Oakland, CA , April 2016

I have summarized each session with some simple (•) bulleted notes, red underline quotes to encapsulate my major take-aways, and occasionally a brief italicized commentary.

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Game-Based Learning: The Hype is Starting to Give Way to Some Surprising Substance  — Keith Devlin (Stanford)

• Big Take-Away = Start with the thinking (which is the more important), then follow with the notation.
• The “Symbolic Barrier”: Symbols are a terrific way to use mathematics, but a horrible way to learn them.
• The vast majority of our population is taught symbolic notation, yet most need mathematical thinking.
• Students using Dragon Box Algebra learn the Algebraic thinking needed for solving equations in 90 minutes. However, this ability did not transfer to paper/symbolic test, therefore, both are needed.
• We teach students to play music, before we teach them to read it. The same should be true of mathematics.

Personal note: I’ve had Dr. Devlin’s book, Goodbye Descartes, for almost 20 years; after his talk he signed it for me.

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Developing Deeper Student Thinking  and Reflection — Patricia Rogers (Gilroy USD)

• Big Take-Away = Use “structured” student collaboration to enhance student reflection, and thus student thinking.
• Good collaboration needs to be: Regular, Brief, Prepared, Open-Minded.
• 3 Teacher Moves (Phil Daro)
  • Student thinking made visible (to other students, not just the teacher)
  • “Everyone Ready” (ALL students individually prepare themselves to share thinking.)
  • “Make an Expert” (of a students who has viable strategy) then have the rest of the class “Turn and Talk” when productive struggle weakens in order to focus on targeted math topic.
• Classroom Discussions (Chaplin, O-Connor, Anderson)
  • Wait Time
  • Revoice (The teacher rephrases what the student just said.)
  • Restate (Student(s) rephrase what a student just said.) 
  • Add-on (Student(s) extend or challenge another student’s conjecture.)
  • Apply (Students apply their own reasoning to someone else’s reasoning …” just try it on.”)

I’ve seen the two techniques of revoicing & restating demonstrated a great deal lately and have now been challenged to bring these into my class more often.

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The San Francisco USD Mathematics Teaching Toolkit: Changing the Practice Along with the Content — Glenn Kenyon & Kathy Bradley (SFUSD)

• Big Take-Away = Established Vision, Beliefs and Goals before building district curriculum…

Vision
“All students will make sense of rigorous mathematics in ways that are creative, interactive, and relevant in heterogeneous classrooms.”

Beliefs
1. All students can and should develop a belief that mathematics is sensible, worthwhile, and doable.
2. All students are capable of making sense of mathematics in ways that are creative, interactive, and relevant.
3. All students can and should engage in rigorous mathematics through rich, challenging tasks.
4. Students’ academic success in mathematics must not be predictable on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, language, religion, sexual orientation, cultural affiliation, or special needs.”

3 Goals
1. Help students express, expand and clarify their own thinking. 2. Help students to listen carefully to one another and negotiate meaning.
3. Help students deepen their reasoning.

“The teaching strategies in the SFUSD Math Teaching Toolkit are designed to support an inquiry-based approached to learning mathematics, with an emphasis on classroom discourse. This approach reflects the shifts of pedagogy required to promote the Common Core Standards for Mathematical Practice.”

• Unit Design Structure to incorporate tasks

• SFUSD’s 3 Signature Strategies for their Teacher Toolkit

1) Math Talks
(SMP#3. “Math Talks”, instead of Number Talks, so discussion can broaden {e.g. strategies for computing area})

2) Three-Read Protocol
(Model for close reading of complex math text)
First Read (Teacher Read Aloud) = What is the Situation?
Second Read (Choral Read) = What are the Quantities & Units?
Third Read (Individual Read & Think) = What question can be asked?
This only runs 10-12 minutes. Take away the question to create a rich task.

3) Participation (Group) Quiz A technique to give public feedback on group work. Lists ways a student can contribute (“You can help your group if you can…. create a table, draw a diagram, listen to people’s ideas and ask questions, etc) Also publicly list teacher expectations (e.g. How groups … us shared space? ask question? explain thinking? etc)

• Video Exemplars & PD modules are available on district web site.

1. SFUSD has a PHENOMENAL math web site chalked full of resources for supporting teachers implement the vision and the curriculum. Check it out!
2. The description of their Group Quiz speaks to the need to explicitly teach students how to productively collaborate.
3. This was the first of three sessions that spoke about the importance of vision. It will be the predominant point that I take home with me from this conference.

