Written by Our school, which is four schools within one, (Jr. Middle, Sr. and Montessori) has been focusing on math. We as members of the Cohort 21 community (there is one participant from each school) have been asked to incorporate math into our action plans.
What I originally chose to work on was…
HMW increase grit, resilience and perseverance in Gr 2 math students?
However, I wanted to broaden my scope to include my roIe as the curriculum coordinator for our Jr. School.
This is where I am now…
HMW as curriculum leaders support teachers to increase grit, resilience and perseverance in their students’ mathematical processes?
I want to focus on problem solving and mental math computation. These are two areas that our Jr. School has identified as areas of weakness.
So far I have…
- Incorporated a book study with staff – Sherry Parrish Number Talks
- Visited all Jk-Gr 4 classrooms to model Number Talk lessons
- Created a Math video to share with parents and teachers about how children develop their sense of number and provided some strategies to support students in the classroom and at home. This is part of our Spotlight Series https://vimeo.com/221775702/5145ec407d (Please disregard the fact that it looks like I have suffered a stroke and am 30+ pounds heavier in this video – those were the lovely side affects of recovering from a concussion for me – fun times!)
- Completed a gold standard PBL project of designing and building a Mouse Library which incorporated many areas of the curriculum. There will be a blog post devoted to this project shortly.
My next steps are…
- Complete PD with Number Talks
- Provide PD on other math games, strategies and tools – Thinking about Box Cars and One Eyed Jacks
- Create more videos for our Spotlight Series
I’m exploring…
- Spatial reasoning resources
- Box Cars and One Eyed Jacks math games and resources
- PBL and how that affects resilience, perseverance and grit
- How teaching through PBL impacts particular skills such as mental math computation and problem solving
I’m still wrestling with…
- The shift from direct instruction to PBL in the classroom, but also with the teachers…I’m using rather ‘old’ ways to support teachers in their learning.
Questions that I have for you…
- How can I be more effective with my teacher facilitation?
- I’d love to hear about PD sessions and strategies you, as learners, have found valuable.
- How have you facilitated teacher instruction? What worked and what were the challenges you experienced?
@lmitchell a great place to look next would be the work of @snewell
Read through all her posts starting with this one -https://cohort21.com/suzannenewell/2017/02/21/can-we-assess-a-mathematical-mindset/ and follow her action plan journey. In just one year she was able to make mathematical mindset a priority for our math teachers and her survey and mindset mapping initiative spread K-12. Happy to share the detail with you at the 3rd f2f or connect with @snewell as she is a C21 alum.
Hi Lisa,
I really like the idea of incorporating a staff book study, as well as introducing teachers to the many benefits of PBL to increase student resiliency and grit.
Quebec integrates situational problems into their curriculum, which are just awesome application problems on steroids. I cannot tell you how much I love them, and continue to incorporate them into my classes in Ontario. Take a Look 🙂 https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B7ZBU4SZ0S6XTEgtNDNyQVhTT00
Although I have never been in a facilitative position, I find it very effective to have a supervisor (or you in this case) sitting with me through a lesson, and discuss the ‘Approaches to Learning’ that I am using in that lesson, and discuss others that I could have used instead. It’s a great idea maker, and works great with a PBL mindset.
Approaches the Learning Image
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1EtKBgOtJApmLO6v9ZtZKulgXQmqc0iUA
Hey Lisa,
I’m not sure if this is an area you would be open to experimenting with, but reading your post initially made me think about Japanese Lesson Study. Our Junior School has been using it for a number of years now with awesome success: it’s one learning model for teachers that focuses on questions, collaboration, student observation, and analysis. It might not be a piece for this year, but your action plan strikes me as something that will be many years in the making, so perhaps a possible area to look into…
http://tdtrust.org/what-is-lesson-study