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 4.16: It's the mid-year - here's some tips!
First, it's Nobel Prize day so we discuss the legacy of the Nobel Prizes, a testament to Alfred Nobel's vision of celebrating human achievement across disciplines like physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, and peace. Ever wondered why mathematics didn't make the cut? Join us as we uncover these insights and reminisce about the nostalgia of encyclopedia collections, a reminder of how far we've come in the quest for knowledge.
As the school year hits its mid-point, we gather wisdom from educators on the CPM Professional Learning Team. Danielle from Illinois emphasizes the transformative power of student feedback, while Jessie from Wisconsin shares tips on self-care and nurturing professional relationships. Jeremiah and Nicole from Minnesota both stress the importance of adaptability, whether through reflecting on teaching strategies or reassessing class agreements with tools like Google Forms.
We also revisit a revealing conversation with Wendy Phillips, a seasoned math educator, who offers strategies to spark intrinsic motivation in study teams, ensuring meaningful student engagement. With Wendy we delve into creating dynamic math classrooms with effective teamwork and positive learning environments. We discuss the role of class norms and team responsibilities in fostering collaboration.
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Speaker 2:Here we are. It's December 10th.
Speaker 1:And I'm wondering what the national day is today, joel? The national day today, for December 10th, is Nobel Prize Day.
Speaker 2:Nobel Prize Day. Is this the day that they're giving out the Nobel Prizes?
Speaker 1:It falls on December 10th just to honor achievements of the person who started the Nobel Prize. It looks like it was Swedish engineer Alfred Berthard Nobel. So I don't know if that's a birthday or anything like that, but I don't know if they give a birthday or anything like that, but I don't know if they give it out on this day or not I see, it's not necessarily the day that they award it it's more pure, acknowledges achievements of creating dynamite, and then a prize.
Speaker 1:Well, it's interesting you say that because there was a french newspaper that carried a false obituary of him criticizing that role in warfare and things like that. And that's when he decided to reevaluate his life's goals and he decided to set up this prize that recognized the best in humanity and there's.
Speaker 2:There's different nobel prizes, right there are different nobel prizes.
Speaker 1:I know there's one for peace. That's the one I know really don't for economics.
Speaker 2:I think there's physics a peace.
Speaker 1:That's the one I know. I know there's one for economics. I think there's a few right Well for sure. Physics and science. My closest related knowledge of Nobel Prizes are we have Mario Cappecci Drive here in Utah and he was a professor at the University of Utah for a while and we do a lot of cancer research here in Utah at the university and so I think it has to do with that. But he was able to manipulate the genes in mice so that we could work on cures for cancer.
Speaker 2:And he won the Nobel.
Speaker 1:Prize for that For science, a physicist and a biologist Like those are, so I don't know if those are separate categories or if it's just all.
Speaker 2:It looks like. Okay, so it looks like there is just do a quick research here. There's one for physics, there's one for chemistry.
Speaker 1:How about math?
Speaker 2:There's one for physiology or medicine, there's one for literature, and then there's the piece for math.
Speaker 1:So not math specific.
Speaker 2:Not math specifically. You'd have to, you know, somehow, do it, as I think there was over like economics, I guess, in broader, what?
Speaker 1:There's some side I remember I was visiting a school in california and they decided to do their science program. It was physics in ninth grade, chemistry 10th and biology in 11th, which is kind of a reverse of what we do here in utah. And, and one idea that was told to me, the reason we do it the way we do it is because it's alphabetical. I don't know how valid that is or anything like that, but they switched it around and they kind of said well, that's the order of how things work, and then the chemistry of what makes things work, and then ultimately into the biology and the math is what holds it all together.
Speaker 2:I thought that was interesting I think that, like any things, they're all integrated oh for sure, like there's pieces. Uh, as far as learning like what, what you, you know how you might learn something before something else, like in science, it feels even fuzzier than math to me, but I think there's some pieces of oh well. Well, if you had much like the way we design our books right, if you had learned physics and chemistry before you did biology, you could learn very different things in biology Absolutely, and vice versa.
Speaker 2:Than if you hadn't Right Totally, totally.
Speaker 1:Yep, Yep. So yeah, that's interesting. How about do you know any Nobel Prize winners that stand out in your mind?
Speaker 2:I know very few Nobel Prize winners and I think the one I'm most aware of is the Peace Prize, Like for some reason it feels like that's the big deal one, though Clearly they're all a big deal. I do remember when President Obama got the Peace Prize, and I remember when Nelson Mandela, for some reason I think Jimmy Carter also got the Peace Prize.