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Beyond Relevance and Real World: Talking with Teachers About Engagement in Mathematics? — Dan Meyer

• Big Take-Away = ‘Real World’ does not have to be real, just accessible and engaging.
• 62% of teachers surveyed : Greatest challenge is “unmotivated” students. Interesting that they didn’t say motivating students was the challenge.
• Question: Why don’t teachers spend more time developing good questions?
  Teacher Response: “Because we don’t have the time.” (True that.)
  Real Issue: “Lack of creativity. Giving the answers does not require creativity.” (True that, also, but ouch!)
• A stronger option than the typical “engaging images or context” in a textbook: Redefine Real World. A situation is in the process of becoming real to you if you are able to … 

1. Ask a question about it.
2. Guess about it .
3. Argue about it.

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High School Coaching Model: Building Bridges Between Coaching and PLC Culture — Kris Cunningham & Jeanette Scott (Phoenix UHSD)

• Big Take-Away = Roll out PD through PLC teams.
• New initiatives first unveiled during PLC team meetings.
• Most powerful change agent was a lesson study. (1st day by 1 teacher, next day by all teachers)
• Most teachers took 3-4 years to show change; 4 of 5 teachers showed significant change within 5 years.
• There exists a Common Lesson Plan format for lessons studies and co-planning.
• Professional Development certificates tied to evaluations. (i.e. Professional Growth affects evaluation outcome.)

The fact that teachers took 3-4 years to show change aligns with Maggie McGatha’s research shared at last year’s NCSM conference. 

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Practicing the Five Practices: Coaching Teachers to Use Student Work in Planning  — Max Ray-Riek (Math Forum)

• Big Take-Away = Walk teachers through the 5 Practices of Discourse with student work samples.
• Max shared with us the Teddy Bear’s Banquet pattern problem. He had us determine the Math Goal for the lesson, and then Anticipate the student responses.
• Max then offered 16 samples of true student responses (Monitor) and then had us Select and Sequence some of the responses for classroom discourse and share why. We were then asked to Connect the responses to the Math Goal.

This is a great training tool that can be brought into any PLC structure.

I also witnessed Max slyly counting on his fingers. This was his way of giving is all wait time on his prompts. 

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Smarter Balance – Making Connections: Eliciting to Acting on Evidence —  Judy Hickman (Director of Mathematics, SBAC)

• Big Take-Away = When the scoring focus is on Reasoning, students can still score full credit with a minor calculation error, if they show understanding.
• Do NOT put too much emphasis on Interim Assessments. As “snapshots” they will give you good information, but it will be an incomplete assessment.
• The authors of the exams were shocked that students answered so few questions correctly.

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Four Keys to Effective Mathematics Leadership — Mona Toncheff & Bill Barnes  (Activating the Vision )

 

 

 

 

• Big Take-Away = Vision needs to be created by ALL stakeholders
• The Four Keys:

1. Establish a Clear Vision for Mathematics Teaching & Learning
2. Support Visionary Professional Learning for Teachers and Teacher Leaders
3. Develop Systems for Activating the Vision
4. Empower the Vision of Family and Community Engagement

This was the second of three sessions that spoke about the importance of vision. This one stressed the need to have all stakeholders (admin, teachers, classified staff, parents and the business community) in on the creation of the vision. Mona & Bill then asked, “If you were ask 10 people on your campus, ‘What is our vision,’ how many answers would you get?”

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The Secret to Leading Sustainable Change: Vision, Focus, Feedback, and Action! — Dr. Tim Kanold (Turning Vision into Action )

• Big Take-Away = Set the Vision, Help people advance the Vision,  Celebrate Evidence that the people are advancing the Vision, and take Action on the feedback towards the Vision. 
• Sustainable change requires evidence that the change is bigger than their opinions.
• Is the work you are doing formative? Meaningful feedback must be followed with results in action by the teacher or teacher team.
• Meaningful Feedback = F.A.S.T. Action: Fair, Accurate, Specific, Timely. Action from your feedback is required.
• Mary Beth call. Dr. Kanold told a story of when he was Superintendent of Stevenson HSD. He called a secretary at one of the schools, restated that ‘engagement’ was part their district vision, and asked “What does engagement look like in your job.” That’s keeping the vision in front of the people!
• The Popeye Moment: Change happens when the moment of moral courage vocalizes what Popeye often said, “That’s all I can stands, cuz I can’t stands n’more!“

This was the third of three sessions that spoke about the importance of vision. The story of calling the secretary is tattooed on my brain. Dr. Kanold stressed that the vision should be posted visibly during every PLC meeting, and that any unproductive dialogue can be redirected with the simple statement, “How does this conversation advance this vision?”

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A Math Coaching Package — Donna Lione, Rebecca Williams & Chris Shore (Me) (Temecula Valley USD )

 

My colleagues and I presented the framework for developing a comprehensive math program. The details of each of the 8 components will be posted as separate posts.

• Vision
• Relationships
• Humility
• Influence
• Passion
• Faith
• Focus
• A Plan