MATH BLOGGING

RETROSPECTUS 2014
A sampler of the Math education blog posts that inspired us in 2014

Introduction
Its never been easier to miss a great math blog post. What was once a small group of math
teachers willing to make themselves vulnerable by putting their practice online has now become
a veritable onslaught of thoughtful commentary, engaging and interesting tasks, and stories that
we can all learn from.
If you arent familiar with the Retrospectus, feel free to look back at the 2012 and 2013 editions.
The upshot is this: its a semi-aggregated sampler platter of blog posts that touched, inspired or
challenged someone this year to the point they were willing to share it. Thats it. Not a huge bar
it may seem, but then again, inspiring your peers might be the highest bar. Ive iterated before
and Ill iterate again: this is NOT a blogging award/top post list. Ideally, this tome will introduce
you to a math education blogger you werent aware of before.
Ive made one editorial change this year due to the exponential growth of the math
blogosphere. Many of the authors of the posts in this volume had multiple posts shared. In such
an instance I only included one of the authors posts. There were two reasons for this: 1) this
thing is getting really, REALLY long and 2) I wanted to emphasize newer and perhaps lesstrafficked bloggers. In such an instance where multiple blog posts from the same author were
nominated, I attempted to select the post that best encapsulates the bloggers voice or was of a
subject that was novel or introductory to a theme. If youd like to see all the posts that were
shared, you can check out the Retrospectus solicitation post.
As in the previous two years, the posts are categorized as Tasks, Commentary, or Stories, while
acknowledging that many posts overlap or transcend each category.
I really enjoy this project every year as it allows me to slow down and read what really affected
teachers over the course of the year. Recent changes in my work responsibilities sometimes
drag me away from the math world into non-math subjects. Its been illuminating to think of
Math classrooms as part of a system of education that offers opportunities and challenges to
students, teachers, and administrators. That makes it easy to miss new posts and new blogs
entirely. Hopefully youll find some quiet reflective time to sit down and review some of these
posts and take them to heart and into your classrooms. And while youre here, go ahead and
show the authors your gratitude with a comment, a follow, or a subscription.
Geoff

Table of Contents
Tasks
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.

4!, Andrew
Systems of Linear Equations Game on Desmos, Nora
Multiplication: Finding the Greatest Product, Fawn
A Critical Language for Problem Design, Ben
Open Strategy Cup Stacking, Alex
You Can Always Add. You Cant Subtract., Dan
Hypothesis Wrecking and the Diagonal Problem, David
What would happen if we took a problem apart and put it back together, Joe
Conceptualizing Drills, Nat
Undressing Tables, Naked Numbers and Modeling, Graham
Graphles to Graphles, Kate
Decimals in a One Frame, Kristin
Better Polar Expressions, Jonathan
Volume of Cones Discovery Lesson, Julie

Commentary
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.

Status: The Social Organization of Smartness, Ilana

Better Math Discussions, Anna
Conference notes part 1: how we talk about mathematics instruction, Grace
Reality Check, Chris
Standard algorithms unteach place value, Christopher
Good at Math, Seth
Visibly random groups & Vertical non-permanent surfaces, Laura
Grand Challenges for Mathematics Education, Robert
Conceptual Understanding in Mathematics, Grant
We Need Teachers Who Fail, Andrew
On the purpose of examinations, Kate
Critiquing the Common Core on its Merits and Demerits, Geoff
Its not how big your class is, its what you do with it, Paul
Immediate Feedback is Too Soon For Feedback, Michael

Stories
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.

Is There Room For Math That Isnt That Hard?, Kaissa

Numberless Word Problems, Brian
Procedure in the Drivers Seat, Megan
You just listened, so then I could figure it out, Tracy
Stalkers and dreamers, Elizabeth
Wrong But Not Stupid or, How to Call Out Mistakes without Trampling the Mistaken,
Ben
35. Mulling things over, Sam

TASKS

4!
Andrew 03/26
Me: I need two volunteers. You have no idea what you're doing. Thanks Brianna and Jesus. Go
stand in front of the whiteboard on the side of the room. You are the two contestants in today's
Spelling Bee.
This is how I opened today's lesson. Wait. A Spelling Bee in math class? I address the audience:
Me: I need your help. I am going to ask you a question. The answer is a number. I am not
interested in any categories like gender, height, age, birthday, first name, last name, etc. For my
Spelling Bee, I need you to take my contestants and order them for me. What's the maximum
amount of ways I could order these two contestants?
Students have time to think and some quickly raise their hand to say, "Two."
Me: Show me. Tell us what they are.
Student: Right now Brianna is first. Jesus is second. We could switch them and Jesus goes first.
Me: [looking at Brianna and Jesus] Do what she said.
Brianna and Jesus switch order.
Me: Have I maxed out all the possible combinations for ordering Brianna and Jesus?
Class: Yes!
For a little comic relief, I toss Jesus an easy word to spell.
Me: Jesus, spell "cat".
Jesus: C-A-T
Me: Wait. What?
I learned today that most kids don't know how a spelling bee works, so I call on a few kids to
explain the three steps:
1.
Say the word.
2.
Spell the word.
3.
Repeat the word.
Me: Jesus, let's try this again. Spell "cat".
Jesus: Cat. C-A-T. Cat.
Me: Bri, spell "discombobulate".
Brianna: Ughhhhhhh. What?!
Me: Okay, can I get a third contestant for our spelling bee? Jesus, since you're the winner,
please pick someone.
Standing in front of the audience, I now have Jesus, Brianna, and Garry.
Me: Okay, let's say their current order is one possible combination. Let's keep Jesus first. Can
you get any other combinations with Jesus being first?
Student: Yea, switch Bri and Garry.
I look at Bri and Garry.
Me: Do it! Okay we now have two possible combinations. Have we maxed out the possible
combinations with Jesus being first or can we get more?
Class: We're maxed out.
Me: Okay, someone give me a new combination.
Student: Put Brianna first this time. Then Jesus. Then Garry.
Me: Okay, we now have three combinations. Can we get more where Brianna is first?

I repeat this process until the class has agreed we maxed out our combinations with six total.
Great. I toss this information in a table like this to keep track of it.

Me: So what if I add a fourth contestant to the spelling bee?

Sarah: No!
Me: Really Sarah? What? Are we going to have more or less combinations?
Sarah: More.
Me: Gimme some guesses everyone. Toss something out there for fun. How many combinations
could we get with four people in the spelling contest?
Students tell me 8, 10, 9, 12, 16, 13 and I write all of them up on the board. I ask for some quick
reasoning behind the guesses.
Me: Ok, thanks. You all can't be right. Instead of moving people around, let's do this instead.

I gave each group a sandwich bag with four different colored snap cubes: red, green, blue,
yellow. Students were to work in their groups to figure out all the possible combinations of four
colors. They were to write it down in their notes for the day. I circulated the room, noticing
student work.
For groups that think they're done, but wrong (like only 12 combinations):
I zone in on one combination and keep their two colors fixed, "Have you maxed out all the
combinations with these two at the front?" Usually this is the only nudge they need to get closer
to the correct number of combinations.
For groups that are on track:
I make it obvious I note their work, or ask for a quick explanation, or I quickly move to another
group.
Groups that finish and have the correct answer:
I have them explain their work, organization, process, and reasoning. I ask if they feel confident
and usually they do. I'm not going to string them along. I respond, "That makes sense to me."

followed by:
Me: So what if I gave you a fifth color?
Student: [typical response] Ughhh.
Me: Oh, what's wrong?
Student: That's a lot of work.
Me: I know, right? I'm right there with ya. I wouldn't want to write out all those possible
combinations either. So, your job is to try and figure out a shortcut. In other words, if I just gave
you four colors right now, how could we quickly get 24 combinations without writing them all
out. If I'm now giving you five colors, what would be a quick way to figure out all the possible
combinations?
Once I see that most groups have reached the magic number (24), I show them this and have
them count.

Me: One clap on three for the closest guess.

1-2-3 CLAP!
Many kids see that 4 groups of six combinations yields 24 combinations. I toss 24 into our table
and ask the whole class about finding the possible combinations for five colors. Typically, the
students want to avoid this nonsense and express some noise of rebellion.

Me: What's wrong? You guys don't want to write out all the combinations? Well, let's try and
find a shortcut. Do we see anything from our table that might help us?

To my pleasant surprise, at least one kid in each of the three participating classes found the
following relationship:

Abraham, Brianna, and Daisy: You take the previous "Combos" result and multiply it by the
diagonal "Colors" amount to get the new amount of "Combos."
Me: Let's see if that works.
It does. Great!
Me: Okay hot shots! This is a great shortcut. What if our principal walked in and gave us 13
colors. How would I quickly figure out the total number of combinations since I don't have the
number of combinations from 12 colors?

Here's where I introduced the use of factorials. Yes, I could have spent time getting the kids to
look for this pattern, but I simply didn't have or make the time. I felt it was a good place to show
them that putting the factorial symbol after a number means to multiply it by all of the natural
numbers less than the given number.
4! = 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 24
Me: So if our principal walked in and said, "Find all the combinations of 13 colors." we'd go
thirteen...
Class: ...times twelve, times eleven, times ten, times nine...
In reflection, this lesson created more successes for my students than I anticipated. Some
include:

Discovering patterns and relationships within a table,

Creating a need for the factorial of a number,

Adding another vocabulary term to our tool belt, and
Finding combinations more efficiently.

This lesson started with a low-entry of two students and two combinations.
We built in the next part by finding six combinations for 3 students.
We built in a guess for the combinations of four students so they can invest in the question and
look for patterns.
We manipulated four colors, organized our combinations, made conjectures, and arrived at a
reasonable answer that maxed out the combinations.
We pushed those students who finished early to discover a shortcut on their own.
We created a need for avoiding excessive work with larger numbers and a need for some type of
formula (factorials) that will get us the same result.
I came into this lesson with a rusty understanding of factorials, probability, and combinations.
Anyone who is against Common Core State Standards, think again! It's making math teachers
know their content better, so they can better serve their students. It's opening the door for
students to reason their way in math class. I'm not blogging to get into the importance of CCSS
right now. However, I'm convinced this was way better than me standing in front of the students
telling them to put an exclamation point after 4 (like this 4!) and to just multiply 4 by 3 by 2 by 1
to get all the possible combinations of four somethings. Instead, the students discovered the
relationship (pattern) within the table and felt confident in discovering the total combinations of
five colors without drawing them all out.
Factorial,
848!

Systems of Linear Equations Game on Desmos

Nora 03/27This game needs a name yet. Your help is appreciated with that endeavor.
First I'll tell you how we played it in class, then I let you know what the students suggested, and
finally I'll tell you want changes I think I'll try next time.

Initial Rules
Break the class into 5 teams. I use 5 teams because desmos has 5 colors other than black
(purple, blue, red, green, and orange).
Each team starts with 1 trailer (ordered pair): (0, 2) (0, 3) (0, 4) (0, 5) and (0, 6). Each a different
color.
The inequalities y < 1/1 x + 0 and y > -1/1x + 0 are the two inequalities.

Here is a link to the start of the game.

The overlapping shaded region is the area that is safe from tornadoes, so the players will want
to move their trailers there or actually move the shaded region.
Each team rolls a die to see what they can do:
1) Change one of the slopes to whatever they want
2) Change one of the y-intercepts to whatever they want
3) Change the direction of one of the inequalities
4) Move a trailer to where ever they want (must be visible on the screen)
5) Get another trailer
6) Unleash a tornado.
To unleash a tornado, I numbered each region of the graph that was created by the inequalities,
except the overlapping shaded region, then rolled the die. So if the regions were labeled 1, 2,
and 3, and I rolled a 2, all the trailers in the region labeled '2' would be deleted. If I rolled a 4, 5,
or 6 then the tornado never formed.
We played this for the entire period (45 minutes), and the team with the most trailers by the
end of the class was the winner. I had two teams win with 3 trailers each.
The Students' Suggestions
There should be more ways to unleash tornadoes.
We should start with 2 trailers.

What I Will Try Next Time:

Instead of rolling 1 die, each team will roll 2 and then decide which they want to use. I think I
will still begin the game the same way, but because there are two dice and more options, the
players will have the opportunity to add more trailers and unleash more tornadoes.
What I Loved About The Game:
Students were practicing skills they normally hate. Such as:
Determining if an ordered pair is a solution to a system of inequalities. We had great
discussions about trailers being safe from tornadoes or not based on where they were
located. They asked if it was safe to be on the dotted line. They asked if it was safe to be in any
shaded region or just where they overlap.
The students discussed what would happen if they changed the direction of the inequality in
one equation as opposed to the other. Would their other trailer be safe? Where would the
overlapping be?
They debated about how to change the y-intercept or the slope to make one of their trailers
safe but not one of their opponent's.
I can't get these discussions when I hand out worksheets, but tornadoes sweeping away their
mobile homes, they're all over that.

Here's what our 'game board' looked like at the end of class:

Thoughts? Comments? What about a title for this?

*UPDATE* 3/29/2014
I played this game with a different class and we tried the following rules and it made the game
more exciting.
1) Roll two dice, allow the students to determine which number they want to use. If a 6 is
rolled, a tornado must be started.
2) When a 6 is rolled: Number the unshaded regions so that all numbers 1-6 are used. So if
there are three unshaded regions label them 1&4, 2&5, and 3&6. This way a tornado always
forms.
We also discussed ways to damage your opponents mobile home. Perhaps there could be a
way to steal their tires so they can't drive to another location.

Have any of you played this game? Any feedback for me (good or bad)?

Multiplication: Finding the Greatest Product

Fawn 10/26
From a set of 1 through 9 playing cards, I draw five cards and get cards showing 8, 4, 2, 7, and 5.
I ask my 6th graders to make a 3-digit number and a 2-digit number that would yield the
greatest product. I add, But do not complete the multiplication meaning do not figure out
the answer. I just want you to think about place value and multiplication.

I ask for volunteers who feel confident about their two numbers to share. This question brings
out more than a few confident thinkers each was so confident that he/she had the greatest
product. (Im noting here that I wasnt entirely sure what the largest product would be. After
this lesson, I asked some math teachers this question, and I appreciate the three teachers who
shared. None of them gave the correct answer.)

I say, Well, this is quite lovely, but yall cant be right. I ask everyone to look at the seven
confident submissions and see if they could reason that one yields a greater product than
another, then perhaps we might narrow this list down a bit.
Someone sees easily that #7 is greater than #6. The class agrees.

Someone says #7 is greater than #1 because of doubling. She says, I know this from our math
talk. Doubling and halving. Look at #1. If I take half of 875, I get about 430. If I double 42, I get
84. Both of these numbers *430 and 84+ are smaller than what are in #7. So Im confident #7 is
greater than #1.

Someone else says #5 is greater than #4 because of rounding, Eight hundred something times
70 is greater than eight hundred something times 50. The effect of multiplying by 800 is much
more.

Someone says, Number 2 is also greater than #1 because of place value. I mean the top
numbers are almost the same, but #2 has twelve more groups of 872.

But the only one that the class unanimously agrees on to eliminate is #6. Then I ask them to take
30 seconds to quietly examine the remaining six and put a star next to the one that they believe
yield the greatest product. These are their votes.

I tell them that

clearly this is a tough thing to think about because weve had a lot of discussion yet many
possibilities still remain. And thats okay thats why were doing this. Weve been doing
enough multiplication of 2-digit by 2-digit during math talks that its time we tackle something
more challenging. So #3 gets the most votes.
I then punch the numbers into the calculator, and the kids are very excited to see what comes
up after each time that I hit the ENTER key. Cheers and groans can be heard from around the
room. Turns out #3 does has the greatest product (63,150) out of the ones shown.
Ah, but then someone suggests 752 times 84. I punch it into the calculator and everyone
gasps. It has a product of 63,168.
Their little heads are exploding.
I give them a new set of five for homework: 2, 3, 5, 6, and 9. They are to go home and figure out
the largest product from 3-digit by 2-digit multiplication. They come back with 652 times 93.
The next day, we try another set: 3, 4, 5, 8, and 9. We get the greatest product by doing 853
times 94. There is a lot as much if not more than the day before of sharing and arguing and
reasoning about multiplication and place value.
Many of them see a pattern in the arrangement of the digits and are eager to share. Theyve
agreed on this placement.

Then we talk about making sure we know weve looked at all the possible configurations. They
agree that the greatest digit has to either be in the hundreds place of the 3-digit number or in
the tens place of the 2-digit number. We try a simple set of numbers 1 through 5, and we agree
that there are just 9 possible candidates that we need to test. The same placement holds.

Then we draw generic rectangles to remind us that weve just been looking for two dimensions
that would give us the largest area.

I remember saying to the class, more than once, that this is tough to think about. To which
Harley, sitting in the front row, says, But its like were playing a game. Its fun. Oh, okay. :)

A Critical Language for Problem Design

Ben 01/18
I am at the Joint Mathematics Meetings this week. I had a conversation yesterday, with Cody L.
Patterson, Yvonne Lai, and Aaron Hill, that was very exciting to me. Cody was proposing the
development of what he called a critical language of task design.
This is an awesome idea.
But first, what does he mean?

He means giving (frankly, catchy) names to important attributes, types, and design principles, of
mathematical tasks. I can best elucidate by example. Here are two words that Cody has coined
in this connection, along with his definitions and illustrative examples.
Jamming transitive verb. Posing a mathematical task in which the underlying concepts are
essential, but the procedure cannot be used (e.g., due to insufficient information).
Example: you are teaching calculus. Your students have gotten good at differentiating
polynomials using the power rule, but you have a sinking suspicion they have forgotten what the
derivative is even really about. You give them a table like this
x

f(x)

16

4.01 16.240901
4.1 18.491
and then ask for a reasonable estimate of f'(4). You are jamming the power rule because youre
giving them a problem that aims at the concept underlying the derivative and that cannot be
solved with the power rule.
Thwarting transitive verb. Posing a mathematical task in which mindless execution of the
procedure is possible but likely to lead to a wrong answer.
Example: you are teaching area of simple plane figures. Your students have gotten good at area
of parallelogram = base * height but you feel like theyre just going through the motions. You
give them this parallelogram:

Of course they all try to find the area by

. You are thwarting the thoughtless use of
base * height because it gets the wrong answer in this case.
Why am I so into this? These are just two words, naming things that all teachers have probably
done in some form or another without their ever having been named. They describe only a very
tiny fraction of good tasks. Whats the big deal?
Its that these words are a tiny beginning. Were talking about a whole language of task design.
Im imagining having a conversation with a fellow educator, and having access to hundreds of
different pedagogically powerful ideas like these, neatly packaged in catchy usable words. I see
youre thwarting the quadratic formula pretty hard here, so Im wondering if you want to
balance it out with some splitting / smooshing / etc. (I have no idea what those would mean
but you get the idea.)