Speaker 1:I think that's true.
Speaker 2:I don't know why those are the ones that stick out in my brain.
Speaker 1:I believe that those people wanted a better humanity.
Speaker 2:I would imagine I would struggle to name anyone else whose name. No, that's not true. I was going to say I would struggle to name a Nobel Prize winner in any other of the fields, but I do think Watson and Crick got a Nobel Prize for the DNA. Oh, here it is. I don't know if that was in physiology or chemistry or whatever. Yeah, but I don't know if that's true.
Speaker 1:I don't know at all. If that's true.
Speaker 2:I'm sure you could, I'm sure.
Speaker 1:I'm sure there's a way in this DNA. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 1:I could go to the living room and open the encyclopedia.
Speaker 2:Yes, you could do that If you had an encyclopedia.
Speaker 1:And it was up to date.
Speaker 2:I had a set of encyclopedias from 1949 that I bought at a garage sale.
Speaker 6:I just thought they were really cool.
Speaker 2:Now look at all the things they would talk about. They also came with that little annual addendum, like back in the day they'd give you a little year, okay, great, here's what happened in 1950. Here's what happened in 1951. And in one of those addendums I think it was maybe 1953, probably going to have that year. Wrong was when Queen Elizabeth, queen Elizabeth II who now is no longer the monarch of Britain, but when she was her coronation, because King George I don't remember.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the royal right right like the royal right like yeah, so she was one of the addendums. Wow, that's pretty cool from my tech media. It was kind of cool, all right. So what are you going to do for Nobel Prize Day and?
Speaker 1:I don't know that I have a good celebration for Nobel Prize Day, but some suggestions are that you could look up the Nobel Prize archives and kind of check it out. That might be a good way to celebrate.
Speaker 5:You could learn more.
Speaker 1:You could award your own prize to your favorite expert. This also says this could be a fun game to play with friends and family. You could do something like that and you could also learn about the award selection process. So lots of learning that you could do. I'm going to learn today. That's how I'm going to honor this day.
Speaker 5:How about?
Speaker 1:you.
Speaker 2:Awesome, I think, playing a game of Nobel Prize winner or not that would be fun.
Speaker 5:You know, I don't know.
Speaker 2:I suppose the 50-50 guessing game. I agree. Well, that sounds great. There you go. Go out and learn about the Nobel Prize. So on this last podcast before the winter holidays, we decided to ask our professional learning team for some of their advice for teachers at the mid-year. So we're going to share that with you today. Before we get to the rest of the team's advice, I'm going to give you my advice. My advice is to make your break a break. Try to avoid taking home all of those projects that you gave to students leading up to the holidays and all of the tasks that you gave them on the last day or so. Avoid bringing those home so that you can take a break and not have to spend your time grading. That's my advice for you. Here's the rest of our team's advice.
Speaker 3:Hi, my name is Danielle Boggs and I'm here in Champaign, Illinois, and I just wanted to share my mid-year teacher tip, and it is to get feedback from your students before winter break and share that feedback with students when they get back from winter break. What did you notice? What are you going to do about it? What are some things that are in your control? What are some things that are not in your control? And have a class discussion about it. That's my mid-year teacher tip. Good luck and enjoy your break, Hi.
Speaker 6:I'm Jessie from Wisconsin and I'm here to share some tips that have helped me. Mid-year teacher tip Good luck and enjoy your break. Hi, I'm Jessie from Wisconsin and I'm here to share some tips that have helped me mid-year. I believe the middle of the school year is an important time to take care of ourselves as well as our students. It's dark this time of year, especially up north where I live, and the holidays can bring stress to everyone.
Speaker 6:I found it recharged me when I connected with my colleagues outside of the school day and away from school business. Planning to spend time cultivating these relationships with my colleagues is what helped rejuvenate my spirit and that provided me the strength I needed to spread the cheer and lift the spirit of my students, as they need it in these winter months. It could be something simple like grabbing a coffee or dinner with a couple of my closest colleagues, maybe organizing a little secret snowflake gift exchange within the department or interdepartmentally, depending on the size of your school. Or planning and hosting a larger gathering off-site for many colleagues to spend a few hours together, if that's your style. I've actually participated in and had a hand in planning all of these events in various stages of my career, the important thing was finding time to be together and enjoy each other's company. So as we wind down our 2024, I hope you find ways to connect with your colleagues and continue to recharge together so you're all at your best to welcome 2025. Cheers.
