NCSM 2016 National Conference – BUILDING BRIDGES BETWEEN LEADERSHIP AND LEARNING MATHEMATICS: Leveraging Education Innovation and Research to Inspire and Engage
Below are my notes from each session that I attended and a few of the lasting takeaways.
Day One
Keith Devlin‘s keynote was around gaming for learning. He highlighted the difference in doing math and learning math. I continue to ponder worthy work to unlock potential. How often do we expect learners to be able to write as soon as they learn? If we connect this to music, reading, and writing, we know that symbolic representations comes after thinking and understanding. Hmm…
The Illustrative Mathematics team challenged us to learn together: learn more about our students, learn more about our content, learn more about essentials for our grade and the grades around us. How might we learn a lot together?
Graham Fletcher teamed with Arjan Khalsa. While the title was Digital Tools and Three-Act Tasks: Marriage Made in the Cloud, the elegant pedagogy and intentional teacher moves modeled to connect 3-act tasks to Smith/Stein’s 5 Practices was masterful.
Jennifer Wilson‘s #SlowMath movement calls for all to S..L..O..W d..o..w..n and savor the mathematics. Notice and note what changes and what stays the same; look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning; deepen understanding through and around productive struggle. Time is a variable; learning is the constant. Embrace flexibility and design for learning.
Bill McCallum challenges us to mix memory AND understanding. He used John Masefield’s Sea Fever to highlight the need for both. Memorization is temporary; learners must make sense and understand to transfer to long-term memory. How might we connect imagery and poetry of words to our discipline? What if we teach multiple representations as “same story, different verse”?
Uri Treisman connects Carol Dweck’s mindsets work to nurturing students’ mathematical competence. Learners persist more often when they have a positive view of their struggle. How might we bright spot learners’ work and help them deepen their sense of belonging in our classrooms and as mathematicians?
Day Two
Jennifer Wilson shared James Popham’s stages of formative assessment in a school community. How might we learn and plan together? What if our team meetings focus on the instructional core, the relationships between learners, teachers, and the content?
Michelle Rinehart asks about our intentional leadership moves. How are we serving our learners and our colleagues as a growth advocate? Do we bright spot the work of others as we learn from them? What if we team together to target struggle, to promote productive struggle, and to persevere? Do we reflect on our leadership moves?
Karim Ani asked how often we offered tasks that facilitate learning where math is used to understand the world. How might we reflect on how often we use the world to learn about math and how often we use math to understand the world in which we live? Offer learners relevance.
Day Three
Zac Champagne started off the final day of #NCSM16 with 10 lessons for teacher-learners informed from practice through research. How might we listen to learn what our learners already know? What if we blur assessment and instruction together to learn more about our learners and what they already know?
Eli Luberoff and Kim Sadler created social chatter that matters using Desmos activities that offered learners the opportunities to ask and answer questions in pairs. How might we leverage both synchronous and asynchronous communication to give learners voice and “hear” them?
Fred Dillon and Melissa Boston facilitated a task to highlight NCTM’s Principles to Actions ToolKit to promote productive struggle. This connecting, for me, to the instructional core. How might we design intentional learning episodes that connect content, process and teacher moves? How might we persevere to promote productive struggle? We take away productive struggle opportunities for learners when we shorten our wait time and tell.
Experiments in Learning by Doing 