I have no doubt that a thoughtful, extensive and shared vocabulary of this kind would elevate
our profession. It would be a concrete vehicle for the transmission and development of our
shared expertise in designing mathematical experiences.
This notion has some antecedents.[1] First, there are the passes at articulating what makes a
problem pedagogically valuable. On the math blogosphere, see discussions byAvery
Pickford, Breedeen Murray, and Michael Pershan. (Edit 1/21: I knew Dan had one of these too.) I
also would like to believe that there is a well-developed discussion on this topic in academic
print journals, although I am unaware of it. (A google search turned up this methodologically
odd but interesting-seeming article about biomed students. Is it the tip of the iceberg? Is anyone
reading this acquainted with the relevant literature?)
Also, I know a few other actual words that fit into the category specialized vocabulary to
discuss math tasks and problems. I forget where I first ran into the word problematic in this
context possibly in the work of Cathy Twomey-Fosnot and Math in the City but thats a great
word. It means that the problem feels authentic and vital; the opposite of contrived. I also
forget where I first heard the word grabby (synonymous with Pershans hooky, and not far from
how Dan uses perplexing) to describe a math problem maybe from the lips of Justin Lanier?
But, once you know it its pretty indispensible. Jo Boaler, by way of Dan Meyer, has given us the
equally indispensable pseudocontext. So, the ball is already rolling.
When Cody shared his ideas, Yvonne and I speculated that the folks responsible for the PCMI
problem sets Bowen Kerins and Darryl Yong, and their friends at the EDC have some sort of
internal shared vocabulary of problem design, since they are masters. They were giving a talk
today, so I went, and asked this question. It wasnt really the setting to get into it, but
superficially it sounded like yes. For starters, the PCMIs problem sets (if you are not familiar
with them, click through the link above you will not be sorry) all contain problems
labeled important, neat and tough. Important means accessible, and also at the center of
connections to many other problems. Darryl talked about the importance of making sure the
important problems have a low threshold, high ceiling (a phrase I know Ive heard before
anyone know where that comes from?). He said that Bowen talks about arcs, roughly
meaning, mathematical themes that run through the problem sets, but I wanted to hear much
more about that. Bowen, are you reading this? What else can you tell us?
Most of these words share with Codys coinages the quality of being catchy / natural-languagefeeling. They are not jargony. In other words, they are inclusive rather than exclusive.[2] It is
possible for me to imagine that they could become a shared vocabulary of our whole profession.
So now what I really want to ultimately happen is for a whole bunch of people (Cody, Yvonne,
Bowen, you, me) to put in some serious work and to write a book called A Critical Language
for Mathematical Problem Design, that catalogues, organizes and elucidates a large and supple
vocabulary to describe the design of mathematical problems and tasks. To get this out of the
completely-idle-fantasy stage, can we do a little brainstorming in the comments? Lets get a
proof of concept going. What other concepts for thinking about task design can you describe
and (jargonlessly) name?
Im casting the net wide here. Codys jamming and thwarting are verbs describing ways that
problems can interrupt the rote application of methods. Problematic and grabby are ways of
describing desirable features of problems, while pseudocontext is a way to describe negative

features. Bowen and Darryls important/neat/tough are ways to conceptualize a problems

role in a whole problem set / course of instruction. Im looking for any word that you could use,
in any way, when discussing the design of math tasks. Got anything for me?
[1]

In fairness, for all I know, somebody has written a book entitled A Critical Language for
Mathematical Task Design. I doubt it, but just in case, feel free to get me a copy for my birthday.
[2]
I am taking a perhaps-undeserved dig here at a number of in-many-ways-wonderful
curriculum and instructional design initiatives that have a lot of rich and deep thought about
pedagogy behind them but have really jargony names, such as Understanding by
Design and Cognitively Guided Instruction. (To prove that an instructional design paradigm
does not have to be jargony, consider Three-Acts.) I feel a bit ungenerous with this criticism, but
I cant completely shake the feeling that jargony names are a kind of exclusion: if you really
wanted everybody to use your ideas, you would have given them a name you could imagine
everybody saying.

Open Strategy Cup Stacking

Alex 05/30
Drafted this post a long time ago and finally getting back to it after @jstevens009 commented
about my stacking ability in a picture on my twitter avatar.

I have done this two different semesters. (Make that three now). Sometimes it takes everything
I have to write about activities - I just feel like I am such a better talker than writer and it doesn`t
feel like I get any better at writing. Anyhow........I have presented this activity so many times in
presentations and have just not got around to finishing this post. Today is the day!
Lucky enough to be involved in a lesson study with my incredible principal (@FranceThibault)
my incredible math coach from the board (@robintg), my incredible math department head

(@BDMcLaurin) and two incredible English teachers from my school. I got to do the first lesson
in my class and I choose to do an activity on cup stacking. On a side note this was our very first
lesson study as a group. We have now been doing lesson study for three semesters. It has been
an amazing journey.
Of course thanks to Dan Meyer, Fawn Nguyen, Andrew Stadel and many others who inspired
this idea.... as is typical with our lesson study we are trying to
open these tasks up - unscaffolding them. Giving the
task a "low floor and a high ceiling. "
We started with the image below and asked the students to
write what questions came to mind. We got a bunch. Here is a
sample:
Why is the cup the same colour as your shirt?
How tall is the cup?
How tall are you?
How many cups to make Mr. O?
If we chopped up Mr. O, how many cups would we fill?
How many cups can you drink?
Why are you standing next to a cup?
We settled on " How many cups to make a Mr. "O"? as this
was the most popular question. Of course this was the
question we were hoping for.

We then put the students in groups of three (homogeneous).

They were to settle on a stacking plan and then draw a
diagram of their stacking plan, a guess to low, a guess to high, and their best guess for how
many cups would make my height.
Here is the form they filled out.
GUESS SHEET FOR CUP STACKS
Using your groups stacking idea:
Diagram of stacking plan

Members Names

A guess of how many

cups that is too low.

A guess of how many

cups that is too
high.

A guess of how many cups that is correct

or your groups best guess.

Once they had done this we gave them ten cups and asked them to do the following on chart
paper. Represent their stack with a picture, table of values, graph, equation and show their
calculation to get the answer to" How many cups to make a Mr. "O"?
Groups were given two days to repeat this as many ways as they could think of.
Here are some photos of what they came up with and what it looked like when we built it on
day three.
The first one is what I call top bottom top bottom. Direct variation or linear relation with a

height intercept of zero. Total of 16 cups to reach my height.

The second one is what I call the inside each other method. Linear relation. Total number of
cups to reach my height is 304.

The third one is what I call the triangle method. Quadratic relationship. Total number of cups to
reach my height is 136.

The fourth one is a three dimensional triangular pyramid. A cubic relationship. Total number of
cups to reach my height 816.

This most recent semester a particular group looked at a method I'll call 2 then 1 bottom top
bottom top. Of course they wanted to know if it was quadratic or linear. I told them to do both,
figure out how many cups for each and then build it to see which model was better. It took 24
cups to reach my height.

During this last semester I worked hard at posting student work (anchor charts) around the
room.
Here is the top bottom wall.

Here is the inside each other wall.

Here is the triangle wall.

Here is the three dimensional triangle wall.

I love this activity. The students really connect a table of values, a graph and an equation. There
is an entry point for every student.

You Can Always Add. You Cant Subtract

Dan 06/02

a/k/a [Makeover] Painted Cubes (See preview.)

Thats a very helpful comment from a recent workshop participant. Textbooks dont have that
same luxury.
Heres an example. Watch how Connected Mathematics treats the classic Painted Cube
problem:

Here are elements the textbook has already added:

1. A central question. (How many faces of the little cubes have been painted?)
2. A strategy. (Look at smaller versions of the cube. It also tells you by omission that its
impossible to find more than three faces painted.)
3. A table. (For organizing your data.)
4. Table column headings. (Edge length, total cubes, total cubes of each kind.)
If you subtract those elements and add them in later, you get to ask interesting questions and
host interesting conversations with your students. Like this:
1. A central question. (What questions do you have about Leon and his cube? And later:
Guess how many cubes dont have any paint on them at all?)
2. A strategy. (What are all the possibilities for the number of faces that could have paint on
them? Could five faces have paint on them? Can I tell you how mathematicians work on big
problems? They look at smaller versions of the big problem. What would that look like
here?)
3. A table. (All of the numbers from our smaller versions are getting out of control. How can
we organize all these loose numbers?)
4. Table column headings. (What kind of data should we look at? What about these cubes
seems important enough to keep track of?)
You can always add those elements into the problem the questions, the information, the
mathematical structures, the strategy as your students struggle and need help. But you
cant subtract them.
Once your students see the table, you cant ask, What tool could we use to organize
ourselves? The answer has been given. Once they see the table headings, you cant ask, What
quantities seem important to keep track of in the table? They know now. Once you add the
strategy (Look at smaller versions.) their answers to the question What strategies could we
use? wont be as interesting.
In sum, much of the problem has been pre-formulated, which is a pity, seeing as
how mathematicians and cognitive psychologists and education researchers agree
that formulating the problem leads to success and interest in solving the problem.
So again I have to remind myself to be less helpful and be more thoughtful instead.
BTW. Of course Im partial to Nicole Paris setup of the task:

Great Help From The Comments

Im reprinting Bryan Meyers entire comment:
I dont know that I have anything terribly insightful to add, but this seems like a fun
conversation.
I dont really see too much that is wrong with the problem/puzzle itself, which (to me) is
something like:
I have this cube (show picture/tangible) made up of smaller cubes. If I dipped the whole thing in
paint, how many of the smaller cubes would have paint on them? Is there a rule or shortcut we
can create that would allow us to answer that question for ANY sized cube?
To me, the issue seems to be that the version we see in your blog post attempts to steer the
direction of student thinking and leaves little room for play and divergent thinking/approaches.
It scaffolds away all of the rich mathematical thinking and play in an attempt to cover
standards. In particular, the unspoken assumption in the way it has been printed is that writing
and graphing linear, quadratic, and exponential functions is the real Math in the task (things
we can easily point to as belonging to the discipline/standards).
But, at its core and without all the mechanical scaffolding (as re-posed here), the question
allows room for many mathematical strengths and habits of mind to be valued and sends
different messages about what the real math might be: taking things apart and putting them
back together, creating systems of organization, assigning variables, making generalizations,

posing extension questions, etc. In addition, because it doesnt dictate how to proceed, it
encourages students to trust their own thinking and allows them to see themselves in the
work that develops. The work of the teacher becomes to follow the student, looking for
mathematically ripe opportunities in their work and thinking.
2014 Jun 2. Christopher Danielson brings his perspective to the task as writer of CMP.

Hypothesis Wrecking and the Diagonal Problem

David 04/04
We've been doing more problems lately where students can gather data and look for
patterns. Today's installment is via the Diagonal Problem which I think I first saw via Kate.
I'm noticing that more kids are gaining confidence in looking for patterns, forming hypotheses
and then seeing if they can make the hypothesis fail. The phrase that seems to be gaining
ground when it comes to hypothesis testing is "wreck it"-as in "Oh, you think you have a
rule? See if you can wreck it."
This diagonal problem is nice because a lot of students seem to zero in on special cases. For
example, an n x n (or I just call them squares) rectangle has a diagonal that passes through n
squares. There have also been some nice attempts at nailing down rules for odd x odd and even
x even rectangles. We're finding that special cases don't lead us right to a general rule, but the
information can be useful.

I've put together a flow chart that seems to be helpful.

Some students get caught in the Do research-->do you see a pattern?--> Do research loop
others are making it to the hypothesis before being kicked back to research. All are having to
come face to face with their impatience. Some are owning it.
There are a lot of mistakes being made. There's some frustration. There's arguing. There's
collaboration.
There's learning.
What would happen if we took a problem apart and put it back together?
Joe 01/26
Ben Blum-Smith's challenge to "describe and (jargonlessly) name concepts for thinking about
task design" got me thinking about an activity my colleague Shannon and I tried last year with
our fourth graders.
After watching Dan Meyer's TED Talk Math Class Needs a Make-Over, I couldn't get out of my
mind the part where he shows a problem from a text book and then visually strips away all the
elements until he's down to the graphic.
What would happen, we wondered, if we took apart a problem like that and then asked the
kids to put it back together? We decided to take a grade 4 PARCC prototype, remove the
question and some of the information, and present it to the kids as, well, just what it was: an
incomplete question.

We asked them to imagine what the question might be. They brainstormed some ideas in their
notebooks, and then got together in groups to put down some of their questions on chart
paper. Some were basic and pretty much what we expected. But many were complex
and needed additional information, supplied by the kids, in order to solve. This was something
we did not anticipate, but once it started the floodgates opened and all this math just started
pouring out!

Some of the original questions. They were first posted in the room; later they went up on a
bulletin board.
Next, we gave them the same problem, but with the rest of the information. Still no question.

Again, they were asked to take a guess as to what the question might be. They started getting
closer.

Here's an example from the second go-around.

And another.
Again, we were surprised at the complexity of the questions. There was a high level of
engagement; as long as they didn't have to "figure anything out" they thought they were getting
away with something!
Finally we gave them the whole thing:

They went to work immediately. They had spent so much time with the task they had
internalized its parameters.
Then we realized we had this whole pile of really interesting questions and that it would be a
shame for them all to go to waste. And even better, they were kid questions! We did some
culling, made sure there was variation in the problem content, and that there were some easy,
medium, and hard ones. We taped them all around the room, and told the kids to spend a few
days looking them over and thinking about which ones most interested them. We then put big
sheets of construction paper and some pencils and markers under each question and let them
have at it. Some kids wanted to solve the problems they had written, others were interested in
solving ones their friends had written. Interestingly, some questions could not be solved
because the authors had not included enough information. Those had to be revised.
When all was said and done, we agreed that it was a very productive problem-solving
experience. It had a low barrier to entry, it scaled both horizontally and vertically, and had a
high engagement level. Shannon and I agreed that one of the reasons for that was because of
the student-centered nature of the project. The questions were created by the kids, and they
had freedom to decide which ones they wanted to tackle. Kudos to Shannon for turning her
class into a "math lab" and for using the lesson again this year with a new group of fourth
graders. Any help with a "jargonless" name to describe this activity?

Conceptualizing Drills
Nat 04/19
I have students in an enriched class that demand for me to give them more practice. I tell them
that we practice mathematics with daily class activities. They don't want practice, they want
repeated practice. They are accustomed to receiving repeatable drills to cement
understandings.
I have learned to compromise with this demand. I do believe there is a place for basic skills
training in mathematics, and would raise an eyebrow at anyone who claims these unnecessary. I

do, however, also believe that the heart of mathematics is problem posing, problem framing,
and problem solving.
Here is how I've infused an ounce of conceptualization into regular drills. (I use this for both
practice in a large group discussion, small group rotation format, take home work, as well as unit
exams.)
The work begins like many math classrooms with a set of problems to do. In this post, the topic
at hand is solving equations (at the Grade 9 level).
I'll give ten or so to show the possible variety in structures, and then begin to ask questions that
allow students to think deeper about the rules they just employed. Most of these questions
focus on flexible use and mathematical communication.
Here's a question from my most recent unit exam on solving equations:

The question then reads:

Fill in the blank with the number that makes this equation as simple as possible. Explain your
choice.
Once you've explained your choice, go ahead and solve the equation. Show all work.
The results were fantastic. It was excellent for me, as a teacher worried in skill development as
well as deep, conceptual growth, to see that these students were grappling on a deep level with
the content when probed to do so. I was assuming that many students might choose "3" to
match the denominators on the left-hand side. This scared me, because I felt that I was baiting
my students into mistakes. Turns out, not a single student responded with "3". The most
popular responses were "2" (foreseeing the first inverse operation), "6" (choosing a LCM of all
denominators present), "5" (fully simplifying the fifths), and "1" (assuming that eliminating
fractions is always easiest).
Great insight.
The exam questions are a nice break from traditional assessment while still affording the
convenience and balance of a pencil and paper test. My favourite format for these conceptual
drills is a small group jigsaw where each group answers, explains, and rationalizes their actions
to the larger group. It sparks great discussion.
Here's a question used in the unit on solving equations:

The question then reads:

Change a single digit from the equation above to make the problem as simple as possible.
Explain why you made the choice, and then proceed to solve the equation. Show all work.
Popular choices include changing the "2" to a "1" and shifting the "5" to a "6". These moves both
have ample justification and spark great conversations. Eventually the topic of fractions came
up, and students said that they would like to avoid them altogether. That led me to the natural
extension:
Is there a number that we can replace "2" with to avoid fractions altogether? How many of
these numbers exist? How can we find them?
The discussion skyrocketed from there.
It causes me pause to think about why discussions like these don't happen more often. Is it a
time issue? Do teachers see them as wastes of time? Do teachers struggle with the dimensions
of problem posing necessary to see beautiful math staring them right in the face? Is it downright
confusion of the purpose of mathematics?
**TANGENT: I think teachers don't practice looking for mathematics. We waste our time trying
to appear mathematical by partaking in various stereotypical mathematical whimsies such as an
undue infatuation with Pi day and the obligatory kudos to binary clocks. There is more to
mathematics than surface niceties.
It is one thing to preach balance but to continually teach at the poles. One day we work on a
task and "construct" mathematical knowledge, and the next we "lecture" and "practice".
Learning doesn't operate on this notion of average--flip-flopping will only confuse students. We
need to develop a curriculum and supporting pedagogy that lives between the two worlds at the
same time. Procedural and conceptual are not nearly as mutually exclusive as they are mutually
dependent.
Nat Banting
PS. For another foray into this conceptualizing of drills see David Coffey's worksheet adaptation.

Undressing Tables, Naked Numbers and Modeling

Graham 11/04
I had the 2nd grade names and the information I needed, so I created this table and asked the
students WDYN?

Immediately students recognized the names of their 5 classmates and the perplexity session
began! Lots of different ideas and noticings were floating around the room:

They all have different numbers but some people have the same numbers

Trent doesnt have any numbers less than 10

Trent also has the biggest number of what-evers!

My names not up there?!

No number is greater than 25

When asked WDYW it was unanimousWhats all the information on the chart for?

I stole the idea from Dan when he discussed Edmontons water consumption during the gold
medal hockey game of the 2010 Winter Olympics. Dan took the graph, stripped away the labels
which left it more open for conversation. Steve Leinwand might be the GodFather of
approaching lessons this way. He discusses the idea of undressing the data in Accessible
Mathematics.
After a really great conversation with students about the data on the label-less graph, I threw all
their notice and wonderings into a context by adding labels. I had never tried discussing data
and numbers out of context before but when we talk about multiple entry points and making
math accessiblethis was a home run.

The WDYWs went far better than I could expected but full credit goes to the No Name
table. It allowed students the time necessary to digest and discuss numbers through
observation and comparison.
Side note: When students were discussing the table something really cool happened which I
have never noticed or looked-for before. While listening to students, I noticed that when they
compared only Marcuss minutes to each other they focused on the digits. But once they began
comparing Marcuss times to Isabellas times (or any other student) they shifted from focusing
on digits to focusing on the whole number (I like this way more). Im still trying to understand if
this is something I can purposefully control.
Their WDYWs:

Who ate the fastest on each day?

Who was timing them and why?

Were they all eating the same lunch? (we made sure all students got lunch from school)

Who was the fastest eater last week? *main question based on student votes*

I was amazed to see the variety of ways that students used mathematics to model who was the
fastest eater last week. Students worked in pairs and heres some of the highlights from student
thinking:

3 groups immediately said Dartavious because he had 8 minutes on Friday and mentioned it
was the fastest time for the entire week. But then we discuss the other days and times and
they wanted to change.

1 group said JaNay because she had 2 times under 10 minutes.

Using Educreations, 2 groups added up the total number of minutes spent eating lunch and
determined that Trent was the fastest because he had the fewest minutes overall. Loved
this thinking because although they didnt average out the minutes per day (6th grade
standard), the result is still the same.

All of the aforementioned responses I was expecting but with students I have learned to expect
the unexpected.
A pair of girls were quiet as ninjas as they worked on the front board until one said Mr.
Fletchers, were done!

Who uses a yellow expo marker?!? These two little gems of 2nd gradersthats who!

Me: Wow! This looks really interesting. What is it?

Girls: We bunched the numbers together to find out who was the fastest eater. (We had a
small conversation as to why they bunched the numbers the way they did)

Me: Ok I get it. And when you bunched the numbers what did you figure out?

Girls: Dartavious and Marcus have too many big numbers so theyre slow. Then we
compared Isabellas and Trents numbers. Trents 12, 11, 11 are way faster than the 15, 14,
14 so Trent is faster than Isabella.

Me: Ok and what about JaNay and Trent?

Girls: She was tricky, but they each have 10, 12 and 24 so those numbers dont count. But
Trent has two 11s left which is faster than JaNays 9 and 16. So that means that Trent was
the fastest eater last week than JaNay.
Boom!
Reasoning, conjectures and modelingoh my! Its time I start undressing more tables!

