In this episode of Room to Grow, Joanie and Curtis have conversations with middle and high school students to gain their perspectives on learning math. They interviewed six students from grades 7-12 in three different sessions. Because all of these conversations were rich with great comments, the next two episodes of Room to Grow will be devoted to these students’ perspectives.

Part 1 focuses on what the students said their teachers do or don’t do in the classroom that supports their learning. We heard about the importance of being able to talk to others during class, to move around and actively engage students in the lesson, and understanding, supporting, and normalizing that students learn at different paces. Future episodes center on the conversations around homework and the importance of their teachers in forming their own mathematical identity and the culture of learning in the classroom. You may be surprised at how much you learn from these students.

We encourage you to explore the resources below, referenced in this episode:

• Riya’s Ramblings podcast – find on your favorite podcast platform or HERE on Apple Podcasts
• Resources for getting students talking in math class
• Blog post on developing math language routines
• Blog post with strategies for supporting mathematics discourse in your classroom
• Resources for getting students up and moving in class
• Blog post with ideas for beginning, middle and end of class
• Blog post with easy to implement ideas

Did you enjoy this episode of Room to Grow? Please leave a review and share the episode with others. Share your feedback, comments, and suggestions for future episode topics by emailing roomtogrowmath@gmail.com . Be sure to connect with your hosts on Twitter and Instagram: @JoanieFun and @cbmathguy.

In this episode of Room to Grow, Joanie and Curtis continue their conversation from the Wisconsin Math Council’s annual conference.

Wisconsin mathematics education leaders Mary Mooney and Lisa Hennessey share additional thoughts on the remaining pillars of their conference theme, A C.A.L.L. to Action, embracing the roles of Community, Advocacy, Leadership, and Learning. Additionally, we hear some questions from the session audience. If you haven’t already, be sure to go back and listen to the first episode, then enjoy this month’s conversation.

We encourage you to explore the resources below, referenced in this episode:

• Wisconsin Mathematics Council: https://www.wismath.org/

Did you enjoy this episode of Room to Grow? Please leave a review and share the episode with others. Share your feedback, comments, and suggestions for future episode topics by emailing roomtogrowmath@gmail.com. Be sure to connect with your hosts on Twitter and Instagram: @JoanieFun and @cbmathguy.

In this episode of Room to Grow, we join our hosts at the Wisconsin Math Council’s annual conference. Wisconsin mathematics education leaders Mary Mooney and Lisa Hennessey join Curtis and Joanie for a discussion focused on the conference theme, A C.A.L.L. to Action, embracing the roles of Community, Advocacy, Leadership, and Learning.

Due to the extended nature of this great conversation, this month’s episode features Community and Advocacy. Stay tuned for next month’s continuation of the conversation, focused on Leadership and Learning.

We encourage you to explore the resources below, referenced in this episode:

Wisconsin Mathematics Council: https://www.wismath.org/

Did you enjoy this episode of Room to Grow? Please leave a review and share the episode with others. Share your feedback, comments, and suggestions for future episode topics by emailing roomtogrowmath@gmail.com.

Be sure to connect with your hosts on Twitter and Instagram: @JoanieFun and @cbmathguy.

In this episode of Room to Grow, our hosts discuss ways to support student sense-making in teaching and learning mathematics. Building out on the ideas shared in Episode 3 of Room to Grow, Curtis and Joanie dive more deeply into what it means for students to “make sense of mathematics.”

They discuss what it looks and sounds like when students are making sense, as opposed to just repeating back learned ideas, and consider which classroom structures and teacher moves might best support students’ sense-making.

They acknowledge that sense-making is not more or less important than learning mathematical skills and fluency, but that it is a part of deep learning and of a student’s ability to generalize their understanding.

As Peter Liljedahl says in Building Thinking Classrooms, “The goal of building thinking classrooms is not to find engaging tasks for students to think about. The goal of thinking classrooms is to build engaged students that are willing to think about any task.”

We encourage you to explore the resources below, referenced in this episode:

• The Standards for Mathematical Practice, now referenced in most states’ math standards and originally published by the Council of Chief State School Officers and the Governor’s Association;
• Jo Boaler’s Math-ish book and website;
• Peter Liljedahl’s book and website Building Thinking Classrooms, and Robert Kaplinsky’s blog post about why you should read it.

Did you enjoy this episode of Room to Grow? Please leave a review and share the episode with others. Share your feedback, comments, and suggestions for future episode topics by emailing roomtogrowmath@gmail.com. Be sure to connect with your hosts on Twitter and Instagram: @JoanieFun and @cbmathguy.

In this episode of Room to Grow, our hosts look for the balance between instruction that is teacher-driven, traditional lecture-style, and inquiry-based, discovery-style lessons. They recognize the value of both types of teaching, understanding that there is a time in learning for both exploration and for direct and explicit teaching.

The conversation offers explanation of what conditions may require different teaching strategies, based on the goals and content of the lesson as well as how students are responding to and progressing (or not) toward intended learning.

The common theme between these approaches is student sense-making, and our hosts each share a personal example of taking opportunities to encourage sense-making in students.

