Suzanne at the Math Forum

As a middle school teacher I know that it’s difficult to make time to individually connect with each of your students since you may be dealing with 130 to 180 students (depending on how many classes and how many in each class). Elementary teachers usually don’t have the volume of students that middle or high school teachers have but because mathematics is usually just one of the subjects they are responsible for delivering to their students, their time is similarly precious when considering adding yet another task to their never-ending list of things to do.

Often I ask teachers who think that using the Math Forum’s online feedback/mentoring functionality, what writing their students are already doing. For example,

* do you have students keep journals? How often do you collect them? How often do you comment on them?
* do you have students write responses to problem solving prompts on paper? as classwork? as homework? as projects? How often do you collect them? How often do you comment on them?
* do you have students reflect on feedback and revise?

Another thing I ask teachers who are contemplating this is, how organized are your students? If they start writing in your class on one day, do they have the paper with them the next day? Do you keep their papers in folders and they stay in the classroom? Do they keep their papers in their own notebooks?

The reason that I ask these questions is that it’s possible that using an online system just might save time in the long run.

My main tip, however, is in how you provide feedback. I recommend that teachers make only two comments per student following the format:

I notice ….
I wonder ….

The “I notice” statement notes one thing that you value in the student’s solution. In other words, a sentence of praise. The “I wonder” statement is a question with the intention that as a result the student will reflect on their draft, revisit it and add more. Along with this, I recommend that teachers check these two boxes in our system so that they bypass using the full rubric:

Choose not to score this submission.
Hide the scoring grid from students.

I suggest this abbreviated method for several reasons, including

* it doesn’t take very long per student
* it reinforces problem solving as a process
* … but … most importantly, the student’s thinking and problem solving remain in THEIR possession and is not transferred to the teacher

Recently I’ve realized that when a teacher repeats everything a student says or when they give detailed feedback, in some way they are taking over the student’s thinking. If the student is to embrace the Mathematical Practices of …

1. Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively.
3. Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.

… they have to continue to own their work. They have to reflect and revise!

Thoughts?

What does this really have to do with my blog post? Nothing! I just love the photo. This is a sea dragon that I saw at the Monterey Bay Aquarium. (Click on the small photo to view a larger version.) I just love dragons!

Sometimes when I describe how the Math Forum’s Problems of the Week service works a teacher and/or their administrator get very interested when I mention the online feedback options. Imagine reading or hearing a version of this description:

Students are encouraged to submit solutions explaining how they arrived at their answer, as the beginning of a process designed to develop their communication and mathematical thinking skills. These solutions may be mentored by volunteer or paid mentors, or by their own teacher. The Math Forum offers an instructional rubric for scoring student work and detailed instructions on giving helpful feedback to students. The mentoring process promotes reflective, thoughtful problem solving.

[Note: in a previous blog post I talked about slowly introducing our rubric.]

Often what a teacher/administrator hears is the time-saving idea of having others (the Math Forum’s volunteer or paid mentors) give feedback to the students!

Consider these possibilities:

* student submits online, receives no feedback
* student submits online, receives feedback from someone besides the teacher, the teacher doesn’t have time to look online (it’s an activity only between the student and the mentor)
* student submits online, receives feedback from someone besides the teacher, the teacher reads the online exchanges

With the first and second possibilities the teacher is saving time because the online problem solving interaction is something they’re having a student complete either alone or with interaction from others. With the third possibility mentioned it might take more time for the teacher to read the exchanges than to be the one involved in the first place. My guess is that even with the best intentions, a teacher who planned to read the online exchanges might not be able to keep up with that idea.

In conversations with teachers/administrators inevitably my next question is, What does saving time mean? Is one of your goals of having your students work on the Problems of the Week to encourage them to practice  ”making sense of problems and persevere in solving them“?  How good are the students currently with this practice? Are they developed enough so that they don’t need their teacher’s help to build the practice? If that’s the case, I can buy the argument that having students work on their own and possibly receive mentoring from someone else could save the teacher time. But, I think it’s more likely that students need a great deal of scaffolding to embrace this practice. If the teacher gives feedback to their own students and coordinates that with what they’re doing in the classroom, in the long run, that will save the most time.

Stay tuned … in my next blog post I’ll share some ideas I’ve used that can help you manage your time with these activities!

This morning I was working in a section of my online course [PoW Membership: Resources & Strategies for Effective Implementation] and one of the posts reminded me of how we introduce our problem solving rubric to students. Particularly if students are just starting the process of problem solving and communication, it’s important not to overwhelm them (or yourself!).

Whether you’re using the Math Forum’s Problems of the Week or other problem-solving prompts from your curriculum or other sources, these ideas might be helpful. For reference, the rubrics I’m referring to are (freely accessible) from this page: Teaching with the Problems of the Week

Just scroll down until you reach The Rubrics section on that page and you’ll find links to PDFs for Primary, Math Fundamentals (elementary), Pre-Algebra, Algebra, and Geometry.

This is the order I might use to unveil each of the six sections of the rubric:

1. Interpretation
At the Math Forum we think that our Noticing/Wondering activity takes care of this quite nicely! Students are learning and practicing the first half of the CCSS Mathematical Practice #1 (Make sense of problems…)

2. Completeness
Even though I might introduce this second, it’s not something students will be able to do well if they’re new to problem solving. It takes time and a lot of reinforcement to have students develop the second half of Mathematical Practice #1 (… and persevere in solving them.)

3. Strategy
This then can be emphasized in conjunction with introducing some various strategies (hopefully your entire school is on board and students will have been introduced to strategies starting in kindergarten…but…maybe not!). We have summarized a nice set of strategies on our Problem Solving Activities page (linked from the left sidebar on most PoW pages).

4. Clarity
I like to explain this idea to students by saying … write your solution so that a classmate can follow what you did. For some reason emphasizing their classmate instead of their teacher is more motivating!

5. Accuracy
You may wonder why I would recommend this so far down the list and that’s because a thorough problem solving process most likely will result in accurate problem solving. I like to de-emphasize “getting quickly to the right answer” and instead emphasize the process … but, of course, bottom line is to get to the correct answer!

6. Reflection
We save the best for last! It’s tough to get kids to reflect on their process but it is very, very valuable.

Have you introduced rubrics to your students? What have been your successes? What have been your challenges?