Evolution of a Lesson Progression Protocol - 1. Introduction

It all started nine years ago in Rocklin, CA. My goal was to make math more meaningful and relevant for my middle school students while also building an argument to get my first smart phone. Since that year, I have been playing with lesson plan/progression design. Below is a graphic I created to show the things I have been playing with and how they relate to each other.

CLICK HERE to access slide deck

My Why Part 1: Real Life Math Problem Solving
I started playing with lesson design back in 2010 as a middle school math teacher. It was the very beginning of CCSS and we had PLC Modays which means the students went home early so our teacher teams could collaborate over data once a week. With this shortened day, I create Real Life Math primitive HyperDocs CLICK HERE to see the first one I created.

I wanted to take some of the math topics we were studying at the time and combine them with the weekend activities of my family so my students could see some connections (yes they were contrived!) After that first one, I created a new one every weekend the rest of the school year. CLICK HERE for the rest of them.

THIS is one of my favorites from our parent math day when parents came to school with their students during their math period and they did math together. At the time I did not realize I was mashing my own lesson design protocol that would change my teaching forever.

The birth of the K. Beck protocol above (2nd column):

1. SPARK interest by sharing pictures of our family weekend mundane activities
2. CHALLENGE/INFORM the students to create math problems based on the information I provided
3. EXPLAIN the students solve the problems and explain/share their thinking and work collaboratively
4. APPLY students apply what they know about the topics we are studying to create the questions and solve them and show proof of understanding.
5. REFLECT unfortunately I was the only one reflecting which drove future planning and creating.

I was influenced by many educators I had begun following on Twitter: Dan Meyer @dydan, Scott Ferrand @scott_ferrand, Matt Townsley @mctownsley

From 2010 until 2013 I used Monday's as my Common Core math problem solving sessions and then I left the classroom to become a curriculum coordinator. 

Next post: 

Evolution of a Lesson Progression Protocol - 2. Instructional Coaching

The Math Is on the Wall - Installing the Whiteboards

This will be a series of posts to document and share how whiteboard walls have changed my teaching and student learning in my math classroom this year.

This post is about purchase and installation.

Let's Start at the Very Beginning... A Very Good Place to Start...

Back on August 26th I had an exchange with Chelsea McClellan a math teacher in Pollock Pines CA who invited me into her math classroom that has whiteboards on the walls.  I went and visited on September 7th.  The picture below shows her room.  

She painted her cabinets with whiteboard paint and added three 4x8 panel boards from Home Depot that she also painted with whiteboard paint.

I had been researching whiteboard walls for classrooms ever since I attended a CUE event in October 2016 and attended Ed Campos Jr.'s session CLICK HERE to read his blog post.

After visiting Chelsea's classes I made an appointment with my principal and we discussed how I could make this happen in my classroom.  There were a few stipulations that I needed to follow:

• The whiteboards had to be temporary (meaning they can be easily taken down if I move rooms)
• No painting of the desks with whiteboard paint - (again too permanent and I get that!)

Pretty simple and easy to follow.  I purchased four 4x8 panel boards from Home Depot (click here).  I had three of the boards cut in half - 4ft. x 4ft. and one of the boards was cut into fourths - 2ft. x 4ft.
My after school STEM club installed the whiteboards:

• They put duct tape around the edges of the boards
• Used 16lb Velcro to put on the walls (click here) 

I'll be adding one more board cut into thirds against my cupboards opposite this picture before we go back after winter break.

Baby Steps and Bread Crumbs for Shifting Math Instruction

I've been thinking about this for a while now. I want to innovate my math classroom...

First, here are my constraints:

• My curriculum which is Pearson Digits
• My insane pacing guide which has me and  the teachers at my school and in my district teaching the same thing the same day etc...  We have common summative assessments that everyone gives on the same day.
• We have weekly intervention for students who are struggling that we use our PLT Monday to pick students to go into based on common formative assessments that we give each week.
• And finally students who want to sit and get rather than do the difficult work and are resistant to problem solving and mathematical thinking. The students are compliant instead of curious.
• Also I've been GLAD trained this year so my site Administration expects me to integrate glad strategies in my math class as well.

I look at my constraints and I want to try and flip them and change my perspective of them being something that works against me into something that can support the Innovative learning environment that I want to create.

• The curriculum is the foundational piece that will allow me to try other things while I'm teaching to the standards.
• We have common summative assessments, again it's a foundational piece so I don't have to recreate a assessments.
• The pacing guide also gives me a guideline and a structure to follow.
• Having the built-in interventions for struggling students is a good thing.