Graphles to Graphles
Kate 11/19
New game! My Algebra 2 students struggle with stating the domain and range for reasons
including: trouble understanding and writing inequalities, and a lack of comfort with the
coordinate plane. We spent a day on looking at graphs and identifying their domain and range.
We learned to deploy our wonderful domain meters and range meters that I learned about from

Sam. But for maybe 25% of the students, the cluebird was stubbornly refusing to land.
So, I thought asking the question backward might be a good way to attack it. Instead of here's
the graph, what's the D and R? ask, here's a D and/or R, draw a graph. I mean, I know this is
pretty standard fare. The thing is, I didn't want to do examples and a worksheet, or hold-upyour-whiteboard so I could somehow assess 22 graphs in a split second. It seemed like there
should be a better way.
So I did what I do, which is ask on Twitter. And I got lots of helpful ideas, but this was the one
that I latched onto and ran with:
The end result is, I'd argue, more like Apples to Apples than Charades (hence the title).
To prep: Make game cards. I printed each page on a different color card stock. Student play in
groups of 4-ish, so plan accordingly. I printed 6 sets. (John suggested having students submit
constraints, but, for this crew, I decided to unload that part and create cards with the
constraints.) You'll also need a mini-whiteboard, marker, and eraser for each student. Check
your dry erase markers, because nothing kills a math game buzz like a weaksauce marker. (I'll
admit to a minor teacher temper tantrum where I uttered the words "I'M NOT THE MARKER
FAIRY, MARITZA! I DON'T POOP MARKERS!" Teacher of the year, right here, folks.) Also, you'll
need some kind of token that players can collect when they win a turn. I use these plastic
counting chips that I use for everything, but anything would work, candy, whatever.
Doing a demo round with a few kids playing and everyone watching will pay off, in the morekids-will-know-what-is-up sense.
Here's how the game plays:

Someone is the referee.

To begin the turn, the referee turns over two (or one, or three) differentcolored cards, and reads them out loud. (I feel the reading aloud is important practice for
interpreting inequalities.) You could do, like, first round is one card, second round is two
cards, third round is three cards. Whatever suits your needs.

The other players have one minute to sketch a graph meeting the constraints on
the cards. The referee is responsible for timing one minute.

The players hold up their mini-whiteboards so the referee can see. The referee
should disqualify any graphs that don't match the cards.

Of the remaining graphs, the referee picks his favorite. This player wins a token.

The turn is over, and the player to the referee's right becomes the new referee.

Repeat.
It was great! Here are things I liked about it:

100% participation 100% of the time. At no point should anyone be kicking back.

Nowhere to hide. There were a couple kids who had to come to me and say,
"Miss Nowak, I really don't know what's going on." which I don't think they'd be compelled
to do if we were just doing some practice problems.

Good conversations. Especially reasons for why graphs were disqualified. "You
need an arrow there! The domain goes to infinity!" That sort of thing.

Students were necessarily creating and evaluating. Take that, Bloom!

Built-in review of what makes a graph a function vs not a function.

My chronic doodlers had a venue to express themselves. Especially if the graph

didn't have to be a function.


Authentic game play. You could use your knowledge of what a referee liked to
curry favor.
Here are some action shots. Let me know if you try it, and how it goes!

Decimals in a One Frame

Kristin 02/19
After reading @ChrisHunter36s
post:http://reflectionsinthewhy.wordpress.com/2013/06/09/more-decimals-and-ten-frames/ I
could not believe I had never thought to use 10 frames when working with decimals.
Today we began our unit on decimals and I decided to use the 10 frame (now called a one
frame in my room) as a quick image to get a feel for how my reason about decimals as a part of
a whole and the types of equations they could write to represent the way they viewed the
frame.
I started with this frame:

I had to explain how we used this as a visual in K-2 to build combinations of ten and later use
more than one frame for students to think about addition and subtraction strategies. One
student then asked, Um, how are we going to use them in 5th grade? Perfect intro. We came
to the conclusion that in the younger grades each box is equal to one making the whole frame
equal to ten, hence the name.
Me, Well, what if the whole frame was 1? What would each box be?
Student, 1 tenth.
Me, Great and how can we write that?
Student, 1 over 10 or point 1.
Me, So what decimal does the frame on the board represent?
Student, Five tenths. Everyone gave a quick shake of their hand in agreement. (The signal in
our number talks)
Now that we had the basic understanding, I did a quick image flash of this frame:

I got thumbs up right away, agreed there were 9 tenths in the frame, and then students shared
equations for how they viewed the frame. The said
1 0.1 = 0.9
0.5 + 0.4 = 0.9
9 x 0.1 = 0.9
Then of course the comedian that just loves to make me write more than necessary 0.1 + 0.1 +
0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 + 0.1 = 0.9 He would laugh to think he now got me to type that
out as well :)
We were moving fast through this so I thought I would throw out two frames to see how they
reasoned about going over the whole. I know from past experience that some students will line
.9 + .3 up vertically and add straight down to get an answer of .12, it is the most common
mistake that I think using the one frames will be helpful in minimizing by providing students the
concrete visual of a whole.
I flashed this quick image next and asked students to write what number is represented by the
two frames and equations that represent how they saw the dots.

Here are some responses (right and wrong):

Loved how they visualized the dot moving to make the whole.

This equation was great!

The mistake I was expecting.

I saw 1.2 and 0.12 in journals as I walked around, but then a student shared out that he thought
it was 12/20. I LOVE when a student does thismakes it so much more interesting. I wrote all
three answers on the board. I asked them who believes their answer is correct, they all raised
their hands (confident bunch), so I told them to choose one of the other two answers and
explain what the misunderstanding is that led to that answer. I got some great work that we
shared out and agreed finally on 1.2.
Here is what they said

This one is great because she realized she made a mistake as she was trying to disprove another
answer. Then the reason that 9+3 is more than 10 so .9 +.3 has to be more than one. Interesting
to revisit later.

Understand the thinking, just need to be sure to focus on the whole being broken into 20ths vs
10ths, not 20 and 10.

She had to get her Fun Dip finger in the pic:)

So, thanks so much to Chris. I can see many One Frames in my future number talks!
-Kristin

Better Polar Expressions

Jonathan 03/04
I made a minor tweak to my Pre-Cal curriculum. A discussion at TMC prompted a change where
polar equations are taught right after vectors. All the math mechanics are the same, so it made
sense. It also bumps polar to a time of year where the seniors haven't checked out yet and may
remember something.
I did a detailed explanation of the unit last year. The part in the middle is a tad different now
and man, it was the best way I've seen to dissect polar equation behavior.
The idea came from something I tried in Algebra II. That is, make equation discovery more of a
puzzle. Instead of fiddling with sliders and recording observations, I would provide equation
frameworks and leave the rest up to them.
Instructions
Handed this out (screenshots generated from the answer key):

Put this up on the screen:

a+bsin(theta), a-bsin(theta), a+bcos(theta), a-bcos(theta), acos(theta), asin(theta),
acos(b*theta), asin(b*theta)
Provided these instructions:
How did I make these graphs? Terms a and b are integers no larger than 10.
Detective Work
The old way, I gave too much in the instructions about things like a = b, a > b, and a < b. I wrote
out all these discussion questions and wanted them to write down answers. It was nothing but
confusion while they were working. This time the task was simpler: solve my puzzle, write down
what you think works.

For the most part, silence. Students plucking away at desmos trying to solve the mystery. Sheer
joy when they crack one. Frustration when the x-intercept matches but the y-intercept is OH SO
CLOSE. And then, pure euphoria when they crack the system and decipher what the intercepts
give away about the value of a and b.
Summarizing
Finally, the discussion. I first solicited answers from the crowd for the eight functions provided.
This step is intended to see if there's disagreement. I starred any that weren't unanimous. I
pulled up the answer key and typed in their suggestions to check for matches.
We used our results to classify the equation types into three groups: cardioids, circles, and
roses.
First, the rose curve discussion. Lots of fascinating theories about what determines the petal
count. Often two students would take opposing views, thanks to my accidental genius inclusion
of 8cos(4*theta). It has 8 petals. In almost every class, a student would argue the leading "8" is
why. Another would counter argue it's the 4 and that petal count is that term multiplied by 2. In
one class, a student agreed with the multiplied by 2 theory, but that it only worked with cos. The
looks on their faces when "8" became "7," "4" became "5," and their prior assumptions broke.

I just, I mean, you guys, it was THE BEST moment.

Amazing bonuses:
MANY students figured out how limaons are created (b>a) and acted like it was such a "duh"
discovery. MANY worked out that the value of "a" tells you the x/y intercept (depending on
orientation) and that combining the values of "a" and "b" via addition and subtraction yield
minimum and maximum radii. MANY felt empowered that they even if they didn't notice both
those properties, they were proud to have caught on to one of them. More importantly, EVERY
kid found this task achievable. Two finished early and on their own just started experimenting.

Lastly, I animated a couple rose curves on top of each other as the children reach for their
phones to record it:
Conclusion
Look, maybe you read about 3ACTS and think, ok cool, but I don't teach middle school, these
lessons are too simple. EVERY subject in math benefits from the idea behind those movements.
Create a puzzle. Ask a question. Make them beg. The theory of 3ACTS enabled a group of seniors
to argue with each other about polar equations and hash out the mechanics entirely on their
own. There's no way a worksheet produces the same results.

Volume of Cones Discovery Lesson

Julie 05/14

I spend two days with my students discovering volume. I do this because the volume formulas
LOOK horrendous, however they make perfect sense. I like for my students to discover these
formulas, because then they do not think of them as formulas. It just makes sense.

The first day I do volume of prisms, rectangular, triangular, and a cylinder using play-doh. The
next day I do cones and pyramids. A few years ago I had a project where students made cones
that fit into cylinders perfectly. I still use these models as they are such a great visual for
students.
I start by showing them a cylinder, and having a student write the volume formula on the
board. I have not asked them to memorize the volume formula of a cylinder, but after day 1,
they all know it. Its magical. I then pull a cone out of the cylinder and ask them what
they notice and wonder. They notice that the circle has the same circumference and the height
is the same. Excellent. I then ask them what they wonder about the volume of the two
objects. Most groups decide that it is about 1/2, except for this group.

I then let them pour cheerios (or marshmallows) from the cone into the cylinder. They notice it
takes THREE cones to fill up the cylinder. I have them talk with their table to adjust the volume
of a cylinder. Today, ALL of my students said, Divide the volume of a cylinder by 3! and one
group even told me that was the same as multiplying by 1/3.
After I write their observations on the board, I show them the actual formulas from their
Geometry and ask them to write down what they learned today on that page. I think this is the
most important part because I dont want them to forget HOW they discovered the
formula. Today a student said, We just invented already invented math! It was so awesome I
had to film it, of course.
Now that is a magical day in math. Please, please, please do discovery learning with your
students. It does take more time but will actually will save you more time in the end because
you wont have to re-teach it!

COMMENTARY

Status: The Organization of Smartness

Ilana 03/05
I wrote a book about a highly effective differentiation strategy for mathematics classrooms
called complex instruction. Complex instruction is a research-based approach to teaching that
treats the classroom like a social system. Using this idea, it helps teachers engineer the
environment to make for rich learning opportunities for as many students as possible through
collaborative student work.
I spend enough time in classrooms to be a realist about the various challenges teachers face day
to day. I know that collaborative learning may be a far leap for some. Nonetheless, if there is
one idea that would benefit any classroom learning environment, it is that of student status. In
this post, I explain status and how it plays out in mathematics classrooms.

retrieved from http://flic.kr/p/edWC5r

By the time students are in secondary school, children enter their mathematics classes with
strong ideas about who they and their peers are as mathematics learners. They can tell you who
is smart and who is not. They base these judgments on earlier school achievement, as well as on
categories such as race, class, popularity, and gender. These assessments play out in the
classroom. Some students contributions are sought out and heard, whereas others
contributions are ignored. This imbalance obstructs productive mathematical
conversations because an arguments valuation comes from who is speaking and not what is
being said.
Productive mathematical conversations are ones in which arguments are weighed on the basis
of the mathematical validity of what is being said, not on who is speaking.
Judgments about who is smart based on prior achievement or social categories violate a
fundamental principle of equity and are consequential: learning is not the same as achievement.
Confounding this problem, American schools tend to be organized in ways that obscure
distinctions between learning and achievement. In fact, they are often built around the idea that
differences in student achievement are the natural consequence of differences in ability. The
logic of tracking, particularly in the early grades, rests on notions of identifiable differences in
ability that require different approaches in teaching.

In reality, tracking often only reinforces achievement differences by giving high-achieving

students better teaching and more enriched learning environments. An important principle of
equitable teaching is that achievement gaps often reflect opportunity gaps. We typically think of
opportunity gaps as existing across schools, with schools serving upper middle-class populations
having greater resources than schools serving poor students. Although this tragically remains
the case in the United States, the resource differences within schools are often overlooked. Two
students in the same school placed in different trackson the basis of their prior
achievementtypically have radically different learning opportunities through the quality of
their teachers, the time spent engaged in academic activities, and the rigor of the curriculum.
Once you are behind, getting ahead is hard.
Status is not just a concern for low-achieving students: all students in the United States need the
opportunity to learn mathematics more deeply.
The belief in ability as the root of different levels of achievement is so entrenched in the
organization of curriculum and schooling that many people have a hard time imagining another
model. Other conceptualizations are possible, however. Japanese education attributes
differences in achievement to students different levels of effort instead of differences in ability.
Classrooms are organized to see student differences as a resource for teaching, instead of
viewing them as an obstacle to be accommodated. Tracking does not occur in the early grades.
Considering students robust views on who is smart along with schooling practices such as
tracking, which naturalize differences, it is no wonder that most students mathematical selfconcepts seem immutable by the time they arrive in secondary classrooms. Everything around
them fixes their sense of their ability, be it low, high, or average.
If learning is not the same as achievement, and if achievement gaps often reflect opportunity
gaps, what do we make of students prior achievement when they enter our classrooms? Who
are the students who have succeeded in mathematics before entering our classrooms? How
about those who have not? Disentangling achievement and ability may sound reasonable, but
we need a new model for thinking about students we teach. Elizabeth Cohens work on complex
instruction frames these issues around status, a concept that clarifies the conflation of
achievement and ability. Status gives teachers room to analyze this problem and respond
through their instruction.
In this context, we will use the following definition of status:
Status is the perception of students academic capability and social desirability.
The word perception is key to this definition. Perception drives the wedge between social
realities and perhaps yet unrealized possibilities of what students can do mathematically.
Perception involves our expectations of what people have to offer.
Where do these status perceptions come from? Typically, the perception of academic capability
often comes from students earlier academic performance. It might come from their academic
track, with honors students having higher status than that of regular students. Status judgments
about ability might also draw on stereotypes based on class, race, ethnicity, language, or
gender.
The perception of social desirability arises from students experiences with peers. For instance,
students often see attractive peers as desirable friendsor perhaps just undesirable enemies.
Likewise, whatever drives popularity in local teen culture will show up in the classroom as
status. The team captain, the talented artist, or the cut-up rebelwhomever students clamor to
befriend or win the approval ofwill have higher social status.

Status plays out in classroom interactions. Students with high status have their ideas heard,
have their questions answered, and are endowed with the social latitude to dominate a
discussion. On the other side, students with low status often have their ideas ignored, have their
questions disregarded, and often fall into patterns of nonparticipation or, worse,
marginalization.
Recognizing the relationship between status and speaking rights highlights an important way for
educators to uncover these issues in their classrooms. Status manifests through participation
patterns. Who speaks, who stays silent, who is excluded, and who dominates class discussions
are all indicators of status. Individually, this concept influences students learning. If some
students ideas are continually ignored, their questions will go unanswered and their confusions
will remain unaired. Over time, this system may reinforce negative ideas they have about
themselves as mathematics learners, because they may conclude that their ideas are not
valuable. Conversely, students whose ideas are consistently heard and worked with will have
greater opportunities to engage and sort through them. Socially, if students dominance
becomes unregulated, they may develop an overblown sense of their value in the social and
intellectual world of the classroom. Thus, status-driven interactions not only influence learning
but also reinforce existing status hierarchies.
Skeptics might protest linking participation and status. Some students are just shy, someone
might say. That is true. Likewise, students learning English often go through a silent period or
may be self-conscious of their accents. Our goal with reluctant speakers is to design ways for
them to comfortably participate more than they are perhaps naturally inclined to do. Strategies
such as small-group talk first or individual think time may help build the confidence of shy or
nervous speakers. The emphasis on participation in classroom discussions comes from several
research studies showing that such involvement is essential to developing conceptual
understanding and academic language.
Socially, status plays out in participation patterns. Individually, status influences students
mathematical self-concepts, or their ideas about what kind of math learners they are. As
mathematics educators, we have all encountered students who claim that they are not good at
mathematics before they even give a new idea a chance. Intuitively, we know that students
mathematical self-concept influences their motivation and effort in mathematical learning. If
students know they are not good at mathematics, why should they push past their confusion
when problems become difficult? If students know they are smart, why should they bother to
explain their thinking, let alone pay attention to a classmates? Students self-concept is deeply
tied to their attitudes about learning mathematics, in and out of our classrooms. Societal biases
predispose students to think of themselves and their peers as more or less competent in
mathematics, playing into students choices to engage, persist, and take risks in the classroom.
Text adapted from my book, Strength in Numbers. As always, I invite your respectful and curious
questions and comments.

Better Math Discussions

Anna 02/24
When I first started having students to present their work to the class, I quickly realized that
wanting to have good student presentations was oh so removed from having good student
presentations. Half the time, the work was hard to follow or the explanation didn't make a ton
of sense to the rest of the class or the way they did the problem was so wrong as to not even

really be useful for discussion or even when everything was great, the rest of the class wasn't
remotely interested because they had just done the same problem in the same way so why did
they need to hear another group explain what they had already done themselves? And kids
were just not used to sitting through presentations done by other kids. They were restless,
distracted, and lots of classroom management was required to get some semblance of
presentation. Not to mention the fact that I don't think these presentations did much in terms
of any sort of math learning. I think I was just doing them because I thought I was supposed to
do so?

I loved "5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematics Discussions" when I first read it a
few years ago. It was the most succinct and clear set of explanations for how to organize
discussions around student work. The key idea for me was that it involved NOT calling on
random groups to present and that it required giving students problems for which there are
multiple approaches. The idea is that the teacher selects which work should be discussed and
that there's a rhyme and reason to the work that's selected and the order in which it's
presented.
Having an Apple TV and iPad in my classroom the past two years has also been very helpful for
doing the selection of student work and sequencing it in an order that makes mathematical
sense. Before the Apple TV, I would run around the room, taking notes and trying to then
remember which group I wanted to go first and why. Also, even with my giant whiteboards,
some students feel the need to write microscopically.

Now, I just take a picture of the various approaches that I want the class to discuss, put them in
the order that I want using the Notability app (you could use any app that allows you to stick in
pictures), and then projecting each picture in the correct order and big enough that even my
tiny-handwriting students' work can be read.
My other breakthrough was that having problems with multiple approaches is key because it
really is boring and pointless to hear presentations of the same thing you've already done. It's
much more interesting to see and learn from different ways to the same problem. If the content
doesn't lend itself to problems with multiple approaches, you can assign similar, but not the
same, problems to different groups. It can make for a good progression when the problems
build on each other or when each has only one element that has been tweaked.
I have also been working with students on making the presentations more useful. Instead of just
talking about what they did from start to finish, every group after the first one is asked to
explain what they did differently from the other groups and discuss the benefits and drawbacks
of the approaches. At the end of presentations, I also ask students to summarize the different
ways and discuss when we might use one versus another.
Another issue that I had is with putting up work that had mistakes in it. Students would freak
and be horrified that their WRONG work was being shown to everyone.

It helped a lot when I stopped attributing which group the work with an error came from and
emphasizing how useful the mistake was to our learning. It's February, and I'm finally getting to
the point where students ask whether their mistake is interesting enough for showing to the
class. Score.
The things I'm still struggling with for group presentations are how to talk less and make them
talk more. I still find myself doing a lot of the "summarizing" and pointing out key aspects of the
work to the class, and I want to push myself to turn that over to the students. I would also like
to find more ways to increase the engagement of the students who are listening to the
presenting group. Perhaps asking them to write a summary or some other response after
presentations or require each group to ask a question of the presenters. Other ideas?

