculum materials already. So, for example, the study team, teaching strategies, a lot of those like I-SPY things like this. That's very much connected to drafting and revising. I'm having these really structured collaboration experiences through these strategies and then students get the chance to revise by learning from other folks' perspectives, hearing, having access to a wider range of ideas through those structures about those strategies.
Speaker 3:From talking to Lisa and Claire, that really made me get super excited about other aspects of CPM that I wasn't aware of before I talked with them because I haven't talked with the materials and the fact that assessing having more than one method and more than one opportunity that's really important. If you're going to talk with students about learning in ways that it happens gradually over time and you draft and revise, you need an assessment system that aligns with those values right, because the assessment system could undermine what you're trying to communicate with students about when it comes to learning, and so your materials and your process automatically already has that built in if we use it, and that's very humanizing. If I have more than one way and more than one opportunity to show what I know, I would love to be a master in an environment like that.
Speaker 3:So, just starting out, the design principles of CPM really align with how I think about teaching and learning and are a wonderful opportunity for teachers and students from my perspective.
Speaker 2:I think a lot of what you're saying too circles back to one of the things I heard you say at the beginning, which I think is one of the real.
Speaker 2:For me, at least, one of the things that I hope CPM curriculum helps foster in classrooms is assuming that what the other person is thinking makes sense. Yes, right, we're all trying to make sense of things. That's what we do as humans. We're trying to always make sense of things and that being able to say something that maybe I'm not quite sure how it makes sense to me yet, or I'm not really sure of it I'm still trying to work through the making sense of it part, but if I'm not able to voice that or write it or have a conversation with someone around it, that that is accepted as well. Okay, this is what makes sense to you at this moment, right, and that will grow and change and develop and expand, as you're saying, and connect to other things. That that underlying assumption of capableness in some ways, and that what I'm saying, what I'm thinking, makes sense to me and it might not be correct completely or it might be parts of it are correct, but I am making sense of something and it's valued by your peers too.
Speaker 1:Absolutely.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that too, and that is something that I think takes over time to build that culture. So people believe oh, you are genuinely making sense of what I'm saying and you actually do think of what I'm saying makes sense. It takes a lot of interactions with one another and with the teacher. I'm saying makes sense, it takes a lot of interactions with one another and with the teacher. Okay, you do actually treat my ideas as viable and valuable, and that just takes time, I think. But it's so important and it's so true, and the very effort that we make to represent our ideas, whether it's in writing or in words, that alone moves our thinking forward. So when I try to talk about something, I develop the ideas through talking, or I develop the ideas through writing, and so these representations are part of the process of developing our thinking. And that's another reason why my belief is that drafting or advising is so important, because it's how we move our thinking forward, or advising is so important because it's how we move our thinking forward.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I can say personally I have said many things to a group of colleagues that don't make any sense and then, through our collaboration, my learning expands. So I'm still a learner today, and so I can definitely relate this to a classroom of mathematics students.
Speaker 3:Well, and also your comment, Joel, makes me think about Whose draft is it? Is it our own individual draft or is it a collective draft? As a classroom community, we want to develop our collective understandings together, and so the knowledge doesn't have to be hoarded by one individual right, and that's beautiful. I wouldn't want it to all be. I think that learning in community is how we can all be smarter together. From the spirit of complex instruction and other perspectives like that, I wouldn't want to be alone in learning, absolutely so when I spoke with folks who are experienced with CPM about connections they see with rough drafting and revising, one thing I asked them to do was choose a lesson that you think has some connections to drafting and revising. One thing I asked them to do was choose a lesson that you think has some connections to drafting and revising and what you might do in the name of rough draft math, and so one approach that folks take when they zoom in on a specific lesson is they find what are some tasks that I want to spend more time on with the class? So there's many different interesting problems to think about, but some of the problems are problems where you see a student's thinking and you have to think about the thinking of the student, like you see. Oh, two students are working on a problem. A student thinks about it this way Is that a mistake or is it not? And so they're analyzing another student's thinking, as they're thinking about what's valid about that student's draft and how they might revise it.
Speaker 3:So those kinds of tasks are in the spirit of drafting and revising. Another is just, you know, some of the tasks that are really rich but most aligned with the learning goal, that might be a task that they spend a little more time on debriefing and drafting and revising. So it's around the space of task selection what tasks they see highlighted related to that goal. And when you're working with the study team teaching strategies, you can enact them with a different degree of intentionality. When you think about rough drafting and revising Could be a way of pointing out to students the rationale behind why you're using that activity, like during the whip around. One reason why we're doing this is you're going to hear different groups saying a slightly different perspective and you can think about what's similar and what's different from these perspectives being shared, and so you're going to focus on listening when the groups are going around, but then you'll think about how you're thinking about after this activity, so it can support doing things that you're wanting to do already, and both Claire and Lisa talked about the pocket questions.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, In the lessons as very useful for supporting students with revising their thinking in a way that is more connected to students' autonomy. But asking the questions helps students' thinking move forward. But how the lessons? It's so excellent that there's deep questions already provided for teachers to use.
Speaker 1:I love the pocket questions because, exactly what you said, there's a starting point, but in the moment too, as you said, there's a starting point, but in the moment too, as a teacher, you get to add your own thinking to that process. Yeah, like there's not just that one way right, but it's.
Speaker 3:Could be a dialogue.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:There's such a great starting point, all right, so now we'll shift to what else are you doing?
Speaker 3:What else are you doing now? You have a book out, you're on your rough draft thinking, you've been doing talks. What are the new things that you're doing, where students feel safer and keep growing in their thinking, and then from that it's gotten into the research direction, so it's sort of practice into research. So there was research that went into writing a book, but now, after the books come out, I've been able to do even more systematic research. That's continuing. So I did an analysis of how teachers talked about using ideas in the book.
