Hello and welcome to Making Number Sense Makes Sense, a podcast for elementary teachers,
specifically early elementary teachers, looking to really make an impact in the number sense
of their students. Welcome back to Making Number Sense Makes Sense, a podcast for early
elementary teachers hoping to really make a difference in the number sense of their students.
Today's topic is, I would say, kind of a hot topic in math education if there is such a thing.
It is building thinking classrooms. Now this book, I feel like, took the Facebook math teachers
groups by storm. I'm hearing about it everywhere. I heard about it everywhere, and I read it over
the summer and I was like, what is so exciting about this book? Like, what is it that is making
this so popular? And I have to admit, I was a little skeptical because it's K to 12. And if you
are a early elementary teacher, then you know that when things say K to 12, they are rarely actually
K to 12, because it takes a special person to understand how to teach little people and not
everybody's got it. Not everybody knows what it takes to do that. So like I said, skeptical. Is
this actually going to work in kindergarten? So the main premise of this book is that a lot of
times when students are presented with some kind of math problem, they're not actually problem
solving. What they're doing is mimicking behaviors that look like they're problem solving, but
they're not actually problem solving. That's for a variety of reasons. They may have been conditioned
to understand that the teacher's going to eventually give them the answer if they don't try. And you
know, trying can be a lot harder than not trying. So a lot of times kids get comfortable just kind
of sitting back and making it look like they're busy and not actually being busy. This is an aside.
But I remember in a high school physics class, like we, me and my friend were supposed to be
building an engine or something along those lines. And we were definitely not building an engine.
Building was not our forte. So he and I were just talking to each other about anything but building
an engine. And a lot of times when a teacher comes over to students who are not doing the right thing,
they'll be like, Oh, oh, and then try to make it look they're busy. We were not those people. We are
not going to do that. It's like, we kind of looked at her and we're like, Sorry, we're definitely
not doing what we should be doing. And she was like, Well, I'm glad that you didn't, you know,
try to make it look like you were doing something that you shouldn't. And he's without a missing a
beat goes, Well, what you see is what you get. And I will remember that forever, hilarious. But a lot
of times with kids, it's the same. What you see is what you get. If it looks like they're not really
working. A lot of times they're not actually working. So the idea of building thinking
classrooms is really to move around that and put the kids in a situation where they can't do those
typical student behaviors that they have to really go outside of the box because the environment that
they're in and the way that math problems are presented changes. When you're taken out of your
element and your norm, then you kind of have to react in different ways. And that's exactly what
happens with this building thinking classrooms framework. And the results that I've been getting
has been amazing with my students. They asked me, Oh, are we going to do a task today? Are we going
to work on the whiteboards today? And they don't ask me questions. They get to the point where
they're like, All right, got it. I'm good to go. Let's try and work on this. And they just get right
to it. They don't ask me for help. Usually the only thing I'm really doing is having the opportunity
to listen to all of their great thinking and support any conflict in partners. But usually,
there's really not any conflict. So let's dive into exactly how I set it up. There are three main
things that you need to get started with building thinking classrooms, you by no means have to read
the whole book before you dive right in, you can, but you definitely don't have to. So the big three
that you need are you need your students to be working in random groups. So for K to two, that's
partners. And for older grades, that would be a group of three. You need some kind of vertical,
non permanent surface. So that could be dry race board, or a dry race sleeve, and something to
hang them up around the room so that kids are standing while they're working. And the dry race
marker makes it easy to race. And students are more willing to take risks. And the third thing is
that as a teacher, when you're circulating, you're trying to be deliberately less helpful in a kind
way. You don't want to just kind of look at your kids and do nothing with the younger kids. But you
do kind of want to reiterate that you heard them and just kind of encourage them like I think that
you can do it. I definitely think that you can figure this out and kind of walk away and see,
see what happens. So those are your three big things that you need to get started. So the first
thing is the vertical non permanent surface. My school was recently renovated. And almost all of
my walls are whiteboards. But I realized that that is not the case for everybody. So if I did not
have the whiteboards already, I would definitely be making use of dry race leaves, the type of tasks
that I'm doing in kindergarten often require something that the kids are working with, not just
off you go. It really depends. But a lot of times I'll bring in other things to kind of support
their thinking. And I'll talk a little bit more about that in the task section. The next thing
is random groups. So I use these little color coded cards, and the kids can pick a card. And then
they find the person who matches their color and then they go to their workspace, a link to several
posts about this as well as those color cards. You can kind of see what I'm talking about. You can
also get them for free at the link in the show notes. I've also used computer generated groups.