We encourage you to explore the resources below, referenced in this episode:

• NCTM President Kevin Dykema’s President’s message that sparked this episode: https://www.nctm.org/News-and-Calendar/Messages-from-the-President/Archive/Kevin-Dykema/Balancing-Instructional-Strategies-in-the-Math-Classroom/
• TI’s Building Concepts lesson on structure in solving equations: https://education.ti.com/en/t3-professional-development/for-teachers-and-teams/online-learning/on-demand-webinars/2016/building-concepts-foundations-for-success-in-expressions-and-equations
• A sample problem-based curriculum for middle school (NOT the one Curtis’ son uses!): https://curriculum.illustrativemathematics.org/MS/teachers/what_is_pbc.html

Did you enjoy this episode of Room to Grow? Please leave a review and share the episode with others. Share your feedback, comments, and suggestions for future episode topics by emailing roomtogrowmath@gmail.com.

Be sure to connect with your hosts on Twitter and Instagram: @JoanieFun and @cbmathguy.

In this episode of Room to Grow, our hosts share conversation with Rebecka Peterson, the 2023 National Teacher of the Year (NTOY). Rebecka is a high school math teacher at Union High School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on leave for the 2023-24 school year to fulfill her NTOY responsibilities. She views the NTOY not as an award, but rather a job, that of spokesperson and ambassador for the teaching profession.

In this conversation, we learn about her teaching journey and the lessons she learned along the way that have shaped her focus in the classroom. She shares how she focuses on connections with students – connections to each other, to school, to the content, and to their communities. She reflects on current struggles facing math education systems, and her belief that choice could drive better student engagement, more student learning, and less teacher burnout.

We encourage you to explore the resources below, referenced in this episode:

• Learn more about the National Teacher of the Year program HERE
• See Rebecka’s NCTM Handout with more detail about her “Connections” talk and resources she uses in her own classroom
• Learn more about Explore Mathematics by Sam Shah, mentioned by Rebecka
• Learn more about Rebecka’s End-of-unit creative summary project
• Visit Rebecka’s NTOY webpage HERE
  • Direct link to press kit (including photos)
  • Direct link to request Rebecka
• Connect with and learn more about Rebecka Peterson
  • Instagram - @Rebeckapeterson_
  • X (formerly Twitter) - @RebeckaMozdeh
  • Medium blog - medium.com/@rebeckapeterson

Did you enjoy this episode of Room to Grow? Please leave a review and share the episode with others! Share your feedback, comments, and suggestions for future episode topics by emailing roomtogrowmath@gmail.com.

Be sure to connect with your hosts on X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram: @JoanieFun and @cbmathguy.

In this episode of Room to Grow, Curtis and Joanie consider ways to uncover how students are actually thinking about the mathematics they are learning. Using a real-life, recent incident between Curtis and his sixth grade son, our hosts consider the challenging fact that many students think that success in math class means figuring out what answer the teacher (or the computer program/app, or the back of the book) is looking for.

They posit that when educators are always focused on the mathematics of the moment – what is being learned in a single lesson, week, or unit – we can focus students on the smaller grain size ideas instead of helping them to place their learning in the bigger picture of mathematics as a whole. As always, the episode recognizes that teachers work very hard at a very complex task: teaching young minds to deeply understand important mathematics!

We encourage you to explore the resources below, referenced in this episode:

• “Listening to and Learning from Student Thinking,” by Elham Kazemi, Lynsey K. Gibbons, Kendra Lomax, and Megan L. Franke from Teaching Children Mathematics, October 2016.
• “Making Student Thinking Public,” by Shari Stockero and Laura R. Van Zoest from The Mathematics Teacher, May 2011.
• “Attending to Evidence of Students’ Thinking during Instruction,” by Miriam Gamoran Sherin and James Lynn, from Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, May 2019.
• The Five Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematical Discussions by Margaret Smith and Mary Kay Stein, ISBN: 978-1-68054-016-1

Did you enjoy this episode of Room to Grow? Please leave a review and share the episode with others. Share your feedback, comments, and suggestions for future episode topics by emailing roomtogrowmath@gmail.com. Be sure to connect with your hosts on Twitter and Instagram: @JoanieFun and @cbmathguy.

In this episode of Room to Grow, special guests Sandra Lightman and John Staley help Joanie and Curtis understand the Math Milestones. These one-page resources include 12-14 math tasks that provide a visualization of and engagement with the math standards of each grade. The Math Milestones tasks present grade level math, not as a list of standards or learning outcomes, but as a groups of math tasks, a language understood by teachers and students.

The Math Milestones project was supported by Student Achievement Partners with Sandra and John as critical members of the team. The resources, available for free online, include a set of teacher notes that support using these tasks to better understand the math of each grade level, and to engage educators in conversations that get to the depth of the intended learning. Additional work is being done to provide “asset maps,” resources that allow educators to use student work and responses to the Math Milestones tasks to better understand and build upon students’ strengths.

We encourage you to explore the resources below, referenced in this episode:

• Learn more about the Math Milestones project on their website HERE
• Find the grade level grids (sets of tasks) HERE
• Review the teacher notes for each grade level HERE
• Explore additional resources to support teaching the standards from Student Achievement Partners

Did you enjoy this episode of Room to Grow? Please leave a review and share the episode with others. Share your feedback, comments, and suggestions for future episode topics by emailing roomtogrowmath@gmail.com . Be sure to connect with your hosts on Twitter and Instagram: @JoanieFun and @cbmathguy.