Speaker 3:There are lots of different ways to enact rough drafting and revising productively, and so I'm working on I have a paper under review about productive variations and how teachers enact rough draft math. There's more than one way to do this and how teachers enact rough draft math there's more than one way to do this. So what does this look like? So, for example, what's the role of collaboration in your math class and is drafting and revising connected to that? It's possible to have less collaboration, like students are working, maybe in pairs, and teachers would circulate and choose a prototypical example of student work that the class would workshop together and then, maybe individually, you would revise, as opposed to a lot of the revising happening in the small group time and then the whole class would be talking about oh how my thinking changed in those groups.
Speaker 3:So those are two examples of different kinds of integrating of rough drafting and revising. But there might be different impacts on students' sense of identity and sense of belonging depending on the degree of collaboration in the class, for instance. And so my first realm into the research space was has been around characterizing different strategies that teachers are using in the name of rough draft math. So another example is different assessment practices teachers use. And then the next phase of the work that I'm planning to conduct would be getting student level data in terms of their motivation over time and their engagement during a lesson. And is that similar or different depending on teachers approach with rough draft math? Because I thought it was important to try to understand the different things teachers were doing, the different enactments of rough draft math, before we get the student-level data, because it's hard to interpret students' experiences without understanding the teaching in deeper ways.
Speaker 3:Sure, and another line of work that I'm curious about was actually inspired by being invited to come to the CPM teacher conference and looking at teachers noticing of their curriculum materials CPM and other materials and where they see the drafting and revising potential in the materials, because we have curriculum materials and we have a vision of how we want to teach and that vision can impact what we see in the materials that we have and how we enact them. So I want to understand how teachers are reading and looking at their materials and planning with them using a lens of rough draft math in those materials. So that actually came out of prepping for the teacher conference, and so since then I've conducted additional interviews with teachers who use not only CPM but other materials too.
Speaker 1:Very cool.
Speaker 2:Well, you are super busy, yeah.
Speaker 3:It's such an awesome field to work in math education. There's so many thoughtful people doing interesting work that we can all learn from, so I'm really thankful that people are willing to talk with me and let me visit them and learn from their work.
Speaker 1:I have another question. We're starting a new segment this season, season four. Yes, and it's a joke of the episode. So we're wondering do you have a math joke?
Speaker 3:I do. So my math joke comes to you courtesy of my niece, kate. Okay, kate is in fifth grade in Phoenix, arizona, and one day Kate calls me and she said Aunt Mandy, I have a math joke for you. And I was like great, this is what I want. Okay, she said why do you need glasses to help you with doing math?
Speaker 2:I don't know.
Speaker 3:Why do you need to wear glasses?
Speaker 2:Why do you need to wear glasses?
Speaker 3:Right. She said well, that's because they help with division.
Speaker 2:Yes, okay, that's a good one. I know Kids like puns I didn't see it coming. Adults like puns.
Speaker 1:And I was like, oh, that's great, so good.
Speaker 3:I just think it's awesome. She knows that Aunt Mandy's a math teacher so she saved that joke for me that's nice.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and having this wonderful conversation with us. We sure appreciate it and, goodness gracious, it's just been, it's been really lovely, so thank you, thank you.
Speaker 3:It's a pleasure. I used to teach middle school and so in my heart I'm always a teacher. So being around people that want to think deeply and talk about teaching is a joyful experience for me. So thanks so much.
Speaker 1:Welcome back again, you're welcome.
Speaker 3:Definitely.
Speaker 2:So I know we told you that our final join them on their Journey posts would be this week. However, we're going to push that off to next episode. So tune in on June 11th and you will hear the final reflections, the final posts of our Join them on their Journey, teachers Cheers. Okay, so here's our new segment Yay, math joke of the podcast. So we have selected a random joke from our pool of math jokes that we've collected so far. Still plenty of room for people to send in more math jokes to add to our pool.
Speaker 1:Please do.
Speaker 2:Yes, please, we'll select a random one each week. So our random one this week is from Laura. So let's listen to Laura's joke.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 2:Hi, this is Laura with a math joke. Why did the 30-60-90 triangle marry the 45-45-90 triangle? Because they were right for each other. Oh, all right. So what are you going to rate that one there, joel, what do you think of that joke?
Speaker 1:I got a giggle right. It did make me giggle. I enjoy the context. I'm going to give it a three.
Speaker 2:A three, all right. Yeah, I would say that I like it because there's I would say it's like a higher level math joke. Right, there's a little bit of nuance to it. It did, I did chuckle, yeah for sure, but I also, at the same time, I think I. How unpredictable was it? Oh, yes, I probably should have.
Speaker 1:That's how it's in my brain. I'm always like, oh, I probably should have predicted that Like a pause, given the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, totally, maybe could come up with that answer. Yeah, all right. So, laura, your joke gets a three. Thank you, woo-hoo, woo-hoo, woo-hoo. So that is all we have time for on this episode of the More Math for More People podcast. If you are interested in connecting with us on social media, find our links in the podcast description, and the music for the podcast was created by Julius H. It can be found on pixabaycom. So thank you very much, julius. Join us in two weeks for the next episode of More Math for More People. What day will that be, joel?
Speaker 1:It'll be June 11, king Kamehameha Day and King Kamehameha, highly revered leader in Hawaii. He's credited with unifying the islands in the 1800s. But I'm really excited to talk about this because when I did my student teaching, I got to do a month of it in Oahu and I taught at the Kamehameha schools, and so I got to learn a lot about the history of King Kamehameha and why he is so revered and why the people of Hawaii love him and how that legacy of education is spread from his works and his trust, and so I'm excited to talk about it. See you on June 11th, thank you.