Speaker 4:Hi, this is Jeremiah from Eagan, minnesota. My mid-year advice is to really focus on reflection this time of year. So maybe you've thought a lot about how all students can productively struggle, and maybe you've heard the phrase differentiate the strategies and not the tasks. So think about all those strategies that you've tried throughout the year. Maybe you've added sentence frames into your students' routines so that you could really focus on promoting access and maybe encouraging discourse within their teams. Maybe you've thought about strategies that provide lots of opportunities for collaborative talk or maybe cross-pollination between teams. So you've tried things like Think Ink Pair Share. But then you've also tried the Talk, write, discuss.
Speaker 4:There's a little bit of a difference between those two. The first one, the Think Ink Pair Share we ask our students to think first. The second one we ask our students to talk first. So maybe we need to really reflect on when those strategies are most effective. Another good part of our reflection is getting feedback from our learners. How do they feel about the strategies? Are they feeling like they're bored with them? Would they like to experience some new strategies? Whatever it is, just take a pause and really think about how effective the strategies that you are using in your class really are for your students and it's okay to make adjustments based on that reflection. Have a good break.
Speaker 8:Hi, I'm Nicole Gorgas in Victoria, minnesota, and my mid-year advice is to do a temperature check with your students. Maybe it would be a Google form to check in with each student about how they're feeling about math right now. List the class agreements that you all created at the beginning of the class, or just the team expectations you set forward at the beginning of the year, and have them consider if there's a need for adjusting, adding something, deleting something from that list, and then, once you can go through those Google Forms or however you collect that information from each student, you can do a whole class conversation about those class agreements or team norms and finally post those class agreements. If you haven't yet, it's never too late.
Speaker 2:All right, and here we have a throwback. Throwback to season one, where we had a conversation with Wendy Phillips and how she does team collaboration in her classroom. Because, if you haven't noticed, maybe that's the theme of today's podcast how to encourage and continue connecting with your students and getting them to collaborate with each other. Here you go, enjoy. So we're here with Wendy Phillips. She's going to talk with us about study teams and how she gets her study teams going at the beginning of the year and how she keeps it going throughout, based on a session she did at the teacher conference last year. So welcome, wendy.
Speaker 1:Welcome.
Speaker 7:Hi Joel, Hi Misty, Thanks for having me today.
Speaker 2:Why don't you just tell us a little bit, Wendy, where do you teach and what's your experience with CPM?
Speaker 7:Well, I am a math teacher and department chair at Bellarmine College Prep High School in San Jose. I've been teaching for 25 years and the last and best years have been the last six years teaching CPM, and I've been teaching CC Geometry.
Speaker 2:That's great. That's great. 25 years, that's impressive.
Speaker 1:That's really great. So at the CPM Teacher Conference you gave a session about study teams and I'm wondering if you could maybe share a little bit of those ideas and what that session was about, because teachers are just starting off their school year and we just love that discussion of study teams right now and how important it is.
Speaker 7:Sure, of course. So the title of my talk was how to Motivate Study Teams Intrinsically, and I chose that because I'm focusing on how to motivate kids not externally, like just from within, as opposed to with rewards and punishment, like participation points and participation quizzes, for really getting students to buy into the idea that their participation and making their study team effective really aid their own learning, so be motivated from it in. So the main points of my presentation was how to set up your class the first six to eight weeks in order to get the kids to build their math competence and to buy into that, how it will help them to aid their learning and help them in life to work well in their study team. So I definitely set up all the things outlined in CPM. As far as using the role, I use the team mat. I like to give them colors, just calling them red, green, yellow, blue, giving them tasks to do each day so that they get used to the team role, using the CPM team norms and using, of course, the study team strategies. And using, of course, the study team strategies.
Speaker 7:And then the other thing that I added into that was some influence from Joe Bowler and U-Cubed and taking her mathematical mindset. So I adopted having students creating their own norms at the beginning of the year. So that's what we do on like day one or day two, we just say brainstorm, two lists what you like about math or working in groups, what you don't like about math, about working in groups and math. And then, yeah, the kids create their own norms for the year. They agree on what the norms are going to be for the class and then also integrated building their math competence, which is through showing them some video messages like a TED talk or short messages from YouTubes about growth mindset. But not just growth mindset, also mathematical mindset, teaching the kid. The positive Joe Bowler has seven positive math norm.