Conference notes part 1: how we talk about mathematics

instruction
Grace 12/15
Last week, I attended a convening of teacher preparation programs-- both traditional,
university-based programs and alternative programs-- who are thinking about innovation in
supporting math teachers in the Common Core era. I've got a number of thoughts floating
around:
This meeting confirmed that I would listen to Deborah Ball talk about dustmites if I could-- no
matter what she's saying, she's such a skillful teacher and facilitator that simply being in the
same room with her makes me feel like I'm learning how to be better. A few points that she
either made directly, underscored from others, or implied/sparked (to me, anyway) about the
language we use when we talk about teaching really stuck with me, because I think it's so easy
to accidentally communicate something I don't intend to communicate, especially when using
shorthand. Some of these I hope will be helpful for others' thinking; some are just reminders to

myself about saying what I mean without glossing over important distinctions just to have a
catchy or memorable phrase.
Explicit teaching is not the same as direct instruction: I think the citation on the slide
for this was Engelmann & Colvin (2006), but I haven't found the original source yet.
Teachers do need to make clear what students should be focusing on, what they should
be thinking about, what they should be taking away, because otherwise, students are
left adrift in the sea with no resolution (or thrown off the high dive pick your watery
metaphor). There are many ways to do that without giving students a model to mimic,
which is what direct instruction-- the general idea, not the explicit strategy known as DI- does.
Scaffolding is not the same as simplifying: Supporting a student to gain access
to a task isn't the same as making the task easier or taking away the cognitive
demand; if there's a jar of cookies on top of the refrigerator, scaffolding would
be providing a stepladder or a stool, and simplifying would be moving the jar of
cookies down to the counter. This may seem obvious, but I say because it sets
up the next point:
Unpacking is not the same as breaking down: When we "break down" content,
we identify its discrete parts, dissect it, and present our students with
disembodied and decontextualized fragments. Think of breaking down boxes
(and therefore rendering them unusable for their original purpose) or breaking
down a campsite or breaking down a completed jigsaw puzzle. When we
"unpack" content, however, we open it up to be examined. We make it
accessible by pointing out interesting features or structures. Think of unzipping
a suitcase and exposing its contents, or maybe taking some of the clothing out,
so someone can construct their own outfit. Or of pulling back the curtain on a
stage, and letting the audience's eyes rest on various props and pieces to figure
out what setting and mood is being conveyed.
Students "doing the thinking" or "doing the heavy lifting" doesn't mean the teacher
isn't: All the time, I hear (sometimes from my own mouth): "the teacher is doing all the
work" or "students should be doing the bulk of the thinking, not the teacher." I think it's
intended to mean "students need to be doing more thinking" or "students should be
engaged in more intellectual work," but if we aren't careful, it can imply that the teacher
should be doing less work, or less thinking. In fact, supporting students to engage in
intellectual work requires an incredibly intense amount of thinking and work from the
teacher-- to set students up to be successful, to elicit and listen to their ideas, to probe
and challenge and build-- as anyone who's ever watched an "inquiry" activity crash and
burn can attest. To put it another way, being less helpful doesn't mean doing less work.
Exploration isn't more important than discussion: Takahashi's 2008
presentation "Beyond Show and Tell" makes the observation that American
lessons-- even when they're centered on a rich mathematical task-- often end
after students have arrived at a solution. In a Japanese lesson, however, that's
just the beginning; the bulk of the lesson is spent inneriage: discussing student
solutions, finding similarities and differences among them, and building a
collective understanding. @jybuell and I chatted a bit about this in terms of our
own evolution as teachers-- I thought that getting students to figure something
out was pretty cool, and it never occurred to me that there was more and more
important work to do after that. He figured it out after a few years.
Focusing on the process doesn't mean the answer isn't important: Duh. I don't
think any math teacher would argue that it's okay if students get wrong answers
all the time as long as they engage fully in the process of reasoning ( and how
valid can their reasoning be if it leads them to wrong answers?), but sometimes,

I hear (and say) "the reasoning is what's important" or "it matters most how
they got there" or "it's not really about the answer." All untrue. Just because
we're now placing a greater emphasis on process and reasoning and flexibility
and multiple methods doesn't mean we're lessening our attention to
correctness.
More tomorrow.

Reality Check
Chris 03/30
In accordance with the 7th Commandment of Blogging (If thy comment exceedeth two cubits in
length, thou shalt write thine own damn post.), here is my personal response to Dan's latest
question. To be clear: even though the question was put to Mathalicious generally, and even
though I bodily occupy a nontrivial fraction of that particular organization, it would be
presumptuous of me to write anything approaching an official opinion, especially given the
humbling brains attached to the people I spend my days with. But I have thoughts.
We do thump the real-world drum pretty steadily around the office. We have, as it's known in
the biz, a niche. But what exactly constitutes 'real-world' is an interesting question. I don't
think it's a particularly important question, but it's interesting insofar as it informs the practical
decisions I make about what kinds of tasks I try to author, and what kinds of tasks I leave to
other smart people, in other well-appointed niches. And insofar as that term appears with some
regularity in the CCSS.
A Line in the Sand
There's a philosophically defensible sense in which nothing we'd call a mathematical object is
real (or, for that matter, an object). They're abstract and causally independent and yadda yadda
yadda. There's another philosophically defensible sense in which everything we'd call a
mathematical object is real. Actually, a couple of senses, with varying definitions of reality. And
of course there are positions in between. You could spend lifetime trying to untangle all the
competing ideas of what (or whether) a number is. And basically who cares. In my mind,
there's a simple way to draw a (note: not the) line on the curricular map between That Which Is
Real and That Which Is Not:
Is this question self-referential?
In other words, are we using math to examine itself, or are we using it to inspect something
outside its own borders? So my working definition of 'real-world' math is a mathematical task
that is not self-referential. Which means, and I suppose you saw this coming, that my answer to
Dan's question is none of the above. None of those problems is real-world in any appreciable
sense. They are all questions about a circle, a square, and their respective areas: math looking
at math. A and B are obvious. C and D are just promising hypothetical candy (which is the
absolute worst kind of candy) for solving A or B. I suppose E and F are both dipping their toes
into the real-world, but self-consciously.
Okay, so those are some counterexamples. Maybe a countercounterexample will help shed
light on my litmus test.
For Instance...
Here are two problems:
1. Is it true in general that P(A|B) = P(B|A)? If not, can you express P(A|B) in terms of P(B|A)?

2. Should innocent people be worried about the NSA's PRISM program? How much should
they be worried?
By my definition, the second question is 'real-world' and the first one is not, because the first
question is mathematically self-referential (it's a question about a mathematical relationship
phrased in mathematical language) and the second one is not (it's a question about personal
liberty and national security phrased in natural language). Of course they are the same
question, and they are both excellent. But from my chair, the very fact that those questions are
the same is so non-obvious that connecting them requires a profound act of mathematical
thinking. Also, you get to do some really good math qua math. I find that both professionally
compelling and pedagogically useful. That's why I do what I do. Without speaking too forcefully
for the rest of the team, I think that's part of the reason we do what we do.
Unpacking Circles
As I understand Dan's position (or at least one particular aspect of Dan's position), there's no
reason to create a distinction between, e.g., a circle's reality and the reality of health
insurance. In fact, for kids, a circle may be real (Platonist objections notwithstanding) in a much
clearer and more visceral way. And from there it's not a particularly ambitious leap to extend
this reasoning such that all of mathematics can be considered practically real to human beings
living in a world that includes mathematics. I think that's about right.
But I also think it's valuable to make just this sort of distinction from time to time. Learning
mathematics (or maybe just learning) has a lot to do with forming connections. You can know
something about addition. You can know something about subtraction. But when you --- a
much younger you --- begin to wrap your head around the connection between the two
operations, important things are happening. And a connection's impact on understanding is
inversely related to its obviousness. The guy who understands the connection between
multiplication and division has learned an important thing. The guy who understands the
connection between the zeros of a complex function and the distribution of prime numbers has
revolutionized an entire field.
I'm personally interested in helping people make non-obvious connections. There are lots of
good ways to do that, and we as educators should pursue all of them, but one way is to connect
clearly mathematical ideas to questions that are not clearly mathematical in scope,viz., ask realworld (as I've defined it) questions.
Silver Bullet
So essentially my job boils down to finding interesting non-mathematical questions that are
isomorphic to interesting mathematical questions, but not obviously so. (How's that for a
resume bullet!) I've already touched on why I think non-obviousness is important, but there's
another reason: when the contextual link is trivial, the question generally becomes terrible. And
it's really, really easy to create trivial links. And then the real-world problem is no longer
isomorphic; rather it becomes both substantially identical to and superficially uglier than the
original problem, which is unproductive. It's easy to pour a thin candy shell of context that does
nothing to conceal the shape of the underlying problem, or to improve its flavor. The real world
can definitely ruin a task if your only goal is to incorporate something --- anything --- nonmathematical because for some reason you're afraid to ask a math question about math.
And in that sense I understand the impetus behind the 'fake-world math' backlash, because
there's a certain amount of extant conviction that slapping the 'real-world' label on something
magically confers awesomeness...which it certainly does not. Such wanton slapping can also
make it seem as though it's somehow desirable to avoid mentioning mathematics while
teaching it, which is a lousy way to treat of such a rich subject, and rather unsubtly suggests that

math is unpalatable on its own. We should, as a community, take the position that a poorly
executed idea ought to be avoided. We should question the circumstances and mechanisms
that lead to poor execution. I also think we shouldn't dismiss the good idea outright. The real
world isn't a silver bullet, but it's a perfectly good bullet to have in the magazine.
P vs. NP
I mentioned supra that, while I find this question of to be intellectually interesting, I don't think
it's especially important. Mostly because what I'm interested in, globally, are great math tasks,
and the greatness of a task is independent of whether it's situated in- or outside of the real
world, however we choose to limn it. There is only the illusion of dichotomy here. I drew my
own personal line, and I chose to work on one side of it because I'm partial to the view from
over here. But I also realize that the work I do at Mathalicious represents a small (though
valuable) part of the mathematical experience students should have.
I think that work like mine and work like Dan's approach the same target from essentially
opposite directions. Dan is trying to reify mathematics by treating it as a properly first-class
citizen in the world as we know it. I'm trying to expand mathematical thinking to comprise
those parts of the world we may not realize are already within its purview. Somewhere in the
middle we create a situation in which mathematics and the real world end up occupying
essentially the same space. Isn't that what we're all doing? I hope so. I'd really like that world.

Standard algorithms unteach place value

Christopher 10/08
I found a page full of computations sitting around the house this evening. Naturally, I picked it
up and gave it a look.
Griffin (10 years old, 5th grade) had been doing some multiplication in class today. Somehow his
scratch paper ended up on our couch.
Here is one thing I saw.

Naturally I wanted to ask the boy about it. He consented.

Me: I see you were multiplying 37 by 22 here.
Griffin (10 years old): Yeah. But I got it wrong so I did it again with the lattice.
Me: How did you know you got it wrong?
G: I put it in the answer box and it was wrong.
It turns out they were doing some online exercises. There is an electronic scratchpad, which he
found awkward to use with a mouse (duh), plus his teacher wanted to be able to see their work,
so was encouraging paper and pencil work anyway.
I was really hoping he would say that 37 times 22 has to be a lot bigger than 202. Alas he did
not.

Anyway, back to the conversation.

Me: OK. Now 37 times 2 isnt 101. But lets imagine thats right for now. Well come back to that.
G: Wait. Thats supposed to be 37 times 2? I though you just multiplied that by that, and that by
that.
He indicated 7 times 2, and then 3 times the same 2 as he spoke.
Me: Yes. But when you do that, youll get the same thing as 37 times 2.
A brief moment of silence hung between us.
Me: What is 37 times 2?
G: Well.74.
Let us pause to reflect here.
This boy can think about numbers. He got 37 times 2 faster in his head than I would have with
pencil and paper. But when he uses the standard algorithm that all goes out the window in favor
of the steps.
THE STEPS WIN, PEOPLE!
The steps trump thinking. The steps trump number sense.
The steps triumph over all.
Back to the conversation.
Me: Yes. 74. Good. I like that you thought that out. Lets go back to imagining that 101 is right
for a moment. Then the next thing you did was multiply 37 by this 2, right?
I gestured to the 2 in the tens place.
G: Yes.
Me: But thats not really a 2.
G: Oh. Yeah.
Me: Thats a 20. Two tens.
G: Yeah.
Me: So it would be 101 tens.
G: Yeah.
I know this reads like I was dragging him through the line of reasoning, but I assure you that this
is ground he knows well. I leading him along a well known path that he didnt realize he was on,
not dragging him trailing behind me through new territory. We had other things to discuss.
Bedtime was approaching. We needed to move on.
Me: Now. We both know that 37 times 2 isnt 101. Lets look at how that goes. You multiplied 7
by 2, right?
G: Yup. Thats 14.
Me: So you write the 4 and carry the 1.
G: Thats what I did.
Me: mmmm?
G: Oh. I wrote the one

Me: and carried the 4. Yeah. If you had done it the other way around, youd have the 4 there
[indicating the units place], and then 3 times 2 plus 1.
G: Seven.
Me: Yeah. So theres your 74.
This place value error was consistent in his work on this page.

Let me be clear: this error will be easy to fix. I have no fears that my boy will be unable to
multiply in his adolescence or adult life. Indeed, once he knew that he had wrong answers
(because the computer told him so), he went back to his favorite algorithmthe latticeand
got correct answers.

I am not worried about this boy. He is and he will be fine.

But I want to point outI need to point out that this is exactly the outcome you should expect
when you go about teaching standard algorithms.
If you wonder why your kids (whether your offspring, your students, or both) are
not thinking about the math they are doing, it is because the algorithms we (you) teach them
are designed so that people do not have to think. That is why they are efficient.
If you want kids who get right answers without thinking, then go ahead and keep focusing on
those steps. Griffin gets right answer with the lattice algorithm, and I have every confidence that
I can train him to get right answers with the standard algorithm too.
But we should not kid ourselves that we are teaching mathematical thinking along the way.
Griffin turned off part of his brain (the part that gets 37 times 2 quickly) in order to follow a set
of steps that didnt make sense to him.
And we shouldnt kid ourselves that this is only an issue in the elementary grades when kids are
learning arithmetic.
Algebra. The quadratic formula is an algorithm. Every algebra student memorizes it. How it
relates to inverses, though? Totally obfuscated. See, we dont have kids find inverses of
quadratics because those inverses are not functions; they are relations. If we did have kids find
inverses of quadratics, they could think about the relationship between the quadratic formula:

and the formula for the inverse relation of the general form of a quadratic:

Calculus. So many formulas (algorithms) that force students not to think about the underlying
relationships. If we wanted students to really think about rates of change (which are what
Calculus is really about), we might have them develop a theory of secant lines and finite
differences before we do limits and tangent lines. We might have Calculus students do tasks
such as Sweet Tooth from Mathalicious (free throughout October!). There, students think
about marginal enjoyment and total enjoyment.

On and on.
This is pervasive in mathematics teaching.
The results are mistaken for the content.
So we teach kids to get results. And we inadvertently teach them not to use what they know
about the contentnot to look for new things to know. Not to question or wonder or connect.
Im telling you, though, that it doesnt have to be this way.
Consider the case of Talking Math with Your Kids. There we have reports from around the
country of parents and children talking about the ideas of mathematics, not the procedures.
Consider the case of Kristin (@MathMinds on Twitter), a fifth grade teacher, and her student
Billy. Billy made an unusual claim about even and odd numbers. She followed up, she shared,
we discussed on Twitter. Pretty soon, teachers around the country were engaged in thinking
about whether Billy would call 3.0 even or odd.
But standard algorithms dont teach any of that. They teach children to get answers. They teach
children not to think.
I have read about it. I have thought about it. And tonight I saw it in my very own home.

Good at Math
Seth 10/07
It's tempting to fall into the trap of believing that being good at math is a genetic predisposition,
as it lets us off the hook. The truth is, with few rare exceptions, all of us are capable of being
good at math.
I'll grant you that it might take a gift to be great at math, but if you're not good at math, it's not
because of your genes. It's because you haven't had a math teacher who cared enough to teach
you math. They've probably been teaching you to memorize formulas and to be good at math
tests instead.
Being good at standardized math tests is useless. These tests measure nothing of real value, and
they amplify a broken system.
No, we need to get focused and demanding and relentless in getting good at math, at getting
our kids good at math and not standing by when someone lets themselves (and thus us) off the
hook. If you can read, you can do math. Math, like reading, isn't optional, it's our future and it
helps free us from our fear of creation.
"Can an eight-inch square pizza fit on a nine-inch round plate without draping over the edge?" is
a question that should make you smile, not one you should have to avoid.
Visibly random groups & Vertical non-permanent surfaces
Laura 11/09
I have been trying to shift my Math classes toward activity- / problem-based learning. We still
have individual practice days, but as much as possible I want them solving new, complicated
problems in groups. Two ideas that I heard about at a meeting of the OCDSB Mathematics
Department Heads have really changed how I do things in class lately:

1. Visibly Random Groups

2. Vertical Non-Permanent Surfaces
Both ideas come from the work of Peter Liljedahl and have been gaining traction amongst
OCDSB teachers lately, particularly in Mathematics classrooms.
Visibly Random Groups (VRGs):
Every day I make random groups so that my students work with different partners each
day. Students are learning from ALL of their classmates this way, getting a chance to hear
different viewpoints, different strategies each day. To make these random groups, some
teachers use a smartphone app such as Shuffle Names, Dice while others use websites such
as Team Maker.
When I first started using VRGs in my classes, I used the Team Maker website. You paste in your
class list of names & it makes however many groups you ask it to. But I would have to go
through the list & delete any students who were absent. This meant the groups could only be
created after the bell had rung. I wanted a system that would tell students their group for the
day as they arrive so that they can sit right down & get started.
So this year I have been using a deck of cards (low-tech & old school!). Heres how I do it. I post
their bellwork assignment on the screen/board before class starts. The desks in my classroom
are arranged in 8 groups of 4 desks, each with the group number hanging from the ceiling above
them (which you can see if you look closely in this
photo).

I stand outside my classroom door during the travel time. As my students arrive I hand them a
playing card (with a number from 1 through 8 on it) indicating which group they are sitting at
that day. This method for VRG has the added bonus of giving me the chance to personally greet
each student as they arrive to class as well as monitor student behaviour in the halls during
transition times.
The conversations I hear between students while problem solving this year are far richer than
previous years & I believe it also contributes to a positive culture of collaboration & sharing in
my classroom.
Peter Liljedahls research shows the following benefits for VRGs:

Screenshot from: http://www.peterliljedahl.com/wp-content/uploads/Visibly-RandomGroups.pdf

Vertical Non-Permanent Surfaces (VNPSs):
After we finish the bellwork activity to start class off, I usually present the problem or activity of
the day (often done in Dan Meyers 3-act math style). Students solve the problem in their small
groups (I try to limit each group to 3 students which works when my class has 24 students or
less). They get out of their seats & proceed to a section of blackboard or whiteboard assigned to
their group in order to solve the problem together.

The vertical nature of the surface:

gets students out of their seats which seems to activate their thinking

allows students to see the work of other groups which gives them ideas of things to try or
perhaps what not to try

allows me as the teacher to see the work of each group at a quick glance, which
prompts me to offer feedback & question their thinking as they work

The non-permanence of the surface is important too. Students seem willing to get to work faster
and are willing to make mistakes because they can be so easily erased. Pencil & paper can be
erased too, but theres something about the whiteboard or chalkboard that makes students
more willing to just try something. As Peter Liljedahls research shows in the data below,
students get to work faster, they work longer, and are more engaged:

Screenshot from: http://www.peterliljedahl.com/wp-content/uploads/CMEF-2014Environments-that-Occasion.pptx

I have two walls w/ blackboards in my classroom & the third wall (which already has a DIY
whiteboard for a projector screen in the middle) will be getting fully covered with DIY
whiteboards in the coming week. My 4th wall is windows, although I know other teachers that
get DIY whiteboards cut to size & lean them up against windows to create student work stations
there as well.
The rules of working on the VNPSs in my class:

One person has the chalk at a time.

