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 4.15: It's Good Grief Day and Part 2 of our conversation with Dr. Peter Liljedahl
Get ready to relive the timeless warmth of Peanuts as we celebrate Good Grief Day! We share personal stories and fond memories from iconic Peanuts TV specials, discussing the often hapless yet charming Charlie Brown and his interactions with friends like Lucy and Snoopy.
Join us for part 2 of our conversation with Dr. Peter Liljedahl, who brings groundbreaking insights into Building Thinking Classrooms. Through the lens of his new book, explore innovative strategies like thin slicing tasks and their integration with CPM to foster student learning.
To connect with Dr Liljedahl on X: @pgliljedahl
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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I will dip you. You are listening to the More Math for More People podcast. An outreach of CPM Educational Program Boom. An outreach of CPM Educational Program Boo.
Speaker 2:Okay, so here we are. It's November 26th.
Speaker 1:Sure is.
Speaker 2:The National Day today Joel.
Speaker 1:It is Good Grief Day.
Speaker 2:Good Grease Day, good Grief. Okay, what is it I need? I need to? Is that like a peanuts thing?
Speaker 1:it is. It's uh named after the iconic charlie brown catchphrase good grief good grief. I don't think anybody ever said that before charlie brown I don't know if that's true or not, but I'm not, I'm okay, I don't I think he he probably made it work, james I think so too, because I can see here that charles schultz, who came up with peanuts, born in minneapolis, minnesota, shout out oh, he was born in 1922, like I would think in 1922 good grief could have been actually a lot of people probably said it back then.
Speaker 2:It does seem like something my grandparents would say Good grief. Exactly so. Is it honoring Charlie Brown or honoring his saying?
Speaker 1:It's honoring the franchise of Peanuts and Charlie Brown, and especially it's this time of year that the date is celebrated, because this is the start of all those TV Peanuts, tv things like the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and Charlie Brown Christmas and Charlie Brown.
Speaker 2:And Charlie Brown Halloween, where he happened.
Speaker 1:Well, that's true. All right, I just looked at the date for a second.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but yes, all right, I just looked at the date for a second.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but yes, but the other charlie browns are happening.
Speaker 2:Yes, they're happening, so it's the season where that's gonna be prevalent. Maybe, and folks so were or are you a peanuts or charlie brown fan?
Speaker 1:yes, and I remember it was in the comics. I used to get the paper and read it in the comics. I always liked Snoopy. Of course I just said Charles Schultz was born in Minnesota and when they built the Mall of America in Minneapolis it was big enough to have an amusement park in the center of the mall roller coasters, all the things and it was Snoopy land, so everything was peanuts and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:Very much so. I'm a big fan and it always makes me laugh when Peppermint Patty would lift up the football, when Charlie would go to kick the football.
Speaker 3:I was a Peppermint Patty fan for sure.
Speaker 1:I think Lucy thought Peppermint bar. Oh yeah, I was a Peppermint Patty fan, for sure.
Speaker 2:I think Lucy thought Peppermint.
Speaker 1:Patty oh Lucy.
Speaker 2:Wait, that's not right.
Speaker 1:Well, whoever the mean, that mean girl, yeah, no, lucy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, lucy, yeah, it was Lucy. She always did that. Yeah, I always felt bad for Charlie Brown. I was like man always gets a rock. I was like man always gets a rock. He never gets any Valentine cards. I always felt so sad for him and I felt so sad that he just kept believing that Lucy was going to let him kick the football this time.
Speaker 1:I think it's good he always is looking at trusting folks, that they have good intentions and they're going to do the best and sometimes they don't, and he keeps coming back for more. I love it.
Speaker 2:Well, that was part of me. This. Okay, great. Well, you don't have to keep going back to it, fair enough. No, I I think that there were parts I liked about the peanuts I was. I always felt bad for charlie brown. I I felt like snoopy sometimes was cool, but sometimes snoopy was kind of a jerk to you in weird ways. I don't know, maybe because he had this big ego.
Speaker 1:He did have a big ego. He was like you're cool.
Speaker 2:So there was this part of him that was like he didn't make sense to me.
Speaker 1:The Red Baron, he was the pilot. He had his buddy Woodstock.
Speaker 2:Yes, I liked Woodstock Well. I don't even know what Woodstock really did, but he was a cool guy.