I like classroom screen a lot. But something interesting that I noticed when I first started
is the kids did not respond as well to the computer choosing a group as them physically
choosing a card. I don't know if they thought that I was still in charge of it somehow and I
rigged it. I don't know. But they seem to accept it more when they were the one who got to choose
their card and their partner was their partner. At this point, they're okay with either but still
prefer picking their own card. A note about the partners though, it did take them a while to
understand that their groups will always be random. They'll always be with somebody different.
Sometimes they'll work with the same person. Sometimes they'll work with different people,
but it is completely random. The good thing about that is then they got to the point where
they weren't so attached to who their partner was and also to understand that everybody in the
classroom has something important to contribute and as a mathematician you'll grow by learning
and hearing what other people have to say. They might be a little disappointed that they're not
working with their best friend, but they can still work with any other classmate to accomplish the
goal of solving the problem or attempting to solve the problem. Like I said, because I'm in
kindergarten, the kids don't have a ton of school norms that they're breaking through. So I wouldn't
say that I had students asking me for help often in this setting because it kind of felt different
to them than just kind of your run-of-the-mill activity, but when they did ask for help, I would
usually, I asked them if they had talked to their partner. I also encouraged them to ask another group
what they were doing or what ideas they had and to see if that would help them out so that they
really kind of saw other students as areas where they could get ideas and they could get support,
not just me as a teacher. And the students who were getting asked to help another student
didn't feel like they were copying off them because they were helping. They were asking for
help. They're like, oh yeah, I'll help you. And the good thing about most kids, but especially
kindergartners, is they really want to help. They want to be helpful. So if someone is asking for
help, they're definitely into that. Are you with me so far? Great. Now jumping right into what
they're actually doing once they get to their vertical non-permanent surface. The book suggests
starting with a non-curricular task or something that doesn't necessarily have to do with
math or the concept that you're working on, just to kind of get them into the flow
of what they're doing and also to get some buy-in. Like this is a fun experience. This is something
that you'll enjoy. So anytime we're at the boards, it should have that same feeling. So it's kind of
setting them up for that idea that this is going to be a good time. We're going to do
really fun things together and we get to work with a partner. Because I had read this book over
the summer, I had set up my classroom with wanting a lot of that empty space available for them to
work. Because I was starting right at the beginning of the year, there are so many routines that the
kids have to learn and this is just another routine. The big things that I was thinking about would be
a potential issue for the kids is sharing the marker. With your partner groups, there's only one
marker between them so they actually have to talk to each other and discuss. So my concern was that
they wouldn't be sharing the marker and that they wouldn't actually be talking to each other. A lot
of parallel play or parallel discussion and not a lot of interaction. So when my first task for
the kids was share the marker and take turns. And when I started, I had to be like, okay, two minutes,
okay, switch the marker, switch the marker. But really, they got over that really quickly and I
didn't have to do that continuing on. It was just kind of to get them used to switching on and off.