The person with the chalk can only write down what their partners tell them to (if they
want to explain the next step, they hand the chalk to a different partner).

The teacher can say switch the chalk at any point & a new partner needs to become the
writer.

I also tell them that if one person does the solving & writing without partner input, Ill
erase their work.

No sitting down.

No working things out on paper before using the board.

Have you tried VRGs and/or VNPSs in your classroom? Leave a comment below!
Check out some other teachers experiences with these ideas like Mr. Overwijks:
http://slamdunkmath.blogspot.ca/2014/08/vertical-non-permanent-surfaces-and.html
- Laura Wheeler (Teacher @ Ridgemont High School, OCDSB; Ottawa, ON)

Grand challenges for mathematics education

Robert 06/28

On Twitter this week, someone sent out a link to this survey from the NCTM asking users to
submit their ideas for grand challenges for mathematics education in the coming years. I
forget the precise definition and parameters for a grand challenge and I cant go back to the
beginning of the survey now that Ive completed it, but the gist is that a grand challenge should
be extremely difficult but doable, should make a positive impact on a large group of
mathematics students, and should be grounded in sound pedagogical research.
To that list of parameters, I added that the result of any grand challenge should include a set of
free, open-source materials or freely-available research studies that anyone can obtain and use
without having to subscribe to a journal, belong to a particular institution, or use a particular
brand of published curricula. In other words, one of the grand challenges in math education
would be to decouple mathematics teaching from proprietary publication and software
platforms as well as ridiculously expensive journals, and make a transformative move toward
being an open access discipline.
Here are the specific grand challenges I suggested:
1. Create a complete open-source curriculum for high school and early college
mathematics, from Algebra 1 through Calculus, consisting of print/PDF textbooks,
instructional videos, computer-based manipulatives and applets, and assessment tools
that are founded in constructivist pedagogy and focus on conceptual understanding and
metacognitive skills in addition to content mastery. The curriculum should be
implementable in a flipped learning course setup or in more traditional course designs.
All materials are to be made freely available under a Creative Commons license on the
web and through a central print repository for those without reliable web access.
2. Create a complete set of statistically-validated concept inventories for all K12
mathematics subject areas, similar to the Force Concept Inventory for physics, to serve
as a standard assessment student mastery of underlying conceptual knowledge in these
subject areas. The result should be a freely-available repository of concept inventories,
refreshed frequently to avoid replication of tests and available upon demand through
internet downloads.
3. Using the concept inventories developed in Grand Challenge #2,replicate the study by
Richard Hake at all levels of K12 mathematics and in university courses at the calculus
level and below, using at least 10,000 students in each study across a wide range of
institutional, cultural, and economic backgrounds.
4. Create an online repository for preprints in mathematics education, including work on
the scholarship of teaching and learning applied to undergraduate mathematics
education, similar to the arXiv. The repository should allow for free downloads of
preprints; upvoting, downvoting, and comments; and contain video abstracts that can
be freely shared and embedded.

You could summarize this list as follows: (1) decouple schools from publishing companies, (2)
catch up with the physics education researchers, (3) see point #2, and (4) allow SoTL researchers
in mathematics to get their work out to the public faster than is already done.
This discussion about the arXiv for math education has been had before and its clear that the
arXiv is not interested in setting up a separate area for math education, even though there is
already a separate area for physics education, so its time to roll our own, as it were. That is by
far the easiest of the four challenges I have here.
What would you add to this?

Conceptual Understanding in Mathematics

Grant 04/23
The Common Core Standards in Mathematics stress the importance of conceptual
understanding as a key component of mathematical expertise. Alas, in my experience, many
math teachers do not understand conceptual understanding. Far too many think that if students
know all the definitions and rules, then they possess such understanding.
The Standards themselves arguably offer too little for confused educators. The document
merely states that understanding means being able to justify procedures used or state why a
process works:
But what does mathematical understanding look like? One hallmark of mathematical
understanding is the ability to justify, in a way appropriate to the students mathematical
maturity, why a particular mathematical statement is true or where a mathematical rule comes
from. There is a world of difference between a student who can summon a mnemonic device to
expand a product such as (a + b)(x + y) and a student who can explain where the mnemonic
comes from.
A few of the understanding standards provide further insight:
Students understand connections between counting and addition and subtraction (e.g., adding
two is the same as counting on two). They use properties of addition to add whole numbers and
to create and use increasingly sophisticated strategies based on these properties (e.g., making
tens) to solve addition and subtraction problems within 20. By comparing a variety of solution
strategies, children build their understanding of the relationship between addition and
subtraction.[emphasis added].
Note what I highlighted: understanding requires focused inferential work. Being helped to
generalize from ones specific knowledge is key to genuine understanding.
Daniel Willingham, the cognitive scientist who often writes on education, offers a more detailed
account of the nature and importance of conceptual understanding in math (along with the
other two pillars of mastery, factual knowledge and procedural skill) in his article from a few
years ago in the AFT journal American Educator.

A procedure is a sequence of steps by which a frequently encountered problem may be solved.

For example, many children learn a routine of borrow and regroup for multi-digit subtraction
problems. Conceptual knowledge refers to an understanding of meaning;
knowing that multiplying two negative numbers yields a positive result is not the same thing as
understanding why it is true.
knowledge of procedures is no guarantee of conceptual understanding; for example, many
children can execute a procedure to divide fractions without understanding why the procedure
works. Most observers agree that knowledge of procedures and concepts is desirable.
Willingham discusses the poor results for basic content and procedural knowledge, as revealed
by trends in testing. However, he also notes More troubling is American students lack of conceptual understanding. Several studies have
found that many students dont fully understand the base-10 number system. A colleague
recently brought this to my attention with a vivid anecdote. She mentioned that one of her
students (a freshman at a competitive university) argued that 0.015 was a larger number than
0.05 because 15 is more than 5. The student could not be persuaded otherwise.
Another common conceptual problem is understanding that an equal sign ( = ) refers to
equalitythat is, mathematical equivalence. By some estimates, as few as 25 percent of
American sixth- graders have a deep understanding of this concept. Students often think it
signifies put the answer here.
Here is a lovely paper expanding upon the issue of misconceptions in arithmetic, from a British
article for teachers (hence the word maths and the spelling of recognise):
1. A number with three digits is always bigger than one with two. Some children will swear
blind that 3.24 is bigger than 4.6 because its got more digits. Why? Because for the first few
years of learning, they only came across whole numbers, where the digits rule does work.
2. When you multiply two numbers together, the answer is always bigger than both the
original numbers. Another seductive rule that works for whole numbers, but falls to pieces
when one or both of the numbers is less than one. Remember that, instead of the word times
we can always substitute the word of. So, 1/2 times 1/4 is the same as a half of a quarter. That
immediately demolishes the expectation that the product is going to be bigger than both
original numbers.
3. Which fraction is bigger: 1/3 or 1/6? How many pupils will say 1/6 because they know that 6
is bigger than 3? This reveals a gap in knowledge about what the bottom number, the
denominator, of a fraction does. It divides the top number, the numerator, of course. Practical
work, such as cutting pre-divided circles into thirds and sixths, and comparing the shapes, helps
cement understanding of fractions.
4. Common regular shapes arent recognised for what they are unless theyre
upright. Teachers can, inadvertently, feed this misconception if they always draw a square,
right-angled or isosceles triangle in the usual position. Why not draw them occasionally upside
down, facing a different direction, or just tilted over, to force pupils to look at the essential

properties? And, by the way, in maths, theres no such thing as a diamond! Its either a square
or a rhombus.
5. The diagonal of a square is the same length as the side? Not true, but tempting for many
young minds. So, how about challenging the class to investigate this by drawing and measuring.
Once the top table have mastered this, why not ask them to estimate the dimensions of a
square whose diagonal is exactly 5cm. Then draw it and see how close their guess was.
6. To multiply by 10, just add a zero. Not always! What about 23.7 x 10, 0.35 x 10, or 2/3 x 10?
Try to spot, and unpick, the just add zero rule wherever it rears its head.
7. Proportion: three red sweets and two blue. Asked what proportion of the sweets is blue,
how many kids will say 2/3 rather than 2/5? Why? Because theyre comparing blue to red, not
blue to all the sweets. Always stress that proportion is part to whole.
8. Perimeter and area confuse many kids. A common mistake, when measuring the perimeter
of a rectangle, is to count the squares surrounding the shape, in the same way as counting those
inside for area. Now you can see why some would give the perimeter of a two-by-three
rectangle as 14 units rather than 10.
9. Misreading scales. Still identified as a weakness in Key Stage test papers. The most common
misunderstanding is that any interval on a scale must correspond to one unit. (Think of 30 to 40
split into five intervals.) Frequent handling of different scales, divided up into twos, fives, 10s,
tenths etc. will help to banish this idea.
From Teachers: January 2006 Issue 42 UK (alas, the link no longer works)
A definition of conceptual understanding. In light of the confusion about conceptual
understanding and the pressing problem of student misunderstanding, I think a slightly more
robust definition of conceptual understanding is wanted. I prefer to define it this way:
Conceptual understanding in mathematics means that students understand which ideas are key
(by being helped to draw inferences about those ideas) and that they grasp the heuristic value of
those ideas. They are thus better able to use them strategically to solve problems especially
non-routine problems and avoid common misunderstandings as well as inflexible knowledge
and skill.
In other words, students demonstrate understanding of
1) which mathematical ideas are key, and why they are important
2) which ideas are useful in a particular context for problem solving
3) why and how key ideas aid in problem solving, by reminding us of the systematic nature of
mathematics (and the need to work on a higher logical plane in problem solving situations)
4) how an idea or procedure is mathematically defensible why we and they are justified in
using it
5) how to flexibly adapt previous experience to new transfer problems.
A test for conceptual understanding. Rather than explain my definition further here, I will
operationalize it in a little test of 13 questions, to be given to 10th, 11th, and 12th graders who

have passed all traditional math courses through algebra and geometry. (Middle school students
can be given the first 7 questions.)
Math teachers, give it to your students; tell us the results.
I will make a friendly wager: I predict that no student will get all the questions correct. Prove me
wrong and Ill give the teacher and student(s) a big shout-out.
1) You cant divide by zero. Explain why not, (even though, of course, you can multiply by
zero.)
2) Solving problems typically requires finding equivalent statements that simplify the
problem Explain and in so doing, define the meaning of the = sign.
3) You are told to invert and multiply to solve division problems with fractions. But why does
it work? Prove it.
4) Place these numbers in order of largest to smallest: .00156, 1/60, .0015, .001, .002
5) Multiplication is just repeated addition. Explain why this statement is false, giving
examples.
6) A catering company rents out tables for big parties. 8 people can sit around a table. A school
is giving a party for parents, siblings, students and teachers. The guest list totals 243. How many
tables should the school rent?
7) Most teachers assign final grades by using the mathematical mean (the average) to
determine them. Give at least 2 reasons why the mean may not be the best measure of
achievement by explaining what the mean hides.
8) Construct a mathematical equation that describes the mathematical relationship between
feet and yards. HINT: all you need as parts of the equation are F, Y, =, and 3.
9) As you know, PEMDAS is shorthand for the order of operations for evaluating complex
expressions (Parentheses, then Exponents, etc.). The order of operations is a convention. X(A +
B) = XA + XB is the distributive property. It is a law. What is the difference between a convention
and a law, then? Give another example of each.
10) Why were imaginary numbers invented? [EXTRA CREDIT for 12thgraders: Why was the
calculus invented?]
11) Whats the difference between an accurate answer and an appropriately precise
answer? (HINT: when is the answer on your calculator inappropriate?)
12) In geometry, we begin with undefined terms. Heres whats odd, though: every Geometry
textbook always draw points, lines, and planes in exactly the same familiar and obvious way as
if we CAN define them, at least visually. So: define undefined term and explain why it doesnt
mean that points and lines have to be drawn the way we draw them; nor does it mean, on the
other hand, that math chaos will ensue if there are no definitions or familiar images for the basic
elements.
13) In geometry we assume many axioms. Whats the difference between valid and goofy
axioms in other words, what gives us the right to assume the axioms we do in Euclidean
geometry?

Let us know how your kids did and which questions tripped up the most kids and why, if you
discussed it with them.
(SPOILER ALERT!!!!)
Thanks to reader Max Ray for pointing out a few TEACHER answers to the test!
A handful of math teachers & mathematicians (so far) have taken up the challenge posed by
your 13 questions, answering them for ourselves before asking students to dive in, so that we
have a sense of what we might want to hear from kids.
Here are the ones I know of so far:
http://mathforum.org/blogs/max/in-which-i-take-the-grant-wiggins-challenge/
http://step1trysomething.wordpress.com/2014/04/25/answering-the-conceptual-questions/
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FK8m_oVaS_UWS4grETMAfAhByN_vrQC0TR85ld5FXj8/
edit
And here is a nice commentary from one of our AE math consultants, Rita Atienza: Atienza math
comment.
And here is a great summary as to the ability to use the lack of definition of points, lines, and
plane to make valid hyperbolic proofs that reflect Euclidean assumptions (hence, the validity of
hyperbolic geometry: http://www.math.cornell.edu/~mec/Winter2009/Mihai/section4.html
PS: I also had a nice phone conversation with friend and former HS student(!) Steve Strogatz, the
celebrated mathematician-author about the test. He reminded me of two test questions that I
should have asked (and that he and I have previously discussed):
True or false: .999999 = 1
Explain why a negative times a negative = a positive.
Steve also pointed me to a cool example of the value of undefined terms(beyond the one I
taught him years ago by Poincare, in which a plane is imagined as an enclosed circle, used to
prove the relative validity of one branch of non-Euclidean geometry) using the childrens game
Spot It.

A postscript for geeky readers of my blog, and for fans of E D Hirschs work who have been critics
of mine in the past re: Knowledge:
I have been surprised to discover that there are a whole bunch of smart,literate,
and learned teachers who seem to deny that (conceptual) understanding even exists as a goal
separate from knowledge and by extension that my work and the work of many others is
without merit. To them as to E D Hirsch, it seems there is only Knowledge. This, despite
the fact that the distinction between knowledge and understanding is embedded in all indoEuropean languages, has a pedigree that goes back to Plato and runs through Blooms
Taxonomy; the National Academy of Science publication How People Learn; and is the basis of
decades of successful work in understanding by Perkins, Gardner, the research in student
misconceptions in science, and the research on transfer of learning.

Some of my critics regularly cite Willinghams summary of educational research, and a paper
by Clark, Kirschner, and Sweller (discussed below; Dan Meyer has a link to all the key papers and
rebuttals here. And thanks to a blog reader, I was led to the articles related to the debate on the
USC web page (Clarks University); scroll to the bottom) to make clear that direct instruction
leading to knowledge is the only way to frame the challenge of both aim and means in effective
education. As I will show, I believe they overstate what the research actually says and have
little ground for suggesting that there is no meaningful difference between knowledge and
understanding.
Wilingham on conceptual understanding in math. First, lets look more closely at what
researcher Daniel Willingham has to say about conceptual understanding in mathematics. His
article is based on the idea that successful mathematics learning presumably generalizable to
all learning requires three different abilities that must be developed and woven together:
control of facts, control of processes, and conceptual understanding. And throughout the article
he discusses not only the importance of understanding and how it is difficult to obtain but
also notes that instruction for it has to be different than the learning of basic skills and facts. I
quote him at length below:
Unfortunately, of the three varieties of knowledge that students need, conceptual knowledge is
the most difficult to acquire. Its difficult because knowledge is never acquired de novo; a
teacher cannot pour concepts directly into students heads. Rather, new concepts must build
upon something that students already know. Thats why examples are so useful when
introducing a new concept. Indeed, when someone provides an abstract definition (e.g., The
standard deviation is a measure of the dispersion of a distribution.), we usually ask for an
example (such as, Two groups of people might have the same average height, but one group
has many tall and many short people, and thus has a large standard deviation, whereas the
other group mostly has people right around the average, and thus has a small standard
deviation.). *emphasis added+
This is also why conceptual knowledge is so important as students advance. Learning new
concepts depends on what you already know, and as students advance, new concepts will
increasingly depend on old conceptual knowledge. For example, understanding algebraic
equations depends on the right conceptual understanding of the equal sign. If students fail to
gain conceptual understanding, it will become harder and harder to catch up, as new conceptual
knowledge depends on the old. Students will become more and more likely to simply memorize
algorithms and apply them without understanding.
Yet, for some reason, critics fail to accept this distinction or see the inherent paradox,
therefore, in education (discussed below). Novices need clear instruction and
simplified/scaffolded learning, for sure. But such early simplification will likely come back to
inhibit later nuanced and deeper learning not as a function of bad direct teaching but
because of the inherent challenge of unfixing earlier, simpler knowledge.