Speaker 1:There's lots of dancing. I liked those. I liked the piano music, like that jazzy piano music. I like when humans other than the kids would talk.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:That was always fun.
Speaker 2:You still laugh that there was times that that's what Mike interred in the classroom. Definitely, hello, I was actually talking again. Yeah, for sure, for sure. No, there's some good things. It's classic.
Speaker 1:It is.
Speaker 2:I do wish that one of these times Charlie Brown just like favored it.
Speaker 1:Well, I would say, watch the films this year, and perhaps it's been an updated version maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe and skeptical okay I feel like you're trying to put a football out there for me, joel maybe I didn't think about that. Yes, maybe that's true. Maybe that's true.
Speaker 2:All right. So how are you going to celebrate Good Grief Day, Joel? Other recommendations on your source there Good grief.
Speaker 1:I don't know how I'm going to celebrate, to be honest, but you could read the Peanuts cartoon, you could watch the Peanuts films and TV specials, or you could wear your Peanuts merchandise proudly. Oh, what's that?
Speaker 2:No, it's not a good day. Can't commercialize it, right? Yes?
Speaker 1:I do not have any peanuts merchandise per se, so I have to maybe watch the show okay all right, how about?
Speaker 2:you, this might be one that I just stopped down on.
Speaker 1:That's one way to celebrate everything every day doesn't have to be a celebration.
Speaker 2:It could be I know you like to make it a celebration. I do, I do for sure I will celebrate by just thinking about charlie brown and wishing him hearing when he was straight I like it, I like it, I like it I yes I think that'd be good you can on, we go
Speaker 2:here, we go. Well, hello everyone, we have the second part of our conversation with Dr Peter Lillidall coming up for you. If you missed part one, then you need to go back to the episode that dropped on November 12th and listen to part one and then come back and listen to part two.
Speaker 4:Enjoy, so you have a new book out, yeah, it talks about all these things, yeah it's got all of it in there, and the one I'm currently working on the green book was K-5, and the one I'm currently working on the green book was a K-5, and the one I'm working on right now is a 6-12, and it'll have all that new stuff in there too.
Speaker 2:That's great, got it. What color is the new one going to be?
Speaker 4:It's kind of a brick red oh wow, All right nice. Nice. So I already have the cover and it's also got some other things in it. It's got some really deep dives into how to thin slice and of course, it has lots of examples of thin slice tasks. But it's in part for the book and I'm working on that right now. What are some things to think about as we're trying to create this sequence of tasks?
Speaker 2:Well, that is an excellent segue into the next thing I want to talk about. Oh, okay, Because I think this is one of the things that I know as a PL team professional learning team here at CPM we've talked about or we've tried to get our minds around and I think it comes up a lot when people are doing CPM and building thinking classrooms is how does the thin slicing, how do those two things, merge Right?
Speaker 4:And how do those two things merge, right Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and how they overlap, and I think that sometimes people see that and other times people really struggle to see it.
Speaker 4:And it's interesting to me and I know this is the thing that I know our boss, Sharon Rendon has talked with you about and some people have talked to you about, and I have talked about it with lots of CPM teachers. You can.
Speaker 1:Yeah, with lots of CPM teachers.
Speaker 4:Okay, and my advice is always the same, and I like to think that you, I know Sharon and I have talked about this multiple times. It's, first of all, the CPM tasks are so great, right, like every one of them is conducive to building thinking classrooms. But one of the things that teachers struggle with is that they're like I got to get through these. We got to get through these six tasks Right. And what my advice always is is look okay, hold on, all right.
Speaker 4:So, first of all, the first task you want to do is a great task. The kids are going to work on it for like 10 minutes and they're going to answer it. And now have they mastered everything in that task? Like, typically not right. And then they get get to question number two, which is also a great task, but is very different from task number one, right, and. And then are they going to master everything in task two? No, and then they go to mass task three, which is also a great task, but again very different from test one and two. And so what I'm finding when I work in classrooms where they're using cpm that works really well, is that after task one, I give them task 1.1. Now, 1.1 is virtually the same as task one.
