A colleague came by to visit my classroom last week to check out the centers approach, and sent a few follow up questions.  We agreed to do a blog interview, so that others could also engage.  Enjoy!   

VWQ: I  just want to say I LOVED being in your class today. Such good things happening. I especially loved helping the students who had to count the number of people in a newspaper and then count how many of those were people of colour and then write the fraction/ ratio to describe people of colour to total people in the newspaper. Also with women. Way to slip in the Social Justice. ;)

VT: Thanks, it was a pleasure to have you in -- I always like to have visitors in my room because it forces me to re-examine my teaching, and think about my instructional choices. (Not to mention, an extra adult in the room to interact with students is always a nice resource!)

Yes, I am always trying to find ways to sneak in Social Justice.  Some units lend themselves better to it than others... Data Management provided an excellent platform, for example.  Sometimes people think that only LASS teachers can address issues of social justice and human rights in an authentic way.  One of my goals this year was to find authentic ways to embed equity issues into the math curriculum.  I'm still working on it!

VWQ: I was hoping I could ask a few more questions about the math Centres... 

My 7 s and 8s have been exploring fractions through paper folding.   I asked them to record their work on a device, to make a record of the activity, and as a way to build in technology. I think this video might be the best one yet... except you have to pause it to read anything! :)

But I love how they included a tricky part, and explained how that helped them move their thinking forward -- Press "play" below, and enjoy....

Following this, I would show my class the second half of the video, and then allow them to consider/write about/discuss these questions:

As a sequel to the two-part activity above, I might show the following video, in order to demonstrate how students can take a stand against injustice. 

To enrich the conversation further, I would definitely spend some time facilitating a conversation with students about "Pink Shirt Day" (which addresses bullying more broadly) and "Day of Pink" (which specifically address homo- and trans-phobic bullying.

For some teachers, getting started with class discussions about social justice and equity can be tricky.  I hope this blog post offers a helpful resource for the LGBTQ context, and I welcome comments and anecdotes about how the conversation goes in your class!

Being the harshly opinionated person that I am, one of my great challenges professionally and personally is suspending judgement.  It's only gotten worse with age:  It seems the smarter and more educated and experienced I become, the more judgemental I am!!!  Ugh!  

I am therefore very grateful to my colleague in Grade 8 who presumed positive intentions when I recently asked about a math problem she had presented to her class, and which I hoped to use with my own class.

Behold, the Mangos Problem, in its original form:

Though delighted by the math, the equity advocate in me railed against the hierarchy in the problem:  What was all this talk of Kings and palaces and servants?!  To make matters worse, as my partner pointed out, in a problem like this, it was necessary to recall the order of things in order to solve the problem, so the sexist, classist structure was actually being reinforced!!!

I immediately set work re-wording the problem, and even put it into a format with which I could experiment with some new technology.

Behold:

Eager to share my brilliance with my colleague, but cautious about offending her, I carefully asked if she'd be open to a conversation about her mangoes problem.

This afternoon, the opportunity for said conversation arose, as we were on a planning 1/2 day to discuss our research project.  First my colleague shared an incredibly powerful lesson on deconstructing "beauty", using the "golden ratio" and some common media images.   Surprised by her insight into social justice when it came to women, power and body image, I used that discussion as a segway into the Mangoes Problem.

Wow, did she ever surprise me!

Without skipping a beat, she launched into an explanation of how she almost always creates "problematic problems" to encourage students to think about both the math and the "other" stuff that comes with it.  In the case of the Mangoes Problem, she used the story structure to discuss the concept of hierarchy with her students, and to encourage them to question the hierarchy implicit in the classroom.  ("I am not the keeper of the knowledge", she tells them, and encourages them to challenge the traditional teacher-student power structures, and take on more ownership of their own learning.)

I was very impressed.  

And then I returned to Classflow, and reworded the problem back to the original text!

Originally this post was going to be about how I turned a culturally crappy math problem into a culturally proficient one, isn't Ms. Teschow so fabulous? 

Instead, it turned into a blog post about Ms. Teschow eating humble pie.

Again.

As as unit launch for fractions, decimals, ratios and percents, I had students work in groups with square sheets to paper on this low floor/high ceiling task. As a way to capture student thinking while integrating technology, I asked one student from each group to record the group's work using Flipagram.  Two of the results are below:

I'll be honest; I was hoping for more descriptive communication (using fraction-specific vocabulary!)  to accompany the photos, however, it was our first time using the tool formally in class.  I'm also discovering an interesting phenomenon that intermediate students don't seem to like the sound of their own voices, and so are reticent to record their thinking using the audio feature of the app!

And, let's be honest, these 40-minute periods are killer: By the time students get to class and get settled, there simply is not time to embark on such grandiose adventures! 

Nevertheless, it was a step outside my comfort zone (which means I grew a bit!), and I do think some of the students enjoyed using the technology to document their group's work.  Next time, I would spend more time brainstorming success criteria for what makes an effective Flipagram, and then have students work in pairs to complete the task and record their work.

One of my professional goals this year has been to become more confident with technology, and in particular, the growing concept of "BYOD" in schools ("Bring your own device").

As I've discovered, BYOD is a bit of a mixed bag: In one of my classes, about 70% of students have a device; in the others, it's closer to about 15%.  So, the ideal I had imagined of 2:1 correspondence is not a reality.  Also, I myself was having trouble envisioning use beyond quick access to online resources, so how was I going to sell the concept of BYOD to families were themselves not convinced of its value?  For starters, I'd not seen technology modeled particularly effectively in any classroom context, other than possibly the use of an Interactive White Board, which my colleague and I spent most of the year learning to use as part of a math and tech research project a few years ago, and which I would not say we've become experts in (and also, my current classroom does not boast such an one).  And when I took some online classes this year, I could not seem to move myself beyond the "wow, cool" mindset and into the "hey, I could actually DO this in my classroom" frame of mind.

Finally, though, I partnered with my instructional coach to build a short Kahoot into a data management lesson we co-taught a few weeks ago.  Student engagement was extremely high, and through the emotional connections made to the limbic system, retention was also high; I was able to refer back to that lesson often as an example to illustrate a concept relevant to the unit.  So I made sure to build a Kahoot or two into my upcoming unit on Fractions (to be posted soon -- still putting on the finishing touches).

But I wanted more.

I wanted to use technology to collaborate on mathematical thinking.  One thing my colleague and I discovered during our "Smart Bansho" research project a few years back was that the document camera/Smart Board combination we had cobbled together did not allow for the sort of student solution sharing we had hoped for.  Could other technology possibly be more effective in this regard?

One of the apps I am learning about through various workshops and self-directed PD I am participating in this year is called "ClassFlow".

I decided to create a ClassFlow lesson to share a fractions problem I hope to do with my Grade 7 and 8 students in the coming weeks.  My plan is to share the problem through class flow, have groups work on it on their devices (only one per group needed!), and then share and debrief solutions as a class.

I have to say, the darned app is not intuitive, at least not for an old crow like me!  Creating a pretty slide deck was easy enough, but figuring out how to get "students" (in testing my girlfriend and a mutual friend of ours) to be able to annotate slides and for me as the teacher to be able to access and see said slides became a problem that boggled my mind for a good three days!!!  In the end, though, I think I have figured it out.  We shall see what transpires....

I know students are engaged with their devices.  Although it's slow slogging for me to learn how to do so effectively, I know it's part of my job as their teacher to show them how these tools can be used to foster collaboration and thinking.  Integrating technology has to be more than just quick access to the Internet -- we've got to re-imagine instructional possibilities and redefine the pedagogically possible as we use technology not for babysitting, but for new learning opportunities.