Numberless word problems and bar models for Multi-Step word problems (CCSS 2.OA.1)

It's been a while since I've had the chance to blog, but I miss it so much that I'm making my return. Maybe it's the start of a new season, but I'm ready to reinvest the time in this blog again!

Let me set the stage for this lesson: Yesterday, a long-term substitute in Grade 2 asked me to come in and help her with multi-step word problems. She had taken over this class about a month ago, fresh out of graduating from college. She didn't have a clear plan of how she could teach these and also asked my assistance to find resources to support this unit. Hooray for not having a district adopted curriculum, amirite? This was a chance to sit down with a new teacher and figure out some new strategies to try in math instruction!

I thought it would be beneficial to mash two of my favorite strategies together to work through the more challenging problems; Numberless Word Problems and Bar Models.

Big shoutout to Brian Bushart (@bstockus) for the inspiration and genius that is Numberless Word Problems! Other big thanks to Greg Tang (@gregtangmath) for the idea of using a part-part-whole model (or bar model) when working through word problems!

So this is the mini-document I created to blend these two concepts together to help make sense of some of the bigger multi-step word problems that CCSS 2.OA.1 calls for. (Please feel free to make a copy and tweak for yourself!)

The students reacted very positively to the numberless word problems, even sharing, "This is impossible if we don't know what to add." Many students started inserting numbers on the first slide as a way to show me that they could solve it, which was nice to see that kind of Moxie, but really highlighted the need to use numberless word problems frequently....to SLLLLOOOOOOWWWWWW students down when it comes to word problems. 

I emphasized making sense of the story. Maybe putting a visual picture or movie in their heads or drawing what they think they heard what was happening on their whiteboards. 

As the numbers were revealed, they wanted to start doing some/any kind math, but since we didn't know the full story yet, they weren't quite sure what operation to use yet. This is where the bar models or part-part-whole models came in. They could start to see what they needed to join together and what they needed to take away in order to solve the different steps or missing information.

The only regret is that I premade the part-part-whole models for the students so there is no chance that they could independently use that strategy to help them solve multi-step word problems. Next time, I'm going to try leaving it blank and drawing in the models as information is revealed, I think that will help guide them to become more independent with the strategy. 

I'm happy with this start and am excited to work with this teacher to fine-tune it some more for the students. The teacher thought these strategies worked really well and plans to use it herself, so that's always a good win when others can take something away, as I hope this blog post does for you!

My Math Autobiography

"I want to be a math teacher when I grow up."

Not even lying, that was something I would say quite often when asked what I wanted to be when I grew up. I always loved math; it always came easy to me, I loved "playing" in math, I was really great at memorizing algorithms and my times tables; it just seemed like a natural fit. I had wonderful elementary school teachers who fostered that love for education, and especially math. 

I can't say I got my love of math from my parents, even though they were the best parents anyone could ask for. My dad is a genius and can design and engineer the most incredible super high-tech machines and systems. My mother always feels like she isn't smart enough for anything, and she always had that self-doubt. Whenever it was homework time, from kindergarten all through high school, I was left to my own devices to get it done. But I was self-motivated enough that I would come right home and immediately do all my homework by myself, without being prompted and without asking for help. (Yes, I'm a nerd) 

When I got to high school there was a shift. I had one particularly horrible Trigonometry teacher. Don't get me wrong, he was a very nice, old man, but he was so clueless and would teach the entire class with his back to us and just writing problem after problem on the board and dictating algorithms for us to scribble in our notebooks. True story: kids used to sit in the back of my class and smoke pot. That's how clueless he was. I passed his class with an A because 1. I sat in the front row away from the smoke clouds (reminder, I'm a nerd) 2. I taught it all to myself and 3. I practiced a ton at home.

I had a freshly out of college young woman teacher for my Geometry class. This could have been my chance to reignite my passion for math, but again, she fell short. First, she had to ward off unwelcome advances by the boys in our class (gross). Even though she was a new teacher, I think she used the same pedagogical methods as she learned math, therefore she, too, would stand at the front of the board and just lecture, and lecture and lecture and expect us to copy the theorems verbatim into our notebooks. I didn't understand geometry, and I still don't beyond a 5th grade level.