Speaker 4:Maybe I've moved the variable, maybe I've changed the the numbers, maybe I've introduced a negative but it's, but in terms of the task it's, it's virtually the same, and it kind of creates that redundancy where the kids get to okay, let's do it again, let's think it through again. And sometimes I even have to do a 1.2, right, maybe not for all the groups but for a group. And then it's you can, you can just see it. When they come out of that they're like okay, I got that one figured out, like we've really nailed that one, and then maybe we don't go to two, maybe we go to three or four and then we do a 4.1. And I think that teachers need to exercise their professional autonomy in these situations to use CPM, which is an amazingly rich resource, and I think that every teacher is going to have to look at those six questions and decide for themselves which are the ones that need a 4.1 and a 4.2?, which are the ones that don't.
Speaker 4:And for which ones do we need to create redundancy and which ones do we need to skip? Because if we create the redundancy we don't have time to do them all. But I don't think there's ever I hope there's never been a textbook written where the textbook authors are like, oh, you've got to do it all, like every question. I hope that's not it right Like a textbook is supposed to support a teacher, not replace a teacher.
Speaker 2:100% 100% and not always all, when you don't have the whole picture yet, right, how do you move through it? Yeah, and how do you exercise your knowledge of your kid and your professional judgment as a teacher and do all of those pieces, right?
Speaker 4:And I always tell teachers don't go out and invent a new task, Like. The world doesn't need new tasks. Right, Like the task you got in front of you, that's awesome. Sometimes we have to feather our way into it, Sometimes we have to fist slice our way out of it Right, but it's like the task itself is really, really great. This is often how I do it, Like teachers will say to me well, this is a task I want to work on today.
Speaker 4:I go that's a great task. That'll be task number four. Right, we need a one, two and three. That comes before that, because that's just too big of a jump for the kids to step into. Or I'll say, oh, that is a great first task, but now they're going to need a 1.1 and a 1.2 before we get to the next one, Right? So it's knowing the kids and knowing how they think and recognizing that just because they've solved a question once doesn't mean that they've mastered everything about it. Oh, never. They're kind of chaotic and they need to do things more than once in order to really start to bring order to their thinking.
Speaker 2:Right. So, as I understand it, at our teacher conference, in February you're going to do a thin-slicing lesson from a CPM lesson course. Is that the deal?
Speaker 4:Yes, I am Thin slicing might be the wrong word for it, but I'm going to start with some core CPM tasks. And I'm going to take people through how I would do it in a classroom, and that could be that we're going to thin slice our way into it, or we might be thin slicing our way out of it or we might be thin, slicing our way out of it, or we might be doing both, but it's like just saying here's an amazing resource, an amazing task.
Speaker 4:How can we get it to meet the students where they're at Right?
Speaker 2:Rather than trying to get the students to meet the task where it's at 100% Awesome.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I'm looking forward to it, 100% Awesome.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm looking forward to it. We are too Absolutely. I might need to enable my way into that session, but I think you know people.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I do. I know people who like that happen.
Speaker 2:I can make it happen for sure. Yeah, we're really excited that you're coming to the teacher conference again. Yeah, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 4:I always enjoy that conference. I feel like that will be my third time there. I feel it's so. One of the things that Building Thinking Classrooms I think has done for teachers is it's given them a common vocabulary which allows them to talk to each other about the same thing right. And I think that when you have something like a CPM conference, it does the same thing right. It's like people coming together. They have a common experience, they have a common vocabulary, they have a common resource. It allows them the ability like it gives them that opportunity to talk to each other about things that is on their minds shared, like shared ideas.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, shared, like shared ideas, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think that's something I'd love. A teacher conference is that it's. It's, it's all. It's all about tpm. It's all about how people can do things better. There's the shared language and it's teachers bringing in their experiences and sharing them right and and having that collaborative space. It's not just CPM employees putting on the we're doing you know, but it's also the teachers in the classrooms.
Speaker 4:Yeah, it's not just pushing out ideas, that's right it's sharing the co-action and the co-construction of how we're going to make this work in our classrooms to make this work in our classrooms Absolutely Under shifting standards and assessment criteria and different pressures and experiences and demographics that teachers work in. Right, we're not all the same. We don't all work in the same setting, Even though we're all using the same textbook we may read. It's all different. Yeah, yeah, Our audience our everybody.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. What else can you tell us, peter, what else is going on for you? Anything else you want to share?
