INTRODUCTION

The Math for All  team wants to hear your thoughts and questions as they relate to making elementary mathematics accessible to all learners and supporting teachers in doing that. We'll be exploring this together, from various angles, throughout the week. We'll be sharing a few topics in advance to get your wheels turning.

Join as many conversations that interest you as we learn together. Thank you in advance for your questions, comments!

TUESDAY May 10, 2022

Let's kick of the first discussion about your wonderings.

What did the video make you think about? What did you notice? What questions do you have for the students and teachers you heard from? What insights did you gain?

Thank you for sharing your work! This video is both enlightening and sweet - hearing the students' voices illustrates the effectiveness of your program: their apprehensions, their delight in math, their self-confidence. The teachers feel empowered to help their students learn. I wonder about the neuro-developmental lenses that you focus on - would you say more about that? In the video, you point to a focus student - is that a student the teacher is focusing on in a particular day? How is s/he assessing their engagement? 

"I would love if there were more punk and spark in our math classes."

What a wonderful quote!

I'm curious how you see this work as related to the now-classical CGI work done at Wisconsin back in the 80's and 90's.  

I don't recall needing, or getting, personalized help when I was studying math (in the last millennium).  But I can see that for many students personalized attention would be the difference between success and failure. I loved the comment in the film when the student said the because his teacher believed in him, he began to believe in himself. Teachers are so very important!

I don't recall needing, or getting, personalized help when I was studying math (in the last millennium).  But I can see that for many students personalized attention would be the difference between success and failure. I loved the comment in the film when the student said the because his teacher believed in him, he began to believe in himself. Teachers are so very important!

Math identity plays such a huge role in the confidence that students have when engaging in mathematics.  Hearing the voices of the students and understanding what they need and want is so valuable in supporting student growth.  Is this PD a program that you bring to schools as part of your PD structure where teachers are supported to work together, almost like a lesson study, to understand the needs of specific focal students?  As a practitioner of CGI, I am also curious like David, how this connects and is related to CGI? 

WEDNESDAY, MAY 11, 2022

Something to consider:

Students show up to our classrooms with strengths or assets.  There are also challenges that they possess.  How do YOU identify your students' strengths and challenges? 

Our Math for All team is eager to hear your thoughts. Please share them with us. 

One of the components of Math for All that I love is the emphasis on students’ strengths and assets, and that this is explicit and infused throughout the materials and the lesson adaptation process. It’s so important to help students recognize their strengths as mathematicians and also to help them learn to self-advocate—which are closely related to their identities as mathematicians (the links are to blogs we’ve written on those topics, in case that's of interest; we also have blogs on other topics, as well as a sign-up to receive our newsletter). 

We’d love to learn from you and hear your thoughts (or more of your thoughts!) related to helping students understand their strengths and advocate for themselves.

What’s something you do, or can think of doing, to help students recognize and own their strengths as mathematicians? What are ways to empower students to speak up for themselves and tell us what they need as mathematics learners?

Good morning from Math for All

A major goal of ours is for teachers to adapt the lessons in their math programs with their particular students' strengths and challenges in mind. We ask teachers to learn to make changes in lesson tasks that leverage students' strengths and remove challenges without changing the mathematical goals of the lesson. In order to do that, teachers must feel competent and empowered to go off script from their books in order to serve students. How can we help teachers feel that empowered? How can administrators help? 

From an Equity perspective, EVERY child deserves the opportunity to live "Punk and Spark" within their math learning experiences!

We couldn't agree more!  Adaptations can provide Punk and Spark" as well as access to serious goals  for more students.  What do you do for Punk and Spark in your classrooms?

Good Morning! Welcome to day 5!

A big component of Math for All, and we believe a crucial aspect of mathematics instruction, is to DO the task or lesson before asking students to do it. This allows for a true(r) understanding of what we call the demands of the task - what are we asking the students to know and do in the task or lesson. So, here's a problem for you to try:

• A long time ago, in a made-up land, a leader held a competition. The challenge was to travel a road with a basket of apples. This road had 3 toll bridges. At each bridge, the price to cross the bridge is 1/2 of the apples in the basket plus one more apple. The winner would have exactly 7 apples in their basket after crossing the final bridge. How many apples should be in the basket at the beginning of the trip?

This problem is rich with opportunity for exploration, especially in algebraic thinking. While I tried to solve this problem, I had to do many things, some of which might not be labeled "mathematical". I had to read and understand the context and the question. I had to remember a lot of important details. I had to write. I had to organize my work so I could look back and understand it. I sought patterns among the numbers I tried, so I could work backwards from the end result.

As you worked the problem, what did you need to do and know to answer the question?

The goal in Math for All, as Karen stated, is to adapt the materials without undermining the mathematical goals of the lesson. So, given the list of demands this problem presents, how would you adapt the problem to provide access to a student who has challenges with these demands?

I loved hearing the students' voices and their candid responses to your questions and prompts. Listening to students' perspectives can shed so much light on our classroom practices. I hadn't heard of your program before watching this video so am interested in learning more. Thank you for sharing. 

For some educators, “differentiated instruction” conjures up visions of having to create different lessons for every student in their classroom. This can feel like an overwhelming task. Math for All makes differentiating instruction more manageable by equipping teachers with tools to plan and implement adaptations to math lessons to meet the needs of one or more focal students (i.e., students whom they have questions about regarding mathematics). These adaptations tend to improve instruction for many students.

If you are a teacher, have you tried the focal child approach? How did it work for you, the focal student, and other students in your classroom?

If you are an administrator, how can you support teachers in adopting a focal student approach?

This video was so refreshing to watch!  I thoroughly enjoyed watching the students voice their thoughts about learning mathematics and successfully articulate what they need/want to make math meaningful.  This project sounds like a wonderful way to promote student identity and agency in mathematics.

Thanks for your work with students.

Hello all! I am Teresa Duncan, co-PI and Director of Research for the Math for All project. Ask me anything about our research design! Some items that might pique your interest:

• We are measuring impact at the student level (mathematics achievement at grades 4 and 5) and at the teacher level (beliefs, dispositions, and self-reported instructional practices).
• Data sources are teacher surveys, teacher instructional logs, and facilitator interviews. We are also conducting a cost analysis.
• We had to pivot to a quasi-experimental design from a randomized controlled trial because of the pandemic – there are pros and cons to both designs.
• Our design involves delivering the MFA PD either in grades K-2 or 3-5. The grade band at the school that is not receiving the PD serves as the comparison group. This approach has helped with recruitment and is an efficient use of our resources.

I’m happy to provide more details and/or answer any questions you might have about the project evaluation!

Key features of Math for All's approach to professional learning are:

• Introducing teachers to a neurodevelopmental framework to better understand student learning
• Fostering the collaboration between general education, special education, and bilingual education teachers
• Engaging teachers in a process of collaborative lesson planning to strengthen their ability to adapt mathematics lessons based on individual students' learning profiles and without undermining the rigor of the mathematics
• Focusing teachers' lesson planning on one focal student at the margin, rather than on average students

Our research and feedback from teachers suggest that Math for All's approach is effective in impacting teachers' beliefs and classroom practices. 

How does our approach compare to the professional learning that you may have experienced or are leading? What elements of professional learning have you found to be effective for supporting teachers in making high quality mathematics accessible to all students?