Nevertheless, I persisted. 😉

I started my freshman year of college undeclared but with full intentions of enrolling in the education major. I took Honors Finite Mathematics my first semester of college and I got a C.  

A friggin C. 

Never in my life had I received any grade lower than a B+ (in case you forgot, I'm a nerd) So that one grade was devastating enough for me to question my entire direction in life. I met with my advisor immediately and she noticed that I really loved to write and she enjoyed my writing, so she nudged me in the direction of communications and marketing (of which she was the head of). I happily took her advice and got my bachelor's 3.5 years later in communications. I worked at an advertising agency for a year right out of college, and when I was burnt out from that, I went back to graduate school to finally pursue my passion for teaching.

I became an elementary school teacher and taught all of the subjects to various grade levels for several years. With so much going on, I never felt like an expert in any one subject by any stretch. Then, for a few years, I was only teaching literacy. So naturally I thought, "Oh my god, I love literacy, I want to become a reading specialist." Thankfully, after a few years, I landed in a different school teaching only math. The first 3 weeks were full of tears, like every damn day full-on bawling my eyes out. 

Then my math coach came in and saved me!

She talked me off the ledge and worked with me to fully understand each standard, helped me structure my math block so it worked for the kids and me, and made me love, love, LOVE math again. Every day was a complete joy; I was having a blast, the kids were having the time of their lives, and my principal was seeing results in the standardized test scores. I think every day I would hear at least one kid say, "I love math!" or "Math is my favorite subject!" YESSSS! As a math educator, that's all you hope for! I was giving my students a positive environment to play and learn math. 

One of my colleagues suggested to me during this time that I try to get my Mathematics license so I could become a math coach or specialist myself. I thought that was a great idea, so I started studying very hard; got myself a tutor, watched every Kahn academy video possible and reached out to every middle school math teacher I could find for resources. (For some insane reason the educator licensure tests for Massachusetts license you for Grades 1-6, but the content on the test is Grades 1-10) After a few months of intense studying, I went to the testing place for my 4 hour math test with so many butterflies in my stomach I could've opened an arboretum. I worked right up until my time was up. Scores came back 2 months later and I passed, with flying colors! "Answered correctly most or all areas" for every subtopic of the test, well except geometry of course. 

I had one especially horrible day at school a few months later. On a whim I checked for job postings on Schoolspring to see if there were any math coach or math specialist teachers open. I found 2 in the town right next door to where I live. I applied for both and got interviews for both. The first school did not hire me, but the second one did. 

From that point on, I completely and utterly immersed myself in the social world of the #MTBoS (Math Twitter Blogosphere) and soaked it all in. I was learning all about revolutionary practices from inspiring educators all over the world. But I wasn't participating. I was lurking. 

Eventually I worked up the courage to make comments and reply, even post my own original thoughts. I haven't looked back since. Every single day I'm learning something new about math and math education. All of the books I've read in the last few months have been professional math-related books, and I don't even care! All day every day I get to think about, play with, and teach math and I am loving every second of it!

I'm fortunate enough to have just signed on to teach Math Methods at Endicott College in MA. I can't even wait to share my passion for math with these pre-service students/soon-to-be-teachers. I just hope it's contagious enough that I'll hear them say, "Math is my favorite subject!"

Curriculum Roadmap...was it all a dream?

I really could have sworn that somewhere on Twitter I saw a teacher post about how they made a bulletin board in their classroom that displayed their whole scope and sequence for math. That way, students could see how everything was connected instead of being isolated units, and the teacher could point back and say, "Remember when..." or look ahead and say, "We'll really need this when..."  It sounded awesome. I loved it. I could've sworn I "liked" it, or at the very least retweeted it.

Now it's nowhere to be found! Was it something I dreamt about?

After reaching out to some #MTBoSers who I know pay close attention to the happenings on Twitter without success, I decided to start my own. I started with Grade 4 because I promised them something like this during our end of the year data meeting.

So here's what my first incarnation of this roadmap looked like:

At least I got every unit on there and it goes in logical order. Then I started thinking about how I could show the connections from unit to unit, for example, they learn factors and multiples in Unit 1 and then use those skills and ideas in later units. So I went back in and added new lines, in different colors and formats. This was my 2nd draft.