Perhaps part of the problem are the either-or terms that some researchers have used to frame
this discussion. The essence of the false dichotomy is contained in Clark, Kirschner, and Sweller.
Here is the introduction to the paper:
The goal of this article is to suggest that based on our current knowledge of human cognitive
architecture, minimally guided instruction is likely to be ineffective. The past half-century of
empirical research on this issue has provided overwhelming and unambiguous evidence that
minimal guidance during instruction is significantly less effective and efficient than guidance
specifically designed to support the cognitive processing necessary for learning.
The authors suggest, in other words, that evidence-based research shows that so-called
constructivist i.e. discovery views of teaching are wrong on two counts:
1. The authors claim that those who use discovery/problem-based/project-based learning all
unhelpfully lumped together as one thing by the authors have confused the cognitive
meaning constructivism (a correct psychology theory of how minds make sense of data)
with constructivist teaching (an unsubstantiated theory of how people best learn).
2. The authors claim that this inappropriate view of inductive pedagogy confuses the needs
and traits of the expert with that of the novice:
Another consequence of attempts to implement constructivist theory is a shift of emphasis
away from teaching a discipline as a body of knowledge toward an exclusive emphasis on
learning a discipline by experiencing the processes and procedures of the discipline
(Handelsman et. al., 2004; Hodson, 1988). This change in focus was accompanied by an
assumption shared by many leading educators and discipline specialists that knowledge can best
be learned or only learned through experience that is based primarily on the procedures of the
discipline. This point of view led to a commitment by educators to extensive practical or project
work, and the rejection of instruction based on the facts, laws, principles and theories that make
up a disciplines content accompanied by the use of discovery and inquiry methods of
instruction. The addition of a more vigorous emphasis on the practical application of inquiry and
problem-solving skills seems very positive. Yet it may be a fundamental error to assume that the
pedagogic content of the learning experience is identical to the methods and processes (i.e., the
epistemology) of the discipline being studied and a mistake to assume that instruction should
exclusively focus on methods and processes.
In sum, those who promote discovery or unguided learning make two big mistakes,
unsupported by research, say the authors: effective learning requires direct, not indirect
instruction. And the needs of the novice are far different than the needs of the expert, so it
makes little sense to treat novice students as real scientists who focus on inquiry. (Even though
the authors offer the aside that a more vigorous emphasis on the practical application of
inquiry and problem-solving skills is a good thing.)
But: huh? In 30 years of working with teachers I know of no teacher secondary school or
college who rejects the teaching of scientific facts, laws, and principles. Indeed, science

classes in HS and college universally are loaded with instruction, textbook learning, and testing
on such knowledge.
Here is what the Clark et al. say in a follow-up article in American Educator:
Our goal is to put an end to the debate (about direct vs discovery learning). Decades of research
clearly demonstrate that for novices (comprising virtually all students) direct, explicit instruction
is more effective and more efficient than partial guidance. So, when teaching new content and
skills to novices, teachers are more effective when they provide explicit guidance accompanied
by practice and feedback, not when they require students to discover many aspects of what
they must learn. [emphasis in the original]
What a curious definition of novice! The novice category is stretched to include virtually all
students. This is surely a sweeping overstatement much like the sweeping categorization of
all non direct-instruction pedagogies as discovery that has been so criticized by others. We
quite properly expect older middle and high school students, never mind college students, to do
extensive self-directed and inductive work in reading, writing, problem solving, and research
because they are no longer novices at core academic skills. Indeed, here is research with college
science students that counter their argument.
Indeed, later in the article, the authors strike a somewhat different pose about the complete
repertoire of pedagogies needed by good teachers:
*T+his does not mean direct, expository instruction every day. Small group work and
independent problems and projects can be effective not as vehicles for making discoveries but
as a means of practicing recently learned skills. [emphasis in the original]
Though this properly expands the list of effective instructional moves, their framing is odd and
telling. The purpose of non-routine problem-solving, making meaning of a new text, doing
original research, or engaging in Socratic Seminar they say is to practice recently learned
skills. Hardly. These approaches have different aims, understanding-related aims, that are
never addressed in their paper.
Indeed, this is just how conceptual and strategic thinking for transfer must be developed to
achieve understanding: through carefully designed experiencesthat ask students to bring to bear
past experience on present work, to connect their experiences into understanding. As Eva Brann
famously said about the seminar at St. Johns College, the point of student-led discussion is not
to learn new things but to think things anew. Indeed, Willinghams warning about not pouring
concepts into a students head when understanding is the goal is the important advice that is
constantly overlooked by the authors and their supporters as the focus is overly-narrowed to
teaching skill via direct instruction.
The authors even tacitly acknowledge this later in the article, in discussing why what works for
novices doesnt work for experienced learners in a subject and vice versa:
In general, the expertise reversal effect states that instructional techniques that are highly
effective with inexperienced learners can lose their effectiveness and even have negative
consequences when used with more experienced learners. This is why, from the very beginning

of this article, we have emphasized that guidance is best for teaching novel information and
skills. This shows the wisdom of instructional techniques that begin with lots of guidance and
then fade that guidance as students gain mastery. It also shows the wisdom of using minimal
guidance techniques to reinforce or practice previously learned material.
Well, which is it, then? Are virtually all students novices or not? When does a gradualrelease-of-responsibility kick in? Just when is a student gaining mastery enough to use more
inferential methods? We know the answer in reading: in middle school, based on the gold
standard controlled research of Palinscar and Brown that the authors mention in the
citations!
Willingham in fact concludes his article by questioning the very novice-expert sequence laid out
by Clark, Kirschner, and Sweller when the goal is conceptual understanding. After describing the
caricatures in the math-wars debate of process vs. conceptual knowledge, he says:
Somewhat more controversial is the relative emphasis that should be given to these two types
of knowledge, and the order in which students should learn them.
Perhaps with sufficient practice and automaticity of algorithms, students will, with just a little
support, gain a conceptual understanding of the procedures they have been executing. Or
perhaps with a solid conceptual under- standing, the procedures necessary to solve a problem
will seem self-evident.
There is some evidence to support both views. Conceptual knowledge sometimes seems to
precede procedural knowledge or to influence its development. Then too, procedural
knowledge can precede conceptual knowledge. For example, children can often count
successfully before they understand all of countings properties, such as the irrelevance of
order.
A third point of view (and today perhaps the most commonly accepted) is that for most topics, it
does not make sense to teach concepts first or to teach procedures first; both should be taught
in concert. As students incrementally gain knowledge and understanding of one, that knowledge
supports comprehension of the other. Indeed, this stance seems like common sense. Since
neither procedures nor concepts arise quickly and reliably in most students minds without
significant prompting, why wouldnt one teach them in concert?
Indeed. Sequence in learning is not at all settled, as Clark et al profess, when the aim is
understanding as opposed to basic skills to be learned the first time.
The key to understanding understanding: the ubiquity of persistent
misunderstanding. Ultimately, a key lacuna in the everything-is-knowledge-through-directinstruction view is its inability to adequately explain student misconceptions and transfer
deficits that persist in the face of conventional direct teaching in science and mathematics.
A glaring weakness in the Clark, Kirschner, and Sweller paper is their one-sentence treatment of
student misconceptions: they suggest that misconceptions are the likely result of allowing
students to discover concepts and facts for themselves!

This is surely a slanted view. There is a 30-year history of research in science and math
misconceptions that shows conclusively that traditional high school and college direct
instruction leads unwittingly to persistent misconceptions, and that a more interactive conceptattainment approach works to overcome them.
Multiplication is not repeated addition. The equal sign does not mean find the answer. Then,
why is this a near-universal misunderstanding of these ideas? Presumably as a result of teachers
not teaching for conceptual understanding and failing to think through
the predictable misunderstandings that will inevitably arise when teaching novices the basics in
simplified ways. Teaching a concept as a fact simply does not work, as Willingham notes.
The paradox of education. What these examples beautifully indicate is the paradox of teaching
novices that so many knowledge-centric educators seem to overlook. Yes, we must simplify and
scaffold the work for the novice and make direct instruction clear and enabling but in so doing
we invariably sow the seeds of misconceptions and inflexible knowledge if we do not also work
to attain genuine understanding of what the basics do and do not mean.
Indeed, the success of Eric Mazurs work at Harvard and with other college faculties, and
the Arizona State Modeling project in physics, both backed by more than a decade of research in
college and high school science, cannot be understood unless one sees the connection between
conceptual understanding and transfer, and the failure of transfer to occur when there is just
factual and procedural instruction.
In fact, a telling comment made by Barak Rosenshine, a leader in direct instruction, that DI has a
more limited use than Clark et al acknowledge:
Rosenshine and Stevens concluded that across a number of studies, when effective
teachers taught well-structured topics (e.g., arithmetic computation, map skills), the teachers
used the following pattern:
Begin a lesson with a short review of previous learning.

Begin a lesson with a short statement of goals.

Present new material in small steps, providing for student practice after each step.

Give clear and detailed instructions and explanations.

Provide a high level of active practice for all students.

Ask a large number of questions, check for student understanding, and obtain responses
from all students.

Guide students during initial practice.

Provide systematic feedback and corrections.

Provide explicit instruction and practice for seatwork exercises and monitor students
during seatwork.
[emphasis added]

Rosenshine is far more careful than Clark et al to clarify the meaning of the term direct
instruction which he claims has five different meanings that need to be sorted out. In fact,
he notes that reading comprehension is a different kind of learning task than developing

straightforward skills, and thus requires a different kind of direct instruction instruction in
cognitive strategies:
Even though the teacher effectiveness meaning was derived from research on the teaching of
well-structured tasks such as arithmetic computation and the cognitive strategy meaning was
derived from research on the teaching of less-structured tasks such as reading comprehension, there are many common instructional elements in the two approaches.
In most of these studies students who received direct instruction in cognitive strategies
significantly outperformed students in the control group comprehension as assessed by
experimenter-developed short answer tests, summarization tests, and/or recall tests.
(Note, therefore, that DI offers no justification for the kind of direct instruction done by
ineffective high school and college teachers i.e. too much teacher talk. DI is a method for
learning and applying skills.)
Here we see the paradox, more clearly: no one can directly teach you to understand the
meaning of a text any more than a concept can be taught as a fact. The teacher can only provide
models, think-alouds, and scaffolding strategies that are practiced and debriefed, to help each
learner make sense of text. Otherwise we are left with the silly view that English is merely the
learning of facts about each text taught by the teacher or that science labs are simply
experiences designed to reinforce the lectures. As I noted here, Willingham argues that teaching
cognitive strategies are beneficial in literacy in contrast to Hirschs constant and sweeping
complaints about the lack of value in teaching such strategies and asking students to use them.
Interestingly, in an interview Rosenshine seems a bit insensitive to the problem of inflexible
knowledge in less able students who need to rely on initial scaffolds for a long time:
Rosenshine: Cognitive strategies refers to specific strategies students can use to provide a
support in their initial learning. For example, in teaching writing there is a cognitive strategy
called the five-paragraph essay. The format for this essay suggests that students begin with an
introductory paragraph containing a main idea supported by three points. These points are
elaborated in the next three paragraphs, and then everything is summarized in the final
paragraph.
After describing a lesson on Macbeth in which the essay template and DI are used, Rosenshine
says:
The teacher told me he used this same approach with classes of varying abilities and had found
that the students in the slower classes hung on to the five-step method and used it all the time.
Students in the middle used the method some of the time and not others, while the brighter
students expanded on it and went off on their own. But in all cases, the five-step method served
as a scaffold, as a temporary support while the students were developing their abilities.
[emphasis added]
I find this an ironic comment since I have often written about the English test item in
Massachusetts in which 2/3 of all 10th graders could not identify a reading as an essay because
it didnt have 5 paragraphs. It is precisely the paradox of the inflexibility and over-

simplification of well-scaffolded novice knowledge that has to be aggressively addressed if

understanding (what an essay is as a concept) and transfer (recognizing that this is an essay,
even though its surface features are unfamiliar) are to occur.
How hard would it be to show weaker students a 3- and a 9-paragraph essay as well as a 5paragraph essay, all on the same topic; and then ask them to explain what makes an essay an
essay, regardless of surface structure? Indeed, this is just the kind of scaffold for inferring a
concept that lies at the heart of teaching for understanding: concept attainment and meaningmaking via examples, non-examples, and guided inferences mindful of prior learning
experience (and likely misunderstanding). Not at all the same as discovery learning and hit or
miss projects.
Yes, the research is clear: direct instruction is better than discovery learning when the aim is
brand new unproblematic knowledge and skill and when contrasted with students discovering
for themselves core facts and skills. But this is a very cramped argument. And it simply does not
follow from it that all important learning occurs through direct instruction or that knowledge =
understanding. Indeed, as Plato said 200 years ago, learning for understanding is not what is
proponents often say it is, that is the putting of sight into blind eyes. Rather, it is more like
turning the head from the dark to the light
PS: Rosenshine offers a very different take on the issue that so motivated Clark, Kirschner, and
Sweller, i.e. the link between the practice of experts and the pedagogy that supports developing
expertise. He laments our failure to pursue the pedagogical question of how novices become
experts:
Rosenshine: One very promising area of teaching research has been to compare the knowledge
structures of experts and novices. For example, the experts might be professors of physiology
and the novices might be interns or graduate students. Or the experts could be experienced
lawyers and the novices were first-year lawyers.
What the researchers consistently found was that the experts had more and better constructed
knowledge structures and they had faster access to their background knowledge. These findings
occurred in diverse areas such as in chess, in cardiology, chemistry, and law. They also compared
expert readers with poor readers and found that the expert readers used better strategies when
they were given confusing passages to read.
A lot of expert-novice research was done from the mid-1980s until about 1992, but then it
stopped. I would have hoped they would have gone on to ask questions such as, What sort of
education should novices go through in order to become like experts? and What does creating
expert knowledge mean for classroom instruction?
But, unfortunately, the research was never used to develop an instructional package for training
experts. It was never used to establish instructional goals for classes to teach all children to be
like the experts. Our goal should be to develop experts, and were not doing it.

A postscript to the initial critics of the post. No, I have NOT made a category mistake.
Knowledge is necessary but not sufficient for understanding; understanding is not
a direct function of knowledge. Understanding is the result of a deliberate attempt to make
meaning of and connect ones discrete experiences, effects, as well as knowledge and skill.
Similarly, performance is more than the sum of skill; it requires judgment and strategy. Thats
why there are three types of performance achievement, not two declarative, procedural, and
conditional. Some students (and players), with limited knowledge, have great understanding;
some students (and players) with extensive knowledge and skill have little understanding (as
reflected in questions/tasks that demand transfer). All of us have experienced such contrasts.
You explain them, then. And also please explain the transfer deficit and misconception literature
while youre at it. Then well talk further.

We Need Teachers Who Fail

Andrew 11/21
A social media interaction with a school board trustee clarified for me why we need teachers
who fail. I suggested that we should be encouraging a more innovative culture in our schools.
The trustee snarled Parents dont send their children to school to be experimented on at me.
We need to use proven methods, not just make it up.
His attitude symbolizes a significant contradiction in schools today. We want schools to be world
leaders, and use the latest most effective methods. Simultaneously, we dont want educators to
take chances, to try something new and unproven. However risk and failure are
essential for learning.
We know intuitively that failure is necessary for learning. The first time a child tries to walk, they
fail. After repeated failures they take their first step. Iterative learning is evident in everything
babies do. Through repeated trial and failure they learn how to feed themselves, control their
impulses, communicate and thousands of other tasks.
Eventually we understand that failure means a lack of mastery, and we start to feel shamed and
to hide our failures. Students dont raise their hands in class because theyre afraid of looking
incompetent. The older a child gets, the more they work to hide their failures.
When weve reached adulthood, were supposed to know what were doing. This is especially
true of experts. We dont want incompetent doctors, police officers, politicians, educators or
any of the other important people we rely on. The wrong order at the drive through annoys us,
but an incompetent professional scares us.

This is misguided thinking. Professional expertise is based on understanding, but knowledge is

growing exponentially and its impossible for anyone to keep up. Professionals encounter ways
to better understand and do their work on a daily basis. Because of the explosion of
information we are all in perpetual beta, and thats why the belief that teachers shouldnt fail
needs to end.
Classrooms and schools using the best and newest practices are going to have some failure, and
thats good. Failure is a sign that were taking risks and trying new things. Thats exactly what
schools should be doing, because the downside of staying safe is greater than the cost of a few
failures.
I often challenge myself to take risks in my teaching, and I understand now that my failures are
unpredictable. One time, the new approach I try works perfectly, and I am surprised and feel like
a genius. The next it falls flat and I have to stop everything, apologize to the class and walk us all
back to safer ground.
There was a time when having a lesson fail would have killed my confidence, leaving me with
recriminations and admonitions. That changed when I stopped pretending I knew exactly what I
was doing. When I removed my ego and accepted that I wasnt in charge of the learning process,
but instead just a part of it, teaching became more fun.
Now classes unfold like a mystery novel and Im fascinated to see how they turn out. I see failed
lessons the way skaters see the scars they gained perfecting a new trick. Theyre badges of
honour. A spectacular flop is more exciting than a resounding success, because theres
way more learning in failure.
Ive slowly brought my students into the process. I admit to them Were going to try this, Im
not sure it will work. Lets try, and tell me how it goes. When something doesnt work I admit
to them Wow! That didnt work at all, did it? And we discuss what happened.
Sharing my thinking helps them manage their expectations and understand that the goal isnt
perfection. It also models the importance of taking risks and learning from failure in their own
learning. As their teacher I ask them to take risks in learning all the time, to do things they arent
comfortable with. Shouldnt I also model for them what that taking a risk and sometimes failing
looks like? Shouldnt I show them what it looks like to persevere after a set back? None of that is
possible without risking failure.
If we want our educators and classrooms to be cutting edge, we must welcome failure in our
teaching and learning. Our students deserve the latest, newest ideas to maximize their learning,

and we cant use those methods unless were willing to risk failing. In our fast changing world
things move very fast. The proven, safe ideas, are already out of date.

On the purpose of examinations

Kate 02/25
I have just finished the second round of mid-semester exams in my calculus courses. As I may
have mentioned before, Im teaching two sections of Calculus I using a traditional grading
scheme and one section of Calculus II using standards based grading. Both courses
encountered their tests last week and had them returned with feedback this week.
While grading, I mentioned the following on Twitter:
@katemath: I really prefer a wrong answer with clear, neat, easy-to-follow reasoning than a
right answer after a jumble of unconnected symbols.
Joe Heafner then replied:
@LCTTA Reward the clear reasoning and de-emphasize the "answer.

Since then, Ive spent quite a while thinking about my purpose of giving them exams. I have the
sense that students think the purpose of exams, in way exams are traditionally graded, is to
compile as many points as possible. Here is a common approach:
1. Write something down for every problem, whether or not you know how to do it,
because you might get partial credit points for having at least something right.
2. If you know how to do a problem, do it as quickly as possible; so long as you get the right
answer at the end, there isnt a need to write clearly or keep track of notation or show
your chain of thought. If the answer is 7 then so long as you have 7 on your paper at
the end, youll get full credit.
3. Once the exam is returned, look it over. Ask questions of the form, Why did I lose three
points on this problem?
I really dislike every step of this approach, but I dont think I have ever communicated this well
to my students and I have not been able to reward a change in behavior away from this strategy
when Ive used traditional grading. On the other hand, with standards based grading, Ive tried
to put effort into motivating my students to follow these steps instead:
1. Keep track about what you know how to do and where you still need work. If you
encounter a problem that you arent confident you can solve, dont worry about it until
you have more practice, seek more guidance, or have more time to study that topic.
2. If you know how to do a problem, show all of your work. This is your chance to show off!
Write neatly, explain your reasoning, and demonstrate mastery of the process. Dont fret

if the answer is 7 and you got 8; we are interested in conceptual understanding and
will happily overlook inconsequential arithmetic errors.
3. Once the exam is returned, look it over. Ask questions of the form, I am missing
something conceptual here. Can you help clear it up for me? or I wasnt sure how to
attempt this problem. After I have more time to work on it on my own, can we go over
it together?
I suspect that the two different grading schemes would result in very different types of solutions
for process problems. One such problem on the Calculus I test stated, Use the limit definition
of the derivative to find the derivative of the specified function. I was not very successful at
getting my beginning calculus students to understand that I am more interested in the process
they are using instead of just their final answer. Standards based grading has allowed me to
have conversations during class about the reason we ask these types of problems and what
constitutes a solution versus just an answer.
The purpose of giving exams in my courses is to allow the students the opportunity to
communicate their level of mastery of the course material. Im looking for their ability to
demonstrate conceptual understanding and their fluency with the technical processes needed
in various problem-solving situations.
I think that standards based grading has made it easier for me to explain this to my students. I
dont think my students see exams as an adversarial process where I am judging them or their
abilities. It is my hope they see exams as an opportunity to show what they know, to discover
what they still need to work on, and to give us both a clear picture of where we should go from
here.
Postscript. One issue I need to work on in upcoming courses is motivating students toward
mastery earlier. Some SBG students are a bit behind in showing mastery of the standards, and
while this hasnt been a problem for them yet, I expect they will begin struggling quite a bit very
soon. Now that our course material is building on itself at a swift pace (integration by parts into
improper integrals into the Integral Test for Convergence of Series) I worry that their [lack of]
progress on our integration by parts standard will cause them difficulty keeping up with the
course. My students have been great and I feel like this was my failure at putting together an
accurate timeline of what they should know and when they should know it. I think maybe I
focused too much on you can always improve later that the message but theres no time
like the present, so do it today! was lost.

Critiquing the Common Core on its Merits and Demerits

Geoff 11/25

Criticism of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) has sadly devolved into theater, when it
and schools would benefit from critical analysis. CCSS criticism is all-too-often hyperbolic while
CCSS defense delves in dismissal of concerns or even ridicule. Thats a shame because CCSS
could use a critical eye: one that understands the standards as an educator and is able to
negotiate the good and the bad. A good-faith critique as it were. Thats what I aim to do here as
an educator, a parent, and an instructional coach.
Before we get into it, I suppose I should give a full disclosure of all my work-related comings and
goings, because thats apparently a thing that gets called into question these days: I generally
support Common Core. Im a former math teacher (so I naturally gravitate toward
critiquing CCSS-Math) who became employed in my current position starting with a grant
awarded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to professionally develop teachers toward
CCSS implementation. Im still employed at the same non-profit, but no longer under that or any
grant.
Here are four things I think about CCSS.
1) National standards are basically a good thing, but they do pave the way for massassessment.
The concern about horizontal and vertical alignment is real. Pro-CCSS folks often point to
student mobility from state-to-state as a reason to have nationalized standards, but Im not
even sure you need to go that far. I taught in a district that wasnt aligned from school-toschool. It would have been nice to have a clear playbook of standards that we were all working
from so I knew roughly where kids were (or should be) from day 1.
However, a nationalized set of standards makes it really easy to test and develop tests. While No
Child Left Behind (NCLB) was the genesis of national high-stakes testing, a common set of
standards may well accelerate it. A nationalized set of standards will make it such that an
environment where School X is compared with School Z is inevitable. While Im a big fan of data
generally, that kind of cookie-cutter analysis is troublesome. Even if next generation
assessments are better (as is alleged, whatever it means), the impetus to benchmark students
like crazy will be there.
Its also true that killing the CCSS wont end the over-benchmarking of students via
standardized test. Neither will scrapping NCLB.
2) The standards are generally better than current state standards.
I had a conversation this weekend with a Scientist and kindergarten Teacher. We wound up
talking a bit about Common Core. The Scientist was mentioning that he saw one of those
Facebook posts where the parent shares a confusing worksheet and then it goes viral and then
thats supposed to be evidence that Common Core is dumb. The Scientist, however, said I saw
the worksheet and was like thats how I do arithmetic in my head. The Teacher was a fan of
conceptual understanding, promoted in CCSS in a way that until recently was oft absent in state
standards.