Speaker 7:Presenting the kids with research actually about why collaborating in math helps them learn and enlight life, and actually CPM has all that research already outlined Some of the stuff I just took right out of that CPM notes. And then also integrating using the YouTube week of inspirational math activities in order to get the kids practicing working in groups with these low risk, fun activities, get them trying out the role Fun kind of interesting problem. Of course CPM problems are also fun and interesting. Right, right, they are. I recommended basically spending. I devote approximately 40 minutes per week for the first six to eight weeks.
Speaker 2:Just focused on study teams and working together kind of ideas.
Speaker 7:Yeah, just on all of these activities together combination of videos showing research, giving them activities, explaining the roles, practicing the role, setting up your routine and, if you can, just I know it's sometimes hard to think, where am I going to find this? 40 minutes a week for the first six to eight weeks. What I found is, though it really pays dividends for the rest of the school year that then, over time, the kids bond. You can move them around repeatedly with a lot of different teammates and they get that bonding experience. The environment becomes such that it's the norm for kids to be taking risks, making mistakes. Feeling like this is OK. I could do this.
Speaker 1:I was just going to say I love that you're having the students actually talk about it and engage in what study teams are, and I'm curious a little bit about when the students come up with the norms or what's going to happen in the class. Is it the same for all your classes or does it change a little bit?
Speaker 7:Yeah, that's a great question. You know, when I started doing this, I was surprised because I did this in four different classes, having the kids create their own norms the first year, and they virtually came up with almost the same norms every single time. And now I've been doing it for maybe like four years and still all my classes come up with the same.
Speaker 7:So I had the first year I took all my classes and I picked the main norms what we like and what we don't like about working in math and groups, and I put them up on the wall so they would see these are the norms they made up and I never had to change that chart because they kept picking the same thing the norms they made up. And I never had to change that chart because they kept picking the same thing. And they even surprised me because, you know, they said things like we like when people have a positive attitude, we like when everyone participates.
Speaker 1:Well, those are great ones.
Speaker 7:I was surprised. They said things like we don't like when someone speeds ahead, we don't like when someone says this is easy. They use specific phrases yeah, so you know. Then I kind of point out to them look guys, or look everyone, people want you to participate, they want to include you.
Speaker 2:It's amazing the things that people like about working together are the things that people like about working together and the things they don't like are things they don't like. That's pretty funny. Yeah, the research and the other pieces to help kids really get at the why behind it, as opposed to just we have to do these things because, right, Getting at some of the like, why are we doing it this way? Why are we learning it this way? Why are we working together? How does that actually help us? And bringing that research together both with the Joe Bowler stuff and what's in the CPM teacher book too, that's great.
Speaker 1:So I'm also wondering, because you just talked about allowing 40 minutes per week in the first six to eight weeks. So what happens after that six to eight weeks? Do you still put that time aside? Is it less time? Is it less frequent? Because it just becomes part of your every day?
Speaker 7:Well, that's a great question too. Honestly, well, I have to say I got frustrated right, because after the first six weeks the kids showed me that they could work together really well. So it was like I've seen every kid in this class, I've seen how they can participate. And then, as we got successfully into the school year, I noticed, hey, some of the teams were breaking down, some of the kids that normally participated were backing off. So I thought what do we need to do to kind of spark it up and continue the kids with that confidence? So I do like to continually remind them of the messages. So I'll just intersperse things. But they don't take a lot of time. So I think that's the thing. Like it only takes five minutes or less sometimes to integrate little reminders of what the things were.
Speaker 7:I literally showed two 10-minute videos. One's a TED Talk of Joe Bowler, the other is four positive messages from YouC, really about changing their beliefs. Because what I find it's just the question of why they're not participating. And why they're not participating it's not because they don't want to participate. Everyone wants to be a part of the group, everyone wants to be a part of the team.
Speaker 7:And if you ask them, kids will say we like working with others better than working alone, and they also realize they get more ideas from other people and that they understand better. So it's a matter of they're not participating because they have these false beliefs about themselves and not being able to do math, about themselves. And not being able to do math and false beliefs like making mistakes shows that I'm not good at it or that I'm not as fast as other people. So little things like interspersing, having them read the list of positive math norms and saying which is your favorite and why. So they just got back to the norms. Having them look at the team norms for the class and ask them to rank themselves one to 10 on how did they function with their group and you can do that during your closure.