Not sure how I feel about the blue dotted lines, might have to change that up a bit. Also feel like I could make more connections but don't want it to look too overwhelming. 

Going to sit on it for a few days and mull it over before adjusting it. Look for the third draft to come soon!

DITLife Friday, May 12, 2017

Normally a Friday day in the life post would be awesome and upbeat. Not this one!

Why, you ask?

Standardized Testing.

Again.

I'm in the unfortunate position of being a test coordinator which means I have to sit in on every single session of the state standardized test. Today I had the joy of watching 18 third graders plow through 22 math questions on a computer. My favorites are the ones who raise thief hands after 15 minutes to say they're done and have not one thing written on their scratch paper. (Yes, there's more than one of these)

Before I got to watch paint dry proctor the test, I had the pleasure of meeting with my grade 1 team for team-time. We went over all the end of the year requirements and previewed next year. I am so pleased with this grade level this year because they are on track to complete every unit of the math curriculum this year. Last year they only got about 75% of the way done! Huge kudos to them and their hard work.

After the standardized testing, I had some time to take a look at the end of the year benchmark tests for all grade levels and work on the login information and getting the test out to all the teachers. I also got called for some tech help, which I always love. It was a surprisingly mellow afternoon for me, which I am so grateful that I had!

After work I spent an hour on the treadmill at the gym catching up on stupid reality shows. Yes, it's my guilty pleasure and helps my workouts fly by!

Came home to a grouchy/miserable husband who just had a tooth pulled. He is in so much pain and so I got to play nurse a little bit and help him try to recover. We were supposed to go out for dinner but he can't eat anything and he didn't feel like leaving the house (can't say I blame him) so we stayed in with the doggies and watched some TV.

Kind of the perfect cap off to a long work week!

Reflection Questions:

1) Teachers make a lot of decisions throughout the day.  Sometimes we make so many it feels overwhelming.  When you think about today, what is a decision/teacher move you made that you are proud of?  What is one you are worried wasn’t ideal?

Totally not a teacher move, but I'm glad I diffused peppermint essential oil next to my desk today because it kept me so calm and relieved a terrible headache I've had all week. I got a diffuser recently for my room at work and I really love it. I also find that other teachers have gravitated towards my room just to come in and inhale the nice scents. So...good teacher move I guess!

2) Every person’s life is full of highs and lows.  Share with us some of what that is like for a teacher.  What are you looking forward to?  What has been a challenge for you lately?

I've really started to feel the end of the year stress in ways I've never felt before. There's just so much to do and wrap up before the kids are gone, and the list of things I need to do to get ready for next year seems to be endless. I'm looking forward to this summer break, but I'm hopeful that I don't spend the whole summer doing work (which I usually do)

3) We are reminded constantly of how relational teaching is.  As teachers we work to build relationships with our coworkers and students.  Describe a relational moment you had with someone recently.

I did some testing on a kiddo to see how their math skills were. This child also had an upcoming IEP meeting and the classroom teacher invited me to come to the meeting. I'm glad I did because I got to add some of my insights into the meeting and I think at the end we came up with some good strategies for this child. The teacher was very appreciative and thanked me several times. I'm glad I was able to be an additional resource for the teacher, and for the child.

4) Teachers are always working on improving, and often have specific goals for things to work on throughout a year. What have you been doing to work toward your goal?  How do you feel you are doing?

I'm still plugging away and trying to be a better teacher and coach every day. I'm definitely more settled into my coach role now that it's year 2 for me, and I'm going to be setting some pretty lofty goals for the next school year!

5) What else happened this month that you would like to share?

Testing is almost over. I got a grant approved. I became an undergrad professor on the side. Nothing too major. *wink*

Testing Doldrums - DITLife April 12 2017

Standardized testing will be the death of me. 

And children.

And education.

And curiosity, ingenuity, creativity, and passion for learning.

I'm sure the list can go on and on and on of things standardized testing will kill, but today this is all that's on my mind. Today I was a test coordinator for Grade 3 MCAS and it's just shear torture. 