Conceptual understanding of numbers and number-sense is crucial for (among other reasons)
future Algebraic understanding. CCSS attempt to get at that. However, it leaves many parents
even educated parents frustrated. Within the past few weeks Ive had to google Story Mat,
Base 10 Drawings, and bar model which arent even in the Common Core Math standards,
but rather, idiosyncratic terms developed by curriculum publishers to help my daughter with
her math homework, and Im allegedly some sort of math expert. Ill admit its frustrating, and
there will be a gap between those of use that learned procedurally and those that are learning
conceptually. Still, the ability to break apart numbers and recombine them is an essential
mathematical skill.
Moreover, state standards are often kind of a mess. They can be a mish-mash of best-intentions,
over-prescriptive, lengthy, poorly-aligned, and not terribly well thought-out or research-based
standards. Sometimes they look like the worst of things that were invented by committees. I can
primarily speak to the context I taught in (Texas), but Ill say that CCSS-M are fewer, cleaner and
simply better standards than the ones I had to wrestle with. Theres an emphasis on reasoning
and conceptual understanding that wasnt there in the previous generations standards.
Its interesting that Indiana, which opted out of CCSS, has adopted standards that look
conspicuously like CCSS. Its one reason that Im optimistic that even if CCSS becomes so
politically toxic that all states abandon it, it will still have been for the greater good. The folks
actually in charge of standards and standards-writing generally see the good that CCSS has to
offer.
3) Common Core has had an awful rollout strategy and has been accompanied by virtually
non-existent training.
The Teacher in the aforementioned conversation was a fan of Common Core, but did describe
that many of her colleagues were struggling to teach math conceptually rather than
procedurally. Thats 100% understandable given the means of CCSS rollout, which wasnt much
of a rollout at all.
I cant say exactly what the correct rollout would have looked like, but it wouldnt have been
this. Teachers are often left to interpret and teach the new standards on their own. Theres a
gap between how teachers (and you and I) learned (or didnt learn) math and how teachers are
expected to teach. Almost every teacher working today was trained in a decidedly non-CCSS
pedagogical environment.
While thats understandable in any seismic shift in education standards, whats inexcusable is
the lack of time and resources devoted to professionally develop teachers, particularly at the
federal level. Race To The Top (RTTT) is kind of ridiculous as an avenue to professionally develop
teachers: show us that you can demonstrate proficiency in Common Core and then well give
you money to develop teachers to teach using Common Core State Standards.
Whats worse is that many states and districts are tying teacher pay and employment to success
on standardized assessment. And theyre doing it now, instead of after a few years of trial! Ill be

honest, if I knew my employment was tied to my students being successful on a math

assessment, Id probably play it safe and try to push as much algorithmic instruction as
possible as a temporary band-aid rather than try a new avenue of fighting for conceptual
understanding. So there may even be a misalignment between the current instruction and the
current standards.
There have been disparate tools here and there to help teachers out, but no nationalized
training or systemic interpretation. Its been largely grant-based which is, by nature, sporadic
and not systemic. Pro-CCSS folks like to chortle at the vitriol directed toward Bill Gates for
awarding CCSS-related grants, but grants as a mechanism to drive systemic and ubiquitous
change is a sketchy proposition.
But once again, my optimism shines through: now that math education programs and teacher
training programs actually have standards (good ones!), theyll hopefully start being able to
prepare teachers properly. There will certainly be a lag time.
4) There are legit concerns about the appropriateness of grade-specific domains
Im uncomfortable suggesting that Every student should know how to do X by the end of first
grade. Kids do come in at very different levels. Whats confusing about CCSS (Math) is that after
Grade 8, they do away with grade-specific standards and give general domains such as High
School: Interpreting Functions and High School: Number and Quantity. Its as if after 8th
grade, suddenly students and schools have the agency to figure it out on their own.
I appreciate having those benchmarks of what students should know by the end of each
grade. However, the consequences of students not being able to demonstrate proficiency on
those standards particularly in the early grades can be disruptive. And while Pro-CCSS folks
would argue that we need to separate the standards from the assessments of those standards,
the assessments and consequences are a natural outcrop of nationalized standards. One
naturally follows the other. And Ive no idea how to alleviate those consequences. Districts,
States, and the DOE will not simply afford more resources to schools with students that fail to
meet those standards. Theyll shut them down. Common Core State Standards is part of a
system that potentially greases the skids for school closures and community disruption. These
disruptions are essentially mandated in NCLB as federal law, before the CCSS existed. My fear is
that CCSS will be used as the tool that NCLB uses to disrupt communities.
Its also not fair to pin blame on the standards themselves. The goal was to develop a set of
national, easy-to-follow, research-based, appropriate standards that would ensure students
would build toward conceptual understanding of mathematics and problem solving, and I
believe they achieved that goal.
===
Im not terribly optimistic about the long-term sustainability of CCSS as a national set of
standards. Steve Leinwand once said that if Common Core becomes political, its dead in the
water. Its certainly political now (even if it doesnt really move the needle electorally). I am

optimistic that the folks in charge of evaluating and writing standards, such as those in State
Departments of Education, have tended to see the importance of conceptual understanding,
among other things.
Im hopeful that 10 years from now either A) my concerns and the concerns of others will have
been addressed or B) the residual of the failed-implementation of CCSS remains embedded in
state-level standards. Either way, its about time we have a conversation about Common Core
that is based in actual teacher input and student outcomes.
(Im happy with comments on this post with the intention of continuing conversation. But cmon,
hysterical comments have no chance of getting published.)
===
Thanks to Christopher, Tracy, and Mike for their feedback on this post.

Its not how big your class is, its what you do with it
Paul 03/09
Big news over the last couple of weeks--besides the nascent testing rebellion going on in CPS
and other districts--has been the publication of Diane Schanzenbach's paper, "Does Class Size
Matter?" by the National Education Policy Center. Among this paper's key findings:
Old studies claiming zero or negative correlations between small classes and
achievement relied on faulty meta-analysis of published data.
The STAR experiment in Tennessee, which was a randomized trial, showed a 0.15-0.20
standard deviation gain from assignment to classes of 13-17 rather than 22-25, with higher gains
in African-American and low-income subgroups.
Teachers of smaller classes are able to (and, in the STAR case, did) use a variety of
individualizing strategies, including tracking individual achievement, differentiating instruction,
and making personal connections with students.
Contrary to popular belief, these effects were larger with more experienced teachers.
Although the STAR study is the most comprehensive randomized study in the US, its
findings are backed by other studies that managed to control for other variables in the process.
These findings are summarized as simply "All else being equal, increasing class sizes will
harm student outcomes."

But I'm still a skeptic, mostly because of the phrase "all else being equal." In particular:
The STAR gain of 0.15 sd requires reducing classes to about half of what they currently
are in Chicago, which would require--roughly--doubling the number of teachers. CPS currently
has 22,000 teachers, and it's hard for me to imagine that the district would be able to shazam up
anywhere near 22,000 additional teachers without dredging the bottom of the applicant
pool. But would these new, bottom-of-the-pool teachers actually improve outcomes?
The reason why you have to get down to 13-17 students per class to see the payoff is
that once the denominator of an expression is large, reducing it a little doesn't increase the
quotient very much. For example, if a class lasts 50 minutes and has 30 students, each student
gets at most 1 minute and 40 seconds of "air time" or attention. If the same class has only 25
students, each student gains 20 seconds of "air time" or attention--which isn't very much. So in
the real world of the class size reductions that are plausible in the short term, you're not going
to see much payoff.

 The main pedagogical advantages the small-class-size teachers had over the regularclass-size teachers in the STAR survey were all things all teachers should be doing
anyway: monitoring what individual students are doing and learning, giving students second or
third opportunities to learn material they didn't get the first time, and making
personal/emotional connections with their students. It's easier to do those things in smaller
classes, sure, but they're hardly small-class-only techniques. In fact, studies have shown that
weaker teachers placed in small classes take no more advantage of these techniques than they
did in larger classes. So the STAR study suggests that teachers who are using these techniques
move further than teachers who don't, which I kind of feel like we already knew.
In a world of finite resources, smaller classes are a trade-off. In the US, we trade smaller
classes than teachers get in other countries for more of them: the standard load is five classes
of 28-30 students (in Chicago) or 40-odd students (in much of California). So obviously it's
better to have five classes of 17 students than five classes of 28 or 40 (for one thing, you have
many fewer students to keep track of). But what if you traded back, having three classes of 45
or so students instead of five classes of 25? You'd get an additional two prep periods a day to
plan, conference with other teachers, and analyze (grade + reflect on) assessments. That time
would allow you to better pace the next day's lesson--which you could plan that day, rather than
having to do a week's worth on Sunday just to be able to keep up during the week--and to learn
more about teaching. And you wouldn't have to stay up until midnight to do that. The situation
I'm describing is pretty close to what they have in China: two sections of 50 students, with most
of the day devoted to planning and preparation.1
Back to the issue of air time: how would getting an additional ten or twenty seconds of
verbal feedback each day compare to getting written feedback on individual work every single
day, which is what many Chinese classes offer?
Another trade-off we make is teacher quality. Just as hiring 22,000 teachers would
reduce quality, it seems reasonable that if we were willing to live with much larger classes, we
might be able to increase overall teacher quality. That's what Finland did when they first started
turning their educational system around (although now class sizes are back down to about 20,
which is the stated average in CPS elementary schools, as a concession to eliminating class
tracking).

So what's the moral? Better teaching clearly produces better outcomes. Smaller class sizes
have costs. (At a district average of about $80-100K per teacher, even just an extra 10,000
teachers runs to about a billion dollars annually, which seems like a lot to pay for a five
percentile point gain on tests.) Expanding class sizes without increasing total student
loads might have substantial benefits to teachers and students: increasing opportunities to work
together and to plan and assess better and more frequently, with more and more individualized
feedback. Why are we talking about keeping "all other things equal" when they so rarely are?
Because veteran teachers know: it's not just how big your class is; it's what you do with it that
matters.
--------------------1. "But China and Finland are so much more homogeneous, it's easier to teach big classes of
those students!" I hear you cry. Well, in the eight-county Chicago area, more than 50% of
African-American students are in classes that are over 95% African-American, and over 25% of
Latino students are in similarly segregated schools. (WBEZ) So while the CPS system is much
more diverse than China's or Finland's, it's not obvious that its classrooms are.

Immediate Feedback Is Too Soon For Feedback

Michael 04/28
(Blogging between classes here, so I've set myself a 7 minute time limit on writing this post.
Apologies if it shows!)
(The obvious questions is, can't the post wait? That's a good question.)
What makes for good feedback on a quiz?
The most common answer around the internet is that it all has to do with timing. Immediate,
personal feedback is the best, and we should take steps to shrink the amount of time between
an assessment and our input. I totally subscribed to this approach for a few years. Franks
brilliant made it possible for me to pull this off in my classes.
Lately, I've been questioning the assumption that the best feedback is immediate. For one,
there's a sort of emotional investment that a kid has with a quiz right after they've finished it. A
lot of the kids who checked their quizzes right after they finished had this sort of "I got this
wrong? WHY?????" reaction that I didn't love.
I also suspect that there are learning benefits to delaying the feedback on a task a day or two.
Delayed exposure to ideas, and all that.
And the other thing is that, realistically, the only way to pull this off is for kids to be all on their
own with an answer key. Maybe you guys are better at making answer keys than I am, but I
wasn't sure how much my kids were getting out of them. What they really wanted was a
conversation about the problems, but I couldn't give the kids that conversation because their
classmates were still taking the quiz.
(Actually, I'm sure you guys are better at making answer keys than I am because I always end up
hastily scribbling them on my way down to the photocopier machine.)
(I've just blown past my 7 minute deadline. We're up to 11 minutes now. Oh dear.)
In short, I wanted to give my kids feedback with a little bit of a delay, but not too long of a delay.
I wanted kids to be able to reflect on their own work, but I wanted it to be social.
Here's what I do now:
1.
Kids take quizzes on Friday.
2.
I collect them, photocopy them, take notes and make grades. Digitally scan
them for reference.
3.
Kids get back their originals on Monday with no notes on them from me. They
get back what they handed in.
4.
They get into groups, go over their quizzes together, iron out any differences or
disagreements. I always make my quizzes a little bit on the long side, so there's usually a
question or two they didn't get to on Friday that they can work on if they finish.
5.
I have notes about areas of concern. I check in on kids who I had flagged for a
conversation. I ask groups questions if there's a disagreement that they're not seeing
yet. I'll ask the whole class questions if there are problems with widespread errors.
And the only part of this that I lied about is the part about giving grades, since I'm currently
teaching at a school that doesn't give grades. But that's how I would've graded them, if I had to.

It's entirely possible that this system wouldn't work in a place where grades were given, like
where I'd been teaching before this year. Kids would probably go nuts not knowing what their
grades were. I'm optimistic that, with enough time, I could have convinced them that this way
was better, but dunno.
If you try this, let me know how it goes!
(Clocking in at 19 minutes. Gah!)

STORIES

Is There Room for Math That Isnt That Hard?

Kaissa 12/16

I want to share a question with you that has been clanking around my brain for a while. At first I
wasnt even sure if I wanted or was even allowed to share and write about this question, but
its one I keep coming back to. Its a question that makes me feel somewhat vulnerable. And its
one Id love to hear your thoughts about, so please feel free to leave a comment even if, like me,
your ideas around this question arent fully developed either.
Is there room for math that isnt hard?
One reason I wasnt sure I wanted to write about this topic is because I really believe in teaching
students to work hard to figure out mathematical ideas. I believe that math can be challenging
and also enjoyable. I teach teachers and students that doing challenging work is what helps us
construct new understanding. I really believe in the power of the make sense of problems and
persevere in solving them (CCSS.Math.Practice.MP1) I believe that much of math learning will
occur in this way. And yet, I keep coming back to this question. Should all math be rigorous?
Should we persevere through all tasks? Or is there a room for something else too?

When imagining strong math communities, I like to consider analogies to literacy communities.
In reading workshops, teachers spend time a good amount of time engaging children in readalouds in which a primary purpose is learning to love books and enjoy reading. As a kindergarten
teacher I often read Mo Willems Piggie and Elephant books not because they were rigorous, but
because its fun to read the speech bubbles using the voices we imagine Piggie and Elephant
would use. We lingered to laugh for a few moments on the page of David Shannons No
David that shows Davids naked bottom as he runs down the street naked. In reading workshops
book browsing is encouraged. Children squirrel away Lego encyclopedias in their book boxes to
pore over with friends. They linger over photographs of animals and come up with their own
wonderings like, Why are reptiles bumpy? Why do pigs have curly tails?
In reading workshop, children should not spend the majority of their independent reading time
engaged in books that are difficult for them. Richard Allingtons research indicates that children
should be spending the great majority of their reading time engaged in books at their
independent level, books they understand and can read accurately. Children need to read and
re-read. (This is one quick Allington article, but his work on the topic is much more extensive
than this.)
So, Im wondering, is there a math equivalent of this? If children subsist on a diet that consists
only of difficult math, will they learn to enjoy it? Will they learn to pursue it beyond the walls of
the classroom? I say that with the huge caveat that I believe challenging and difficult math can
be engaging and fun. But I also believe there is space for math that is not terribly difficult, but is
very enjoyable.
Strategy games (like Rush Hour, for example) can be extremely challenging. While
playing Railroad Rush Hour recently, 5th grader Kevin told me, Im only on the first challenge.
And its already hard. I cant do it. He stuck with it though, and figured it out. Kevin moved on
to other Rush Hour challenge cards, but a few days later I noticed he was working on that first
card again.
Kevin, didnt you do that one the other day I asked.

Yes, replied Kevin matter-of-factly. But I like to go back to ones Ive already done and think
about it again. Its fun.
Was what Kevin was doing the problem solving equivalent of re-reading a favorite book?

This weekend I spent some time at the grocery store with my daughter watching an employee
make a giant batch of guacamole. I watched with fascination. I wonder how many avocados are
in that bowl. How many containers of guacamole will that make? I considered a few ideas in my
mind. How much space would ten avocados take up? So, how many groups of ten avocados? I
engaged lightly and playfully with the idea. The avocados offered an invitation, rather than a
specific task to complete.
I held my almost-two-year-old up to see the giant batch of guacamole. How many avocados are
in there, Lulu? (She loves avocados!)
One and one and one and one! (Thats what her counting sounds like now.) Dos! (That
means any quantity more than one in her world.)
It wasnt hard. For me or for Lulu. But it was kind of fun to think about. I love looking for math in
my life. I hope to inspire that in her and the teachers and students with whom I work. I hope to
offer invitations to engage in mathematics. Sometimes in difficult mathematics and sometimes
in something less serious.
So, is there space for this in our classrooms? Time for engaging, but not terribly difficult math?
What other opportunities do children have to just wonder about math? To browse math? To
engage in math play? To relax into math, the way one relaxes into a book. Is this important? Is
this a thing in math? Is it something professional mathematicians do? Is it something everyone
does as they wonder about their world?
Id love to hear your thoughts.
~Kassia

