Wooden Legs Videos
Focusing on students developing and strengthening CCSS Mathematical Practice: 1. Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them. [Mathematically proficient students start by explaining to themselves the meaning of a problem and looking for entry points to its solution.]
http://mathforum.org/blogs/suzanne/2011/12/01/wooden-legs-videos/
Bluford Universal Charter School
Mr. Reo’s Fifth Grade Class
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
November, 2011
Charlie’s Gumballs Scenario Video
Max Ray acts out what is happening in Charlie’s Gumballs, a problem at the Primary level from the Math Forum’s Problems of the Week (PoWs). We encourage teachers to use the “Notice/Wonder” activity with students as they watch the video and/or listen to or read the Scenario.
http://mathforum.org/blogs/suzanne/2012/04/06/charlies-gumballs-scenario-video/
Last Tweets
I serve a consortium of small, urban schools whose k-5 teachers need professional development in Math, Science and technology. These teachers are typically ‘generalists’ whose strength is not usually math or science. Yet, if we’re to bridge the achievement gap for our students, these very teachers must be trained and given the tools to cause their students to not merely embrace but delight in math and science. This process, we believe, should start in preschool. However, we teach the students (mostly low-income) we have and accept them where they are, realizing we need help from the best teachers. When I saw the videos of you working with students, I decided to ask you to help us. Schools have set aside the week of June 25 for this professional development, and I am asking if you or your staff would consider challenging our teachers to teach their students to think.
Thank you.
Janice
Janice, I’m emailing you separately to respond to your request and we may also talk on the phone this week, however, I wanted to take a moment here to respond in general to your thoughts.
I completely agree that professional development is critical to both create an atmosphere for teachers to work together but also provide them with the tools/experiences needed to build their confidence and skill in teaching mathematics. In the school in Philly where I made the videos that you watched, we also did some “fishbowl” lessons — while Annie or I did the lesson, three teachers were in the room observing and taking notes — after the lesson there was time for us (without the students) to debrief. It was an abbreviated “lesson study” idea and we feel is a very effective way to have conversations between the teachers about student learning and what to do to encourage and develop it.
To work directly with us, the Math Forum has online professional development courses. You can find them listed here:
http://mathforum.org/pd/
We also do face-to-face professional development and an overview of that work is here:
http://mathforum.org/workshops/workshop2.html
To make use of what we have freely accessible, I think there is a lot of “material” both on my blog but also our new Elementary Mathematical Practices blog:
http://mathforum.org/blogs/emp/
that a math coach or curriculum leader could use as a starting point for conversations with their teachers. In face, I would love it if, as a result, there were posts to either blog that included questions or thoughts for discussion.
I’m looking forward to talking with you more to see what ideas might work best for your situation.
~ Suzanne
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