I'm talking about torture on the teachers. We have regulations, which I'm sure are the same across the country, that teachers can not read a book, work on their computer, grade papers, look at their phones, write something, or do anything else to occupy their minds. So for hours on end we sit there and stare at kids while we make shopping lists in our heads, or plan what we're going to do over summer, or think about how long we would last on Naked and Afraid (my conclusion: maybe 3 days, tops)

It's funny for me to reflect upon today because just two days ago I was facilitating kindergarten screening. I got to PLAY with 4 and 5 year olds all day while they secretly showed how much they know. I think my favorite was the counting part, and so many kids were so proud that they could count all the way to 20! (and in some cases, 100) We were stacking blocks while showing me counting with a one-to-one correspondence. This was a stark reminder of the presentation I saw from Kassia Wedekind during the Shadowcon that took place during the annual NCTM conference. She spoke all about the importance of play in mathematics.

And then today I got to sit and watch kids' spirits get crushed as they stressed and fretted over a standardized test. 

What has happened to our education system that we go from fun play to rigid rules and testing? I could gain the same amount of valuable data by playing with these kids than from a multiple choice test. 

Time to get off my soapbox and back on track with my day in the life...

After the ENTIRE day of proctoring the test (yes, one kid used the whole 6 hours) I had to go to my tutoring job. She's a very sweet 8th grader who really excels in school. I have such a fun time during the hour I spend with her twice a week. Today's session was relatively easy because there is only one more day left before our spring vacation!

After tutoring, my husband and I headed downtown Salem to get our dinner...from a meat speakeasy! Yes, you read that right! It's this supercool place that has a wooden door in a wide (not creepy) alley. Every Wednesday, they post a password and the price for the meal. You show up to the place and if the red light is on, you press the intercom, say the password, and order the quantity of meals you want. Pay exact change cash, and receive a really delicious gourmet meal, including a homemade soda, in a brown paper bag to go home to enjoy. At first I just thought it was a novelty thing, but now it's consistently our Wednesday night meal! (If ever you find yourself in Massachusetts and/or Salem, let me know and I'll give you the inside scoop!) Tonight's meal was a fried pork chop with bacon and Asian coleslaw sandwich with a side of Asian noodle salad and homemade root beer!

The name of the restaurant is blurred out because if you post
 the name of it on social media, you get banned! No joke!!

After our scrumptious dinner, we snuggled up with our dogs and watched game one of the Bruins playoffs. It was a great ending to a rather boring day!

Reflection Questions:

1) Teachers make a lot of decisions throughout the day.  Sometimes we make so many it feels overwhelming.  When you think about today, what is a decision/teacher move you made that you are proud of?  What is one you are worried wasn’t ideal?

Today didn't require much thinking or deciding on my end. (Thanks MCAS) However, I will say that I'm happy that I spoke up to the teacher whose room I'm the coordinator for yesterday. Yesterday, this teacher was giving me a lot of pushback about the rules of the test and was perseverating on one particular point. After consulting our TAMs and checking with the principal, we all agreed on what this one rule was meaning. The teacher wouldn't drop it though, and I finally said, "Okay, it's time to move on and drop it, we resolved it, now let's focus on this test." I think being firm yesterday set me up for an easier day today with that teacher. On the other hand, was it a less than ideal move? Perhaps? Maybe that teacher was offended or put off that I said that? I'll have to overcompensate with kindness the next 3 days I'm in that room for testing to let them know I'm not mad and we can still work together peacefully.

2) Every person’s life is full of highs and lows.  Share with us some of what that is like for a teacher.  What are you looking forward to?  What has been a challenge for you lately?

I think my post clearly outlines what's been bringing me down lately and there's nothing I can do about it. I'm really looking forward to our spring vacation next week, and just having the opportunity to unplug from school for a bit. Lately I've had some of the best teaching days of my career because I've had the opportunity to help teachers roll out an online math game and try out some of the best practices I've gathered from my PLN (Twitter). All of these practices, activities, and lessons have made for some really fun and awesome teaching days. I'm looking forward to the testing season being over so I can get back to that!