And what I noticed them doing was they were good, we're going to share the marker, but they were
very much doing their own thing next to each other instead of creating one thing together. So their
task, their first task was share the marker and draw a picture on your whiteboard. And so they
were drawing their own pictures in a future task. I had them try to draw something together. I kind
of thought what is something that would really require them to work together if they want to do,
if they want to accomplish a goal. So my next task a different day is I gave each group a pile of
blocks and their goal was to build the tallest tower that they could together. So that really got
them talking to each other trying to figure out what was the best way to build this tower. And
it seemed really successful. And then after that, we went back to the whiteboards and I had them try
and draw pictures together. And I did have to model what it might look like to do that. So
like that kind of conversation like, well, what do you want to draw? I want to draw this. Okay,
I'm going to draw one thing in this picture. And then you're going to draw the next. So I think the
example was an ocean. It's like, okay, I'll draw the top of the water. And then the partner drew
the sand, etc. They did much better than that. And then we went on to our first quote unquote
official task. And so I gave each group a baggie of magnets. And I said, go count these. And the
kids have to count them. They came back to the carpet. The whiteboard part of it was,
how are you going to show me how many things that you have in your bag, how many items were in your
collection. And that sparked a lot of really great discussion with the kids about how they might show
that. And this was really great, especially for kindergarten beginning of kindergarten, because
some kids come in and they know their numbers, they can count 200, like they have one to one
correspondence, all of those big number things they have a good foundation of. And some students,
it's really their first experience at school at all. And numbers are just squiggles, slig letters
or squiggles. So that was a great kind of hands on way to get both partners involved, even if one
of the partners didn't necessarily know their number symbol yet. So starting this building
thinking classrooms journey, especially within mind that some students might not have the same
numbers knowledge as others, I try to pick tasks that were very visual that didn't necessarily
require writing numbers down to be able to solve the problem. And let me tell you finding tasks
for kindergarten, especially beginning of the year kindergarten, was a challenge. I just wasn't
really sure where to turn like the book itself has some examples. But again, I was like, some of my
kids are still working on their one to one correspondence to three, like we're not ready for
a lot of numbery type math problems. So that has been a challenge, but we work through it. And I
will have a link below to some of the tasks that I use that my kids have really enjoyed.
If you're wanting to try this in your classroom, and you only get to that part of the book,
you are setting your kids up for a really great math problem solving experience, especially if
you're told to give your kids rich math tasks. That's a quote unquote. And I rolled my eyes.
But you're like, what kind of tasks am I going to give them? And how am I going to have them
actually problem solving and not just mimicking or sitting there. So this is a really active way
to break all of those kind of inhibitions down and really let their math skills show. One thing
I will say is, as in any classroom, kids different at different speeds and different paces. So something
that the book talks about is thin slicing. So if they've solved this problem, you can give them
another problem that's similar, but just a little bit more challenging. So that's something I definitely
had to work on like really thinking through, all right, what is this task going to be? What is the
next step and next step? And another thing that also really helps if you're not quite there yet,
is if you see that a group is finished, send them over to go help another group that might be
struggling. And that's a great way for the students to learn from each other and also the kids who
finished to be able to explain what it is that they were doing, which is another really great way
for them to consolidate their learning. For me personally, I'm working on the next kind of steps
in the book, which are consolidating your learning. So after they've done the problem or engaged in
this problem, how am I going to kind of get them from the whiteboard to applying that knowledge or
getting a good grip on that knowledge to be able to apply to other problem solving tasks
and giving them choice and how it is they want to practice
on their own or with their partner, what they were just working on on their whiteboard. I can't
remember where I heard it, but in a study, they had asked a bunch of mathematicians to solve x
problem. And what they noticed is someone who's actually really flexible with math and their
thinking won't ever use an algorithm, they'll just use what they know to create a answer that
makes sense for them with their knowledge. So that's my goal with this with my students. I want
them to really be able to be flexible with the way that they approach a problem and persevere if
something is challenging. And the best thing about doing this with young kids is they're not at the
point where they really need homework, they're not at the point where they have tests that would be
like state testing or anything like that. So I figure that if I can really get them thinking
flexibly now when they're young, my hope is that as they go on to the next grade level and the next
grade level, that will be in their brain and will help them to solve any problem that they get
in any math class that they happen to be in. So like I said, I will leave a link to my original
post, the cards, some really great resources that I use to find my tasks, and feel free to leave a
comment, leave a review, ask me any questions, all of my information will be there. And I would love
to connect with other teachers of young mathematicians who are trying this in their classroom or are
interested in trying. Make sure to check out the book, it goes much more in depth than I could go
here, and I will catch you in the next episode. Let me know if there's anything you would like me to
talk about.