Ways I want to innovate:

• Jo Boaler’s youcubed
• Fawn Nguyen's visual patterns
• Robert Kaplinsky open middle and other math materials
• Dan Meyer’s 3 ACT Math
• Lisa Nowakowski's Math Reps
• Engage New York, Illustrative math, Khan Academy, Math 360, Hyperdocs, Classroom Cribs
• I also have real-life math activities that I created for my kids a few years ago that I would like to start creating again and here's a link to check them out.
• Design thinking and design challenges
• Makerspace
• AND other great stuff also!

I want to spend the time to have the kids become problem solvers and mathematical thinkers and so time is an issue also because I am on the insane pacing guide and assessment timeline.

Because I'm new to my district this year I can't go Rogue which I normally would do because I could justify that I'm teaching the standards. Interestingly, the teachers that I'm working with want me to find a way to do this stuff and then show them how to do it. They have all this faith in me to change the way math is taught in the district.

I'd love to have a conversations with other math(or any content) people to consider this scenario which I think is very common in a lot of schools and districts to come up with a way to baby step the Innovation into the routine so we don't overwhelm the teachers and make it easily replicable.

I have an interesting perspective going back in the classroom after being an  instructional coach for 4 years.  I really want to find a way to work with the constraints that we all have in the classroom and find ways to truly innovate learning and instruction beyond following a curriculum and using a Chromebook as a digital textbook.

We have to start small and I think that's what I'm asking now that I've shared all this: what are the baby steps and/or the bread crumbs to start this journey and who else would like to join this conversation?

Let me know if you want to join the conversation.

Wood Splitting - A Middle School CCSS Math Lesson

I like creating math situations for my students that relate to my life.  I like to do this in the hopes that my students see that everyday things can be related to the math they are learning.  My ultimate goal is for my students to consider the possibility of relating math to their lives.  This weekend is log splitting weekend.  One thing I love about the non-stop work and chores we have on our property is that often it is mindless work.  My job during wood splitting is to roll logs to my husband and to take the split pieces and turn them into a pile.  These tasks that do not take much brain power allow me to think about teaching, lessons, and math problems for my middle school students.  I take pictures to show my students to help them picture the context of the problems.

Our Pine Logs and Starting Pile

Our Oak Logs and Starting Pile

Here is the information for the problem:

• Big pine logs provide 15 pieces of fire wood
• Small pine logs provide 7 pieces of fire wood
• We have 25 big pine logs and 21 small pine logs
• We split big pine logs from 10:00 am to 2:00 pm
• We split small pine logs from 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm
• The pine pile started with 126 pieces of fire wood

I ask the students what math questions we can ask using this information and the concepts we are working on in class.

In my 7th grade classes we are working on Proportional Relationships, Constant of Proportionality, Unit Rate, Percents so the questions we create will be around those topics.  I have questions in mind so that if the students need guidance in creating, I can ask questions to move them if they get stuck.

In my 8th grade class we are working on solving equations.

In a few weeks I'll have my whiteboards up around the room so we can do this activity in a Math 360 environment which will change the entire dynamics of the lesson and the learning.

Here is  a photo of the completed wood pile:

Ratios, Proportions, Chocolate Milk, and Hummingbird Feeders

Photo Courtesy of Krissy Venosdale

I am kind of an unconventional math teacher... I want my students to find other ways to solve problems that do not involve blindly following rules that I give them, oh I don't give them rules.  I spend an abundance of time asking them to problem solve and use critical thinking to solve problems.  They also have to show proof of understanding and share their processes, thinking, etc...

Over four years ago when I was in the classroom as a middle school math teacher one of my favorite activities was Dan Meyer's Nana's Chocolate Milk - 3 - Act Math  activity (love these problems and there is a plethora of them).  I love this activity because it it gives students an opportunity to solve ratio problems using proportional reasoning and problem solving without following a rule.  They can find "their" way to solve the problem using what they know.  It provides opportunities for math talks that create a community of mathematicians and "lead learners" rather than blind rule followers (obviously I have issues with step by step).  And on some days students have to embrace their "Ishness" - Here is a past post on that - CLICK HERE

Now back to Nana's Chocolate Milk and what it has to do with Hummingbird Feeders...

Ironically, I had a recipe mess up moment when I was making the potion we put into our hummingbird feeders.  I mistakenly used the 1/3 cup instead of the 1/4 cup.  So, of course I turned it into a proportional reasoning problem for my 7th and 8th grade students as a warm up problem for the day after we did the Nana's Chocolate Milk problem.  It was a bit more challenging, but the students
worked in groups and made meaning of the problem in ways that made sense to them instead of blindly following a rule I gave them.

I'm looking forward to later in the year when the students will start creating their own 3-Act math activities to share with their classmates and the world!

Here is the link to the slide deck I used to introduce the problem to my students: CLICK HERE.  Please Steal, Copy, etc... and use it with your students and/or create your own.