3) We are reminded constantly of how relational teaching is.  As teachers we work to build relationships with our coworkers and students.  Describe a relational moment you had with someone recently.

Every week I post a math question of the week for the whole school to answer. Lately, I've chosen challenging 5th grade problems. Today, a 3rd grader came up to me and said, "I solved the question, can I tell you my strategy" Ummm, YESSSSSSS!!!! This sweet child told me how he used the distributive property to solve the multiplication problem. He was so proud of his work, and I was so proud to hear him explain his thinking.

4) Teachers are always working on improving, and often have specific goals for things to work on throughout a year. What have you been doing to work toward your goal?  How do you feel you are doing?

This is always my least favorite question to answer. Mostly because I can't remember what goals I set for myself and because I usually realize I haven't been doing much to work towards them! Honestly, I start every year with probably a million little goals, and I think in general, I'm doing really well at improving and working towards them. My main goal will always be to build relationships with the teachers in my school so that I can be a better coach. I'm starting to fall into my old habits of working only with those people who welcome me into their rooms and planning sessions. I suppose I should try, for the last months of school, to step out of my comfort zone and get into those classrooms that aren't as welcoming. I need to try to make a broader impact. So even though this is my least favorite question to answer, it's probably the best question because it really forces me to self-reflect which is so, so important!!

5) What else happened this month that you would like to share?

Lots of fun stuff! I got two graduate courses that I want to teach this summer approved and I have an interview next week to teach an undergraduate course at a local college. I'm hoping that pans out because it sounds like it will be a great opportunity for me professionally. Personally, I've been going to the gym and eating healthy and I've lost 15 pounds in a month and a half! So yeah, life is good right now!

Visiting a "Combustible Classroom"

Today, I had the pleasure of visiting a colleague in a far-far-away land's classroom. And by far-far-away, I really mean it was about an hour drive. Easily chalking this up to the most worthwhile hour-long commute in a long time!

(re)Igniting passion in teaching

My principal had visited Jed Stefanowitz's third grade classroom earlier in the year through the MAPLE initiative with participating districts in Massachusetts. She was so ignited (this is a precursor to some really bad puns) by the work going on in his room, she texted me while sitting in it and told me to follow him on Twitter immediately. Luckily I heeded her advice and instantly started to see the magic he and his classroom had. His classroom was piloting being a 1-to-1 classroom as well as a really STEAM infused classroom. He is a Google certified educator and an ambassador for Osmo, Plickers, Makey-Makey, BrainPop and Prodigy to name a few. In summary, follow this guy on Twitter and definitely follow his blog!

What is a makerspace? 
This was displayed on one of Jed's Apple TVs during STEAM Block

One of Jed's many classroom makerspaces

Our visit today was to focus on the makerspaces he had set up in his room because we are thinking of adding spaces to our classrooms in our building. We saw some incredible use of makerspaces, but we also saw some incredible engagement, blended learning, and passion for third grade learning (from the students, Jed, and his principal!)

In our debrief portion of the day, Jed talked about his recent blog post on "Creating a Combustible Classroom". He explained that a classroom is like a fire; you need air, fuel and a heat. The air is the environment we give students for them to learn, grow and problem solve. The fuel is the curriculum and instruction, and the heat is that excitement that sparks students' ideas. It makes a lot of sense and the fire was burning bright in his classroom today.

My biggest takeaway from visiting his room was that this can be done, and we don't need to have all the snazzy technology that he had either. There are pieces we can adapt into our building immediately. For example, we could offer 6 stations for the week, and students would visit one station a day. One of the days we would have to do 2 rotations, but that can be done on the days when we don't have any preps. I love the idea of more choices and smaller groups, as well as longer station time so students really have a chance to dive deep into that work. Every one of his stations offered the 4 C's: collaboration, creativity, critical thinking and communication.

We can offer a variety of tech options with the tech we have, and we can give more igniting choices during those stations. Bottom line: We don't need to be afraid and sit in a conference room to analyze everything to death, we just need to run into that burning building and see what works and what doesn't. (I do not recommend running into a burning building unless you are a trained fireman, I'm just using that analogy to stick with the combustion theme) One of the other teachers that came along for the visit was texting me all night with ideas on how to incorporate some of these elements in her class, starting tomorrow! She is running right into the building, and I'm right behind her.

