Tag Archives: #SlowMath

#LL2LU, Conferences, Connecting Ideas, Professional Development Feedback, Professional Development Plans, Questions

#T3IC: Using technology alongside #SlowMath to promote productive struggle

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At the 2018 International T³ Conference in San Antonio, Jennifer Wilson (@jwilson828) and I presented the following two hour power session.

Using technology alongside #SlowMath
to promote productive struggle

How might we shift classroom culture so that productive struggle is part of the norm? What if this same culture defines and embraces mistakes as opportunities to learn? One of the Mathematics Teaching Practices from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics’ (NCTM) “Principles to Actions” is to support productive struggle in learning mathematics. We want all learners to make sense of tasks and persevere in solving them. The tasks we select and facilitate must offer opportunities for each learner to develop connections and deepen their conceptual understanding.

Join us to learn more about #SlowMath opportunities that encourage students to persevere through challenging tasks instead of allowing their struggle become destructive. This session will address:

  • How might we provide #SlowMath opportunities for all students to notice and question?
  • How do activities that provide for visualization and conceptual development of mathematics help students think deeply about mathematical ideas and relationships?

Here’s the agenda:

8:30 Introductions
8:40 Intent and Purpose

  • Principles to Actions
  • #SlowMath
  • Norms (SMPs)
8:45 3-2-1 Bridge Visible Thinking Routine
8:50 Using Structure to Solve a Task – Circle-Square Task
9:55 3-2-1 Bridge Visible Thinking Routine

  • 2 questions around Productive Struggle (share one with partner and listen to one of partner)
10:00 Construct a Viable Argument to make your thinking visible:
Does (x+1)²=x²+1?
10:25 3-2-1 Bridge Visible Thinking Routine

  • In the chat, 1 analogy/metaphor/simile for Productive Struggle
10:30 Close

Here’s my sketch note of our plan:

Dave Johnston (@Johnston_MSMath) recorded his thinking and learning and shared it with us via Twitter.

And, a little more feedback from Twitter:

Cross posted on The Slow Math Movement

Questions

#SlowMath: looking for structure and noticing regularity in repeated reasoning #T3IC

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At the 2018 International T³ Conference in San Antonio, Jennifer Wilson (@jwilson828) and I presented the following 90 minute
session.

#SlowMath: looking for structure
and noticing regularity in repeated reasoning

How do we provide opportunities for students to learn to use structure and repeated reasoning? What expressions, equations and diagrams require making what isn’t pictured visible? Let’s engage in tasks where making use of structure and repeated reasoning can provide an advantage and think about how to provide that same opportunity for students.

Here’s my sketch note of our plan:

Dave Johnston (@Johnston_MSMath) recorded his thinking and learning and shared it with us via Twitter.

Cross posted on The Slow Math Movement

#LL2LU, Conferences, Connecting Ideas, Presentations, Questions

Using technology alongside #SlowMath to promote productive struggle

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Using technology alongside #SlowMath
to promote productive struggle
2017 T³™ International Conference
Sunday, March 12, 8:30 – 10 a.m.
Columbus AB, East Tower, Ballroom Level
Jennifer Wilson
Jill Gough

One of the Mathematics Teaching Practices from the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics’ (NCTM) “Principles to Actions” is to support productive struggle in learning mathematics.

  • How does technology promote productive struggle?
  • How might we provide #SlowMath opportunities for all students to notice and question?
  • How do activities that provide for visualization and conceptual development of mathematics help students think deeply about mathematical ideas and relationships?

[Cross posted at Easing the Hurry Syndrome]

Algebra, Assessment, Conferences, Connecting Ideas, Questions, Reflection, Sketch Notes

NCSM 2016: Sketch notes for learning

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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…Apr_11_NCSM-Devlin

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?

Conference Sketch Note - 25

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.
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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.

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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”?

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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?

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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?

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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?

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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.

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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?

Conference Sketch Note - 33

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?

Conference Sketch Note - 34

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.

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#LL2LU, Ask Don't Tell, Conferences, Learning, Sketch Notes

#SlowMath: look for meaning before the procedure

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In her #CMCS15 session, Jennifer Wilson (@jwilson828) asks:

How might we leverage technology to build procedural fluency from conceptual understanding?  What if we encourage sketching to show connections?

What if we explore right triangle trigonometry and  equations of circles through the lens of the Slow Math Movement?  Will we learn more deeply, identify patterns, and make connections?

How might we promote and facilitate deep practice?

This is not ordinary practice. This is something else: a highly targeted, error-focused process. Something is growing, being built. (Coyle, 4 pag.)

What if we S…L…O…W… down?

How might we leverage technology to take deliberate, individualized dynamic actions? What will we notice and observe? Can we Will we What happens when we will take time to note what we are noticing and track our thinking?

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What is lost by the time we save being efficient, by telling? How might we ask rather than tell?

#SlowMath Movement = #DeepPractice + #AskDontTell

What if we offer more opportunities to deepen understanding by investigation, inquiry, and deep practice?

Coyle, Daniel (2009-04-16). The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How. Random House, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Connecting Ideas, Questions, Reflection, TED talk

Patient development of conceptual understanding

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<true confession>

Sometimes I teach at my pace instead of the pace of the learners in my care.

<tragic>

To where am I racing?

Rule Three from The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle is SLOW IT DOWN.

“Why does slowing down work so well? The myelin model offers two reasons.  First, going slow allows you to attend more closely to errors, creating a higher degree of precision with each firing – and when it comes to growing myelin, precision is everything.  As football coach Tom Martinez likes to say ‘It’s not how fast you can do it. It’s how slowly you can do it correctly.’ Second, going slow helps the practitioner to develop something even more important: a working perception of the skill’s internal blueprint – the shape and rhythm of the interlocking skill circuits.”  (p. 85)

In her Shortest Path post, Jennifer Wilson (@jwilson828) asks:

How many of our students would choose a beautiful path over the shortest path to learn a new topic? Which of our students would always choose the shortest path over a happier path to learn a new topic?

I wonder how many learners would choose a beautiful path over the shortest path.  Listen to Daniele Quercia.

I have a confession to make. As a scientist and engineer, I’ve focused on efficiency for many years. But efficiency can be a cult, and today I’d like to tell you about a journey that moved me out of the cult and back to a far richer reality.

What is lost by the time we save being efficient?

How might we take up the challenge of teaching and learning procedural fluency through patient development of conceptual understanding? What if I can show what I know in more than one way is deemed essential to learn?

What if we guide our learners on a journey that offers beauty, understanding, quiet, more time, and then efficiency?

Let’s avoid the dangers of a single path. Choose patient development of beautiful paths to conceptual understanding.

It is not an impossible dream.

Be patient.

Learn.

Coyle, Daniel. The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born : It’s Grown, Here’s How. New York: Bantam, 2009. 217.  Print.