Numberless Word Problems

Brian 10/06
They just add all the numbers. It doesnt matter what the problem says.
This is what a third grade teacher told my co-worker while she was visiting her classroom as an
instructional coach. She didnt really believe that the kids would do that, so she had the class
come sit on the carpet and gave them a word problem. Sure enough, kids immediately pulled
numbers out of the problem and started adding.
She thought to herself, Oh no. I have to do something to get these kids to think about the
situation.
She brainstormed for a few moments, opened up Powerpoint, and typed the following:
Some girls entered a school art competition. Fewer boys than girls entered the competition.
She projected her screen and asked, What math do you see in this problem?
Pregnant pause.
There isnt any math. There arent any numbers.
She smiles. Sure theres math here. Read it again and think about it.
Finally a kid exclaims, Oh! There are some girls. That means its an amount!
And there were some boys, too. Fewer boys than girls, another child adds.
What do you think fewer boys than girls means? she asks.
There were less boys than girls, one of the students responds.
Ok, so what do we know already?
There were some girls and boys, and the number of boys is less than the number of girls.
Look at that, she points out, All that math reasoning and there arent even any numbers in
the problem. How many boys and girls could have entered into the competition?
At this point the students start tossing out estimates, but the best part is that their estimates
are based on the mathematical relationship in the problem. If a student suggested 50 girls, then
the class knew the number of boys had to be an amount less than 50. If a student suggested 25
girls, then the number of boys drops to an amount less than 25.
When it seems like the students are ready, she makes a new slide that says:
135 girls entered a school art competition. Fewer boys than girls entered the competition.
Acting very curious, she asks, Hmm, does this change what we know at all?
A student points out, We know how many girls there are now. 135 girls were in the
competition.
So what does that tell us?
Another student responds, Now that we know how many girls there are, we know that the
number of boys is less than 135.
This is where the class starts a lively debate about how many boys there could be. At first the
class thinks it could be any number from 0 up to 134. But then some students start saying that it

cant be 0 because that would mean no boys entered the competition. Since it says fewer boys
than girls, they take that to mean that at least 1 boy entered the competition. This is when
another student points out that actually the number needs to be at least 2 because it says boys
and that is a plural noun.
Stop for a moment. Look at all this great conversation and math reasoning from a class that
moments before was mindlessly adding all the numbers they could find in a word problem?
Once the class finishes their debate about the possible range for the number of boys, my coworker shows them a slide that says:
135 girls entered a school art competition. Fifteen fewer boys than girls entered the
competition.
What new information do you see? How does it change your understanding of the situation?
Now we know something about the boys, one of the students replies.
Yeah, we know there are 15 boys, says another.
No, there are 15 fewer, not 15.
Another debate begins. Some students see 15 and immediately go blind regarding the word
fewer. It takes some back and forth for the students to convince each other that 15 fewer
means that the number of boys is not actually 15 but a number that is 15 less than the number
of girls, 135.
To throw a final wrench in to the discussion, she asks, So what question could I ask you about
this situation?
To give you a heads up, after presenting to this one class she ended up repeating this experience
in numerous classrooms across our district. After sharing it with hundreds of students, only one
student out of all of them ever guessed the question she actually asked.
Do you think you know what it is? Can you guess what the students thought it would be?
Ill give you a moment, just in case.
So all but one student across the district guessed, How many boys entered the art
competition?
That of course is the obvious question, so instead she asked, How many children entered the
art competition?
Young minds, completely blown.
At first there were cries of her being unfair, but then they quickly got back on track figuring out
the answer using their thorough understanding of the situation.
And that is how my co-worker got our district to start using what she dubbed Numberless Word
Problems a scaffolded approach to presenting word problems that gets kids thinking before
they ever have numbers or a question to act on.
Recently we shared this strategy with our district interventionists and several of them went off
and tried it that week. They wrote back sharing stories of how excited and engaged their
students were in solving problems that would have seemed too difficult otherwise. This seems

like a great activity structure for struggling students because it starts off in a nonthreatening
way no numbers, how bout that? and lets them build confidence before they ever have to
solve anything.
Do I think that every word problem should be presented this way? No. But I do think this is a
great way to prompt rich discussion and get students to notice and grapple with the
relationships in problem situations and to observe how the language helps us understand those
relationships. To me this is a scaffold that can help get students to attend to information and
language. As many teachers like to say, standardized tests are as much reading tests as they are
math tests.
Perhaps you can use this activity structure when students are seeing a new problem type for the
first time and then fade away from using it over time. Or maybe you have students who have
been doing great understanding word problems, but lately theyre rushing through them and
making careless errors. This might be an opportunity to use this structure to slow them down
and get them thinking again.
Either way, if you do try this out, Id love to hear how it went.
===

Procedure in the Drivers Seat

Megan 10/9
Im fired up today. Im going to quasi-vent on my blog, and hopefully I will not offend too many
people in the process. Youve been warned.
When I walk into another teachers room and all of the students are silently working
individually, I get sad. Forget the monotonous drudgery of textbook procedural
homework. When students dont talk to one another about mathematics, they most likely are
not experiencing math as richly as they could if they were working together.
I had two separate and seemingly unrelated incidents today that frustrated me extensively so
Im hoping that the online community can give me some perspective in these areas.
First, Algebra 2. Solving equations. We were doing some practice on the whiteboards. We
havent talked explicitly about solving quadratic equations but I wanted to do a little
experiment.
Me: Solve x^2 + 1 = 37. [writing on the board]
Class: [Crickets]
A few were able to work to a solution, but it was the same students that I would have expected
to do so regardless of how the question was presented.
Me: Ok, lets try this a different way. I think of a number. I square it, then I add 2. My result is
27. What number was I thinking of?
Every single kid in the room was able to arrive and understand that the answer was 5. Some did
this very quickly. Maybe youre thinking well, they didnt know that -5 was also an
answer. News Flash! None of the kids remember that. None. They know the procedures
they used before: quadratic formula, factoring, taking the square root, completing the
square. But they have no idea why, they have no connection for what x really means and they
have no conceptual understanding of a quadratic equation.
Christopher Danielson said it so beautifully yesterday:

THE STEPS WIN, PEOPLE! The steps trump thinking. The steps trump number sense. The steps
triumph over all.
Heres a second example, equally as frustrating. Im helping a student get caught up on his
algebra assignments for another teachers class. I dont teach this class, and I like this kid, so I
dont mind helping him at all.
So systems of linear equations. 8x + 9y = 15 and 5x 2y = 17 (or some bologna like that.)
Kid: I dont get this, I mean, what is x? II know I can substitute numbers for it and get y, but
what does it connect to?
Me: Read this word problem: You work two jobs. One you make $6/hr and the other
$8/her. Last week you worked 14 hours and made $96. How long did you work at each job?
Kid: [3 minutes and an ounce of brain-sweat later] 8 at the first job, 6 at the second.
Seriously, to see this kid mentally crunch these numbers was magical. To him, that was common
sense. To another kid, it might be a table. To a third, trial and improvement. Why cant most
kids do that? Because we (you) insist that they set up a system of linear equations every single
time. And because the title of the section in the book is 3.1 Solving Systems of Linear
Equations. And then we focus on the steps and the methods. Substitution. Linear combination.
Elimination. Graphing. And then a year later, those are just fancy terms that math teachers use
to make easy things difficult.
Procedural fluency is important, but it must be built on a foundation of conceptual
understanding. The procedure should never lead the discussion, and in most high school math
classrooms, it unfortunately is.

===

You just listened, so then I could figure it out

Tracey 09/17
My daughters and I climbed in the car to go shoe shopping before their first day of school. I sat
in the drivers seat while they buckled themselves into their car seats, and noticed I was keeping
track of the loud clicks I heard for each buckle. I took the opportunity to open a math
conversation with my kids.
I didnt look, but I know youre all buckled. How could I know that?
Daphne, age 5, said, You looked in the mirror!
I did not look in the mirror!
Maya, age 7, said, You must have counted the clicks! So, you heard 6 clicks and knew we were
all buckled.
I asked, How would 6 clicks tell me youre both buckled?
Maya answered, Because each car seat has 3 buckles, and 3 times 2 is 6.
Daphne started to cry. Thats what I was going to say!
I turned to Daphne. Tell me where the 6 comes from, in your own words.
Daphne said, Each car seat has 3 buckles, and 3 plus 3 is 6.
Ah! There was my first opening.
Maya, you said 3 times 2 is 6. And Daphne, you said 3 plus 3 is 6. Can those both be true? They
sound different.

Maya and I played with this idea for a few minutes, but I could see in the mirror that we were
losing Daphne. When Maya and I were done, I asked a question just for Daphne.
Daphne, what if we had 3 car seats? How many clicks would I hear then?
There was a long pause while she thought, Maya waited, and I drove.
Nine!
How did you figure that out?
Well, I remembered the 6, and then I said 7, 8, 9.
Maya gasped. Daphne, youre counting on again!
Daphne beamed, and said, I know!
We were all excited because Daphne had counted on for the very first time that morning, when
we were baking popovers. I asked, laughing, Since when are you counting on? How did you
learn that?
Daphne said, Well, you gave me a lot of time to think. You didnt say anything, and you didnt
tell me what to do. You just listened, so then I could figure it out for myself.
My jaw dropped. For the rest of the car ride, Daphne talked about how school should be filled
with lots of time when the teacher doesnt say anything and lets the kids think, because thats
how we can learn. The teacher can just listen. There was so much wisdom in what she was
saying that I asked her if we could make a quick video once I parked the car.
Daphne knows what she needs to learn math: time and something tricky to figure out.
Do you like when a problem is tricky?
She nodded.
How come?
Because then I get some time to THINK, and I LEARN something.
I am a teacher, and I also coach other teachers. How many times have we all talked about think
time, and how important it is? But, heres the truth: about halfway during the time Daphne was
thinking about the fourth car seat, I got a little nervous. I tried to keep my face encouraging on
the outside, but on the inside, I heard a tiny voice:
Uh oh. Maybe this problem is too hard.
Should I help her?
What would be a good question to help her?
While I was secretly worrying, Daphne was calmly figuring out how many clicks four car seats
would make. To a teacher who makes decisions every few seconds, 20 seconds of think time
which is what Daphne took to solve this problemfeels like an eternity. New teachers, in
particular, tend to break silences after a second or two with some kind of help. With practice,
Ive learned how valuable think time is, and I now sustain those long silences. But internally, I
still find it hard to quiet that worried voice.

Later that night, after we watched the video together, I asked Daphne about the reason she
gave for why counting on is challenging. Shed said, You have to remember while talking about
something else.
What did you mean by that, Daph?
Well, you have to remember a whole bunch of things. Like, I had to remember the six, because
thats where I started. And I had to remember the three, because I had to stop after three. And I
was counting at the same time. Its a lot to remember!
It sure is. Can I tell you something? While you were doing all that, I was wondering if I should
help you.
She looked shocked. But I didnt need help, Mommy! I was just thinking!
What would have happened if I had said something while you were remembering where to
start and where to stop while you were counting?
I would have forgotten what I was doing and had to start all over again! That wouldnt have
helped at all, Mommy! That would have been so frustrating!
You know, Daphne, youre making me a better teacher. Youre teaching me, again, that
sometimes when teachers want to help a student, were actually not helping at all. Sometimes
we just need to be quiet. And we need to be comfortable with silence.
Yeah. So kids can think!
Yeah.
We were quiet for a minute together, each thinking.
Mommy, can you tell other teachers that too? Tell them what I taught you? To not interrupt us
when were thinking, and just listen while we figure it out?
Yes, honey, I think I can.
===
Stalkers and Dreamers
Elizabeth 03/16
I've talked about this before: there are those who learn by stalking step by step, one day at a
time, one skill at a time, little by little. And then there are dreamers: those of us who try and fail,
try and fail, try and fail. Carlos Castaeda makes this distinction between stalkers and dreamers,
and it has been a useful distinction for me from the moment I encountered it.
I am a dreamer. I first became aware of this learning pattern when I was about five and learning
to ride on two wheels. My dad removed the training wheels from my little red bike and I would
practice.
I practiced riding day after day for weeks.
And day after day, for weeks on end, I would fail.
I fell everywhere on the sidewalk in front of our house, in the driveway, on our block at lowtraffic times.

I fell on smooth pavement, on concrete, any time I encountered gravel.

I was frustrated and pretty scuffed up. But in my mind's eye at night, I could imagine riding
perfectly.
When I dreamed, I could feel myself rolling smoothly and swiftly on two wheels. In my dream
life, I was a person who could ride on two wheels, and I could do so successfully anywhere.
A little less so in my waking life.
I skidded, slid, or toppled over after only a few feet. I still remember how it felt to fall at
different moments and on different surfaces. I have a vivid and complete felt sense memory of
rolling onto a patch of gravel and sliding to the ground at the intersection of Lenox Road
and Hershey. I distinctly remember the feeling of gravel biting into the skin of my knee.
I must have wanted it bad to keep on trying.
Then one day, it just happened.
I had steeled myself yet again for the failure that had become my 'normal,' and I readied myself
for more cuts and bruises and wounded ego.
But I didn't fall over.
I was so excited I parked my bike and the garage and rushed inside to tell my mother what had
happened. It was the most exhilarating thing I could imagine at the time.
Still, though, I assumed it was a fluke. I continued to prepare myself for further failure.
But then it happened again. And again. And again.
The story of the larva that becomes a butterfly had taken hold of my life. Even after you emerge
from the transformation, it takes a while for your awareness to catch up with your changed
reality. It took several days before I realized I had stepped into a new normal.
I'd been afraid to hope.
Nowadays I wonder how my students experience transformation from people who believe they
can't do math into people who understand that they can. It's hard to trust transformation. As
A.H. Almaas says, you've been a larva crawling around all your life, and you believe that the
best you can hope for is to crawl faster and to become a bigger, fatter, happier, more successful
larva. You see butterflies flying around and you classify them as anomalies. Most of us never
automatically think, gee, that's where *I'm* headed too. Most people think, "Wow those are
really interesting beings. I wonder where they come from. I wonder what it would feel like to be
one of those."
In math, as in learning to ride a bicycle, it never occurred to me that I could take what I know
from other areas of my life to help myself become one of those magical creatures who can ride
a bicycle or do math. I did not know it was my birthright to be good and successful at
those things. I thought I was destined to remain an earthbound larva.

For a lot of us, it's not enough to say, if you can't do these problems fluently after this
investigation, then that means you need to seek out more practice. I needed both experience or
discovery and also practice. I needed opportunities for practice and maybe a choice of
activities that allowed me to seek out the practice I needed while others were ready for more
discovery. Maybe this takes the form of a branching of activities a practice table and an
extensions table, for example. All I know is that students need support and opportunities to selfdiagnose and to seek out the experiences they need in that moment. Stalkers need space to
stalk further while dreamers need space and time to practice and fall down a lot more.
There is a mystical part of this process that cannot be discounted.
At times when I feel discouraged about my teaching practice, I have to remind myself about all
of this. I feel like I am trying and failing, trying and failing, trying and failing. I have a lot of
psychic gravel chewing through the skin on my psychic knees from falling down. I have to
remind myself that this is my process.

Wrong But Not Stupid or, How to Call Out Mistakes without
Trampling the Mistaken
Ben 11/05
It was the end of our first day on limitsa deep and slippery concept, the engine of calculus
when Melanie exclaimed, Wait. Shouldnt that limit be 4, not 6?

Nopeit was 6. Melanies error suggested that shed missed the lessons most basic truth, an
idea that the class had spent the day paraphrasing, analyzing, and shouting in chorus. Talking
one-on-one, I could have coached her through the misconception. But hers was a public
declaration, in front of the whole room.

Even before the words had left Melanies mouth, I could hear the groan welling up among the
students, murmured ridicule and the slapping of foreheads soon to follow. They all knew it. She
didnt. From Melanies blushing, you could read her self-esteem falling like a mercury
thermometer.

And so I found myself confronting one of the teachers daily puzzles: what do you say when a
student is wrong?
In the classroomand beyond itdealing with mistakes is delicate and crucial territory. At one
extreme, we can deride errors, ridicule them, chase them out of town with a pitchforkto the
dismay of the poor kids who were trying their best.

At the other extreme, we risk coddling wrong statements, embracing them as perspectives,
waiting in vain for the mistaken to see the light, and in the meantime allowing confusion to
reign.

Its no easy balance to strike, exposing falsehoods without steamrolling egos. To solve the
predicament means tackling a deeper issue: what kind of dialogue, exactly, are we having?
Which is primary: ideas, or the people voicing them?
Most of our daily conversations are centered on people. Consider the meandering path of
dinner table chatter. It drifts from topic to topic, following tangents, pursuing loose connections.
Questions are posed and never answered. Thoughts dissipate, half-articulated. A conversation,
after all, is about sharing each others company. Its a meal, not an interrogation.
Academic discussions differ. Were hashing out ideas, each person pitching in to advance the
conversation, not necessarily tabulating whose insight is whose. I say A; you say B; and we both
think of C simultaneously. Itd be counterproductive to insist that your ideas deserve special
status simply because theyre yours. The truth is indifferent to its speakers. Reason doesnt
notice who gives it voice.
In an academic dialogue, ideas ought to matter more than egos.

The challenge for teachers is that were having both conversations at once. Our students matter
as peoplewe care about their thoughts, their feelings, their ambitions and fears. But ideas
matter, toowe want to spread truth, to help our students master bodies of fact that past
generations have painstakingly uncovered (and that textbook authors have clumsily compiled).
So how do we address wrong ideas, without trampling the people who espouse them? Here are
four time-tested techniques that Ive stolen from teachers far nimbler than I.

Thats exactly the mistake I made when I first learned this material. Or: Thats a tricky point.
In last years class, more than half of them made that error on the quiz. Or the simplest: Thats
a really natural mistake to make.

It sounds like youre generalizing from the pattern we saw earlier. But Im not so sure those
same results will apply here. Even the most egregious mistakes have their roots in some
identifiable thought process, and tracing that process helps students recognize that

their ideas are not them. A train of thought can derail, and it doesnt make the thinker any less
worthy or intelligent.

Hmm go ahead and check that calculation again, then get back to me. Private mistakes sting
far less than public failures.

Remember, mistakes are the essence of learning. When someone commits an error, we
respectfully help them understand it, so that everybody can learn from it. At its best,
conversation is a beautiful thingcollaborative thinking, a shared brain. But students need to be
taught the rules of the game.
With proper preparation, a class will rarely respond with the hostility they showed Melanie that
day. But sometimes even a friendly pack can turn on one of its own.
Im glad you brought that up, Melanie, I shouted over the groans. It goes to show how
tricky this transition is. Youve all spent the last three years approaching graphs one way. This
new perspective is the conceptual core of calculus, and the mental shift will take some time.
The groans faded. Melanie nodded.

Mulling Things Over

Sam 03/05
Tonight at school we had our inductions into Cum Laude (like national honor society) and Mu
Alpha Theta (the math honors society). And our guest speaker gave a rousing speech about his
life, and how its okay to have fear, but the biggest hurdle to doing something significant with
your life is accepting the fear and moving on in spite of it. Accept it, own it, be afraid, and then
still forge forward.
At the end, he said something powerful. The first thing one needs to do to when leading a
purposeful life is to say what it is that you want to do. Articulate it aloud. And that is scary.

Making it public so you can hear yourself say it, but also so someone else can hear you say it. So
it becomes real instead of this thing that bounces around in your head but never gets out. And
so at the end, he told everyone to be quiet, and he was going to say something he wanted to do,
and then afterwards there should be silence and when anyone else wanted to say something
they wanted to do something they would declare out loud they should stand up and say it,
and then remain standing. This was an open invitation to the students in these honors societies,
but also to the parents and teachers there as well.
The speaker said: I want to change the world.
Silence.
A little more silence where everyone looked around and felt uncomfortable.
Then a student one courageous student got up and said something. And remained
standing.
And then another. And another.
The head of the upper school said something. Then more students. Then a parent. Then me.
Then another math teacher. Then more students.
At the end, every student made a declaration, and a few adults too. It is scary. But it also
showed me how much courage our kids have. Their declarations ranged from showing others
that girls can do math and science to spreading love to making people laugh to promoting
peace to inventing something to becoming a biochemist to making a mark on the world. Big
things and small things, lofty things and concrete things, but all things that share with the room
a sense of self and a sense of purpose.
I loved watching this.
I also loved and hated how hard it was for me to come up with my thing. My purpose in life. I
said:
I want to make it so that kids see math as an artistic and creative endeavor.
And I meant it. Because you know what has been bouncing around in my head that I have been
having trouble articulating? I am now pretty good at coming up with deep and conceptual
approaches to mathematical ideas. And Im okay at promoting mathematical communication.
And Im transitioning to having kids do groupwork all the time, to learn from each other so I
am not the sole mathematical authority in the room.
But all of that said: I dont think I teach math in a way to shows how it is an art form, how
deeply creativity and mathematics are intertwined. And I know that this is one of my charges
as a teacher moving forward. Its going to be an uphill challenge, and one that will likely take me
many years to wrap my head around. The hurdles are significant. Having a set non-problemsolving-based curriculum which doesnt allow time for much mathematical play, nor for the
inclusion of rich problems with multiple entry points, is the largest hurdle. But there must be
ways activities or units here and there that can illuminate the artistry and creativity of
doing and discovering mathematics. And I want to be involved in finding ways for this to

happen. Yes, this happens at math circles. Yes, this happens at math clubs. Yes, this happens at
summer math programs. Thats where the love and excitement and understanding of
the beauty of mathematics unfolds for many students. But I want to find a way for this to
happen in a normal classroom, with normal students, with the normal constraints. That (one of)
my purposes.

Thank you to all who posted about education

in 2014. Im looking forward to continuing the
grass-roots efforts to improve outcomes for
students in 2015.
Geoff