I had the wonderful opportunity of spending a week in Boston for the 2015 NCTM & NCSM conference. I am recapping the NCTM sessions here, and the NCSM sessions in another post.

Since there was so much information, I have summarized each session with some simple (•) bulleted notes and quotes to encapsulate my major take-aways, and occassional a brief italicized commentary.

This was an enormously worthwhile trip. I highly recommend that you get yourself to San Francisco in April 2016, if you can.

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NCTM President’s Address: Five Years of Common Core State Mathematics Standards — Diane Briars

• “College and Career Readiness” in math calls for Statistics, Discrete Math & Modeling.”
• Standards are not equal to a curriculum.
  We need to pay more attention to the tasks & activities through which the students experience the content, rather than simply focusing on the content itself.
• 75% of teachers support Common Core, but only 33% of parents support it, and 33% of parents don’t know anything about it.
  So we have to get the word out.

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What Decisions — Phil Daro (1 of 3 writers of CCSSM)

• “Don’t teach to a standard; teach to the mathematics.”
  This was the most challenging statement of the conference for me, mostly because I’m still struggling to wrap my mind around it. I get what he means, but I have been so trained to state an objective on the board and bring closure to that lesson. He shared that Japanese lesson plans are simply descriptions of the math concepts of the unit rather than the typical American model of objective, examples and practice sets.

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The Practices in Practice — Bill McCallum (1 of 3 writers of CCSSM)

• Students understanding what WILL happen without doing the calculations is an example of Using Structure.
  I took this back to my classroom and immediately applied it in the students’ graphing of quadratic functions. One of the more practical things I took from the conference.
• “A student cannot show perseverance in 20 minutes. It is done day after day.”
• Noticing & Wondering applies to teachers looking at student work as well.
  Dr. McCallum was referencing an instructional practice made well-known by Annie Fetter of the Math Forum through which students are asked to closely analyze mathematical situations. He was calling on teachers to focus on and analyze student thinking (not simply answers) just as closely.

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Five Essential Instructional Shifts — Juli Dixon

• Shift 1: Students provide strategies rather than learning from the teacher.
• Shift 2: Teacher provides strategies “as if” from student. “When students don’t come up with a strategy, the teacher can “lie” and say “I saw a student do …”
• Shift 3: Students create the context (Student Generated Word Problems)
• Shift 4: Students do the sense making. “Start with the book closed.”
• Shift 5: Students talk to students. “Say Whoohoo when you see a wrong answer, because we have something to talk about.”
  I felt that I do all of these, but that I have been ignoring Sgift #3 this semester. Dr. Dixon compelled me to give this more attention again. 

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Getting Students Invested in the Process of Problem-Solving — Annie Fetter & Debbie Wile

• Teachers must stop focusing on answer getting before the students will.
• Honors Students are used to a certain speed and type of outcome, so they need a different type of scaffolding when it comes to problem solving.
• “If you are focused on the pacing guide rather than the math, you are not going to teach much.”
  This was one of several comments, including Dr. Daro’s, that bagged on the habit of being too married to a pacing guide of standards.

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Motivating Our Students with Real-World Problem-Based Lessons — Robert Kaplinksy

• To students: “I will only give you information that you ask me for.”
• Chunking tasks (Teacher talks — Students Think/Pair/Share — Repeat) was demonstrated to allow student conjectures, critiquing reasoning and high engagement.
  Robert modeled his “In-n-Out” lesson. I have seen this several times, but I never get tired of it, because it is awesome. Every time I have witnessed this lesson, teachers cheer when the answer to the cost of a 100 x 100 Burger is revealed. I have never heard this from someone looking up an answer in the back of a textbook. Also, Robert expertly demonstrated how a lesson like this should be facilitated in class by chunking and by getting the students to think of what they need to know.

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Getting Students to Argue in Class with Number Sense Activities — Andrew Stadel

• “As the teacher, I feel left out if I don’t know what my students are thinking and discussing.”
• Discussion techniques
  Andrew is known as “Mr. Estimation 180.” In this session, he showed how to bring SMP #3 into a number sense activity. The new one that I learned from Andrew here was having students stand up … those that choose A face left, B face right, C face forward. Then find someone near you who agrees and discuss. Find someone who disagrees and discuss. That’s Bomb!
• Calling for Touch Time with the Tools
  In other words, let’s get the kids measuring with rulers, constructing with compasses, building with blocks, graphing with calculators.
• Chunking tasks to allow student conjectures, critiquing reasoning and high engagement, as I saw with Kaplinksy.

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Using Mathematical Practices to Develop Productive Disposition — Duane Graysay

• Duane and other educators of Penn State created a 5-week course with the intent of developing a productive disposition in mathematical problem solving.
  There were a lot of data showing the effectiveness of this program which focused on teaching the 8 Math Practices. The most amazing and provocative result was shown by this slide in which student felt that the math was actually harder than they thought before the course, but that they felt more competent.

(SA = Strong Agree, etc)

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Shadow Con — A Teacher Led Mini-Conference

• There were six worthy educators from the Math Twitter Blogosphere (#MTBoS) that each offered up a brief 10-minute presentation. The uniquely cool aspect of these talks is the Call to Action at the end of each. In other words, you have to do something with what you learned.
• Michael Pershan’s talk: Be less vague, and less improvisational with HINTS during a lesson. Instead, plan your hints for the lesson in advance.
  This one resonated most with me, because I once heard that Japanese teachers have a small deck of cards with hints written on them. To draw a hint card, students have to first show effort and progress, then they may draw a hint card. They must use each hint before they may draw another. I accept Michael’s call to action.

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 Ignite — Math Forum

• These were a series of 5 minute/20-slides mini-presentations that were more inspirational than informational. Apparently they are part of a larger movement (Ignite Show), but the folks at Math Forum have been organizing these Ignite Math Sessions at large conferences for a few years.
  If want to get fired up about teaching math, these sessions definitely live up to their name. 

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Can’t wait for next year!