Speaker 7:You can just say hey how did your team do today? Rank yourself, rank your team. Why did you say that? That kind of thing I like that.
Speaker 2:I like how so many times, to make working together and collaborative learning effective, it has to take kind of an equal seat with the mass from time to time and throughout the year, and we work really hard with chapter one and all the other pieces in our courses to try to elevate that, especially in the beginning and to keep it there throughout. But if you can't keep bringing it back so that it has an equal place in importance, then kids aren't going to do it, which I want to point out too.
Speaker 7:you know CPM has such great resources in there. Where I got most of this is from a teacher note and a lot of it is in chapter one.
Speaker 7:They give the specific question and I put those up on the board for the kids questions that they can ask each other specifically about the lesson and I'm giving them daily reminders of that and I guess I would say that it's okay to remind the kid every day. This is what you're doing in your roles. Here's the questions you can ask if you want a cheat sheet for how to participate, and I give them those little cards with the questions on the back and they like them. Like, if I forget to give them a card, we will have a prize because they want to turn it over so that they have a cheat sheet to look at for how they can participate.
Speaker 1:Well, it really helps them become like a. They're becoming self-aware about what it means to be a student, what it means to be a mathematician and work and together and things like that. That's really cool.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you. Thank you so much, Wendy, for coming in and talking to us about study teams today and all the things you do. It sounds like your classroom sounds great with all the different things that you're doing and we really appreciate your time and energy and coming and talking to us today for the podcast.
Speaker 1:Yes, thanks so much.
Speaker 2:Of course.
Speaker 1:And have a great start to the year.
Speaker 7:Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:I'm talking about Wendy Phillips.
Speaker 2:That's right. So we just had our conversation with Wendy Phillips and after we stopped recording we had some more conversation with Wendy, which was really kind of nice.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And we wanted to make sure to bring a couple of those things forward here onto the podcast so they didn't get left out. Absolutely One of the things that I think she said after we stopped recording that I think is so super huge and important is that the teacher has to believe that the kids can do it.
Speaker 2:Totally agree to believe that the kids can do it, totally agree. It's like so obvious and yet sometimes so problematic. The teacher has to believe that the kids want to work in teams, like to work in teams, can do the math. I mean all of those things, the teacher belief and I think in general, adults belief, but particularly the teacher because they have so much power within the classroom. That's right In that kids are capable, kids can do things. It's so let's make or break.
Speaker 1:I totally agree with you and when Wendy was talking about that I thought the exact same thing that it seems kind of like a no-brainer, of course, but we really do need to acknowledge that and teachers, I believe, need to have an assumption that is positive about students can do math and can do work and can participate in groups and work together. The other thing that came out in our post-conversation was when Wendy mentioned about giving participation points and how that was kind of she equated it to if you're speeding in a car, you're only going to stop speeding in your car if you get a ticket or get some sort of punishment, but you're probably more likely to speed again if nobody's there to check that. That and same with participation points that her students were when she took away the participation points part of it and just said let's believe in this positivity that you can do it and we're going to work in teams, that they worked better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that if you're using participation points as a carrot right or if you're using something else as a stick right, I mean that only affects human behavior.
Speaker 2:So much, right? I mean we know both of those things right. Or if we're using something else as a stick right, I mean that only affects human behavior so much, right, I mean we know both of those things right. Once the carrot's gone or once the stick is gone, behavior kind of goes back to whatever we were doing before. And I think that those things can reinforce, but they can't control behavior, right? They don't create the behavior. Sometimes they can reinforce it or they can make it so that, yes, it's maybe easier for me to continue to do this thing, and if I do it enough, it's a habit, then sure that extrinsic reward is no longer needed. But yes, if it's only the extrinsic reward that I'm doing it for it's not likely I'm going to continue to do it afterwards.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a lot of things. What do you know? Teaching is apparently also psychology. It's a pretty cool figure.
Speaker 3:Awesome.
Speaker 5: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 January 7th, distaff Day. I didn't even know what a distaff was until I looked up this day, otherwise known as Rock Day, but it just symbolizes the efforts and work of textile, of a society, and the thing that comes to mind to me when I see a distaff is thinking about the tale of Rumpelstiltskin, and so we'll dive into thinking about how this device is celebrated and where it first comes from and what the history of textiles are. Maybe Misty has some ideas as well. So we'll see you on January 7th in the new year 2025. Thank you.