I know offering these high-interest station rotations and embedded use of technology into learning is a way to ensure class-wide engagement, which consequently would reduce any behavior concerns, as we witnessed today. Just making a few tweaks to what we are doing now will re-ignite teachers' passion for teaching, and ultimately, students' passion for learning. 

Something striking on Jed's agenda today was this image:

I can safely say, after visiting his school and room, that I am fired up to teach for our students' futures! The fire has been lit inside, not only in me, but my other colleagues who visited, and I know our students are in for some exciting learning ahead!

DITLife Sunday, March 12, 2017

Sundays are the best days! (even when I lose an hour of sleep to daylight savings)

My body has not adjusted to the time change overnight, so I was wide awake and ready to go at 6am. I decided to drag my butt out of bed and go grocery shopping then since it's always packed on Sundays, and I knew this Sunday would be especially packed because we will be getting a blizzard later this week! As suspected, at 7am the grocery store was pretty tolerable and I was in and out with a week's worth of food in about a half hour!

Came home and sorted out a few work emails, including sending my weekly math notes to the principal to be emailed to all the teachers. I'm supposed to have math learning walks on Wednesday, but the blizzard is coming in on Tuesday, so I'm not sure we'll even have school.

The rest of the day was extremely lazy for me. I cuddled up on the couch with the dogs and husband and watched a marathon of Impractical Jokers on TruTV. These 4 guys are my spirit animals; I wish I could run around doing all these pranks all day long!

Also snuck in an hour playdate with the nephew/godson which always lifts my heart! He's 2 now and is such a sports fanatic that we spent most of the time jumping away from a swinging hockey stick!

I attempted to go to bed early, but with the change in time and my nervous excitement for the upcoming snowstorm, I only managed about 2 net hours of sleep. It's going to be a long Monday, but it was a wonderful Sunday!

Reflection Questions

1) Teachers make a lot of decisions throughout the day.  Sometimes we make so many it feels overwhelming.  When you think about today, what is a decision/teacher move you made that you are proud of?  What is one you are worried wasn’t ideal?

I feel like there's a recurring theme with my blogs, but I'm genuinely happy I took the time to just relax and do nothing work related today. I've got so much going on at work that it's nice to unplug from all of it on the weekends.

2) Every person’s life is full of highs and lows.  Share with us some of what that is like for a teacher.  What are you looking forward to?  What has been a challenge for you lately?

I'm in a high right now. I've been getting into many more classrooms than usual and really working with students and teachers to do some pretty amazing work. I'm very proud of the relationships I'm continuing to build and the shift in focus of the whole building to put math instruction as a priority. Literacy has always been the focus, but it's so nice to see math coming up!

3) We are reminded constantly of how relational teaching is.  As teachers we work to build relationships with our coworkers and students.  Describe a relational moment you had with someone recently.

I finally was able to admit my faults in not visiting one of our new teachers in the building. She is a veteran teacher but new to our school and district. I've been meaning to go in and visit her more frequently but always get pulled away in a million different directions. I finally stopped into her room 2 days in a row and absolutely loved it! I had a great time with the kids, and she was overly appreciative of me being there. That morphed into her and I chatting about starting a coaching cycle together and I couldn't be more thrilled! Sometimes all it takes is showing up!

4) Teachers are always working on improving, and often have specific goals for things to work on throughout a year.  What have you been doing to work toward your goal?  How do you feel you are doing?

My professional learning goal at school was to help teachers make thinking visible, and it's really coming along nicely. Walking around the building today I noticed so many students explaining their math to me, their teachers and their peers. On a personal front, I said I would participate in at least one Twitter chat a month and I have totally failed that goal! Uggh, it's such a lame excuse but they really start too late in the night for me. My brain is fried and I'm in bed by the time they're starting. I'll try to end this school year with a bang!

5) What else happened this month that you would like to share?

I passed my Google certified educator level 1 exam! I took it the first day of our February vacation and passed. Pretty proud accomplishment. I'm very eager to take the level 2 exam soon!