Speaker 4:what else is going on is? I've been playing a lot lately with just how how to lay out a whiteboard board, like once. There are certain tasks where if you, if you create a bit of a organizer on the whiteboard, you just see a massive shift in how the students behave. I'll give you an example.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 4:Algebra one, we're solving one and two step equations, right. So what do we always tell the kids? Check your answer, okay. Do they check their answer no. You say did you check your answer? They say yes. Or when we're doing rounding, we're rounding and estimating. Did you round first and then add the rounded numbers? Yeah, no, you didn't. What you did was you added the actual question and then you estimated. So after you knew what the answer was, right, exactly.
Speaker 2:Because I wanted to get a good estimate.
Speaker 4:And they do this because it's a game that kids play, right, part of it is laziness, most of it is efficiency, most of it is, and a lot of it is, an overestimation of their abilities and so on and so forth.
Speaker 4:But what if I lay out the whiteboard and I take their workspace and I divide it into three and and there's different ways to do that but I say, okay, in this square you're going to actually solve the equation, in this square you're going to put the answer and in this square you're going to check your answer.
Speaker 4:In this square you're going to put the answer and in this square you're going to check your answer. And by laying out the whiteboard like that, we see, all of a sudden, 100% of the groups are checking their answer Because that's what goes in here, it goes in that space, sure, and it's amazing how just those small changes shift their behavior and so, playing with that right, and how can I shape the experience around the things that I think are really important mathematically, that they're glossing over. And how can I get them to not gloss over that? By just just by putting some lines on a board and saying this is how I want you to lay out your board and put these headings in and get to work. So I'm playing a lot with that.
Speaker 2:Well, it's interesting because it feels like it's a little bit of making really big shifts in classrooms that defront the classroom, that allow more collaboration, that move these things. And then now it's sort of coming back to well, we need a little bit of structure. And what is the structure? Without over-structuring it, right, without going back to the teacher and saying this is how it has to be, and make sure you box your answer and put the line down the middle and blah, blah, blah, blah. Right, that over-structures what kids are now mimicking.
Speaker 4:Right, it's not that. It's not that, it's not that at all. It's just about communicating, through my actions, what it is that is important here. I'll give you another example. Right, I'm doing a task that's going to require the kids to look for a pattern, like not right away, but they're going to have done. After they've done like five or six tasks, they're going to have to start looking for a pattern because I want them to generalize but they keep erasing their work and it's so hard to spot a pattern on things that have disappeared.
Speaker 4:Photos don't work, so it's now. Let's divide the board and say you're going to do the first question here, the second one here, the third one here, and it just forces them to preserve their work In general when. I say okay, now look for a pattern. All the work is there. It could be inside of there, it could be chaotic and messy and whatever, because I'm not overly prescribing that. I just want them to preserve their work and their answer so that they can start looking for a pattern.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's the structure. Like you're saying, this structure is focused toward yeah, how, what are the things I want them to be paying attention to, or that are important to the thinking? Yeah, as opposed to what exactly?
Speaker 4:they're right, because they're driven to just focus on the answer, right like that's what they just want to focus on the answer, and what I'm trying to do is create room for the process to, to be preserved and sometimes to force a process, not necessarily telling you what process to do, but I'm forcing you to leave room for checking the answer, and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1:And that's true outside of math, with teachers too. Like teachers want to have an answer of how this works, yeah, and not go through the process.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we got to go through the process. Yeah, yeah, but it's so. I've been playing a lot with that and again, I definitely don't want to get into structure that forces mimicking, but just structure that helps, helps, leave room for things that are important. That I know. I know that this is where I want to get them to by the end of the lesson. Right, this is important. We got to get to this point and they're not going to get there if they keep doing what they're doing. So it's like how can I create a bit of structure so that they can start to notice things earlier in the activity?
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much for coming on today. It's been a wonderful conversation. We appreciate it. We know it's late where you are, so we appreciate you staying up and getting settled with us and then talking with us, and please give your wife, charisse, our regards.
Speaker 1:Yes, please.
Speaker 2:We look forward to seeing you in February.
Speaker 4:We'll see you soon. Yeah, waiting for it in San Diego. Yes, indeed, all right, thank you so much, my pleasure.
Speaker 3: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 and 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 December 10th, nobel Prize Day, and there's so many prizes given on this day. There's only six categories and peace prizes in there somewhere, and I'm so interested to learn and find out more see what Misty has to know about it. I don't think much about Nobel Prizes, and so it'll be fun to see what prizes have been given and for what reasons, and to enjoy this day and think about what others have done that deserve a Nobel Prize. So we'll see you on December 10th. Hope to see you there, thank you.