Beyond Pizza and Pies Book Study Part 3

Welcome to week 3 of our book study on Beyond Pizzas and Pies.  For more information this summer's book studies, check out this post.  If you need more convincing about how much this book has to offer, check out this short introduction video!

I can't believe we are over half way done this book!  I feel like it is a fairly quick read yet I have some great information to take back to the classroom with me in the fall.

The posting schedule for Beyond Pizzas & Pies (all Wednesdays)
June 10th Chapters 1&2
June 17th Chapters 3&4
June 24th Chapters 5&6
July 1st Chapters 7&8

Chapter 5: Is 1/2 Always Greater Than 1/3? 

"Our research suggests that many students did not understand that, within a context, the size of the wholes must be determined before comparing fractional quantities." 

This quote from chapter 5 really sums up what I have seen over and over again with students and teachers. When I learned about fractions in elementary school, I can't recall a single time where we solved a problem about fractions where the wholes were not the same.  Even now, when companies send me various curriculum samples, many of them do not contain any problems in which the wholes can vary.  I think a lot of the issue with kids not understanding that the size of the wholes must be determined is that they don't get a chance to see a lot of problems where the size of the whole might vary.   

If your curriculum is lacking in this area, the activities suggested in this chapter will go a long ways toward helping your students uncover this important fraction concept  The pattern block activity described in 5.2 and in the video clips is one I have done with students many times and it is a great way to bring forward a variety of big ideas around fractions  I also love the ideas presented in 5.2 around using 6, 12, and 24 packs of soda or water.  This is definitely somethings I will be thinking about adding to my repertoire for next year.  

In my school, we have a long standing tradition of introducing the ideas of the size of the wholes with Hershey bars.  A good teacher friend of mine came up with this many years ago when we were co-teaching a fifth grade.  Now I do this lesson in grade four.  I get two paper bags and some candy bars.  One bag contains regular sized Hershey bars (the ones with 12 small rectangles).  The other bag contains the smaller Hershey bars.  Here you can either use the minis or the small ones with 4 rectangles that often come in an 8 pack at drug stores and supermarkets.  I then hold one bag and have another person hold the other bag.  Then I ask, "Who would like a chocolate bar?  Mrs. ____ and I have chocolate bars in these bags.  I will be giving out whole chocolate bars and Mrs.  _____ will be giving out a half of a chocolate bar.  Please raise your hand if you want a whole chocolate bar and I will come give you one."  Most or all of the kids choose the whole chocolate bar which of course means they get one of the small ones.  If no students choose the half, I will "run out" of whole bars and one kid will have to settle for half of one.  When it is reveled that the kids who is getting half actually gets more, many kids are shocked but I think it leaves a big impression about making sure you notice the size of the whole.  

Does your curriculum include lessons about the size of the whole or ask questions where the two wholes vary in size?  

Chapter 6: How Come 1/5 is Not Equal to .15

I was shocked by the statistics presented in the "What's the Research" section of this chapter.  It really scared me that so many students had no concept of how fractions and decimals are related.  The fact that almost half of the sixth graders in the study couldn't write 4.5 as a fraction really made me question the way fractions and decimals are taught.  In most cases in a given year, I cover fractions first and then kind of glide into decimals after.  I try to make sure I am showing how they are related and do many activities that involve fractions and decimals during our decimal unit but I am thinking about how I can make the work with fractions and decimals even more explicit.  It also brings up the question about which topic to teach first and how much of one topic (fractions or decimals) I should teach before I start using both simultaneously,  These are good questions to ponder as I begin planning for next year.

In previous years, we had probability units in grades 4 and 5 where a lot of work was done with fractions and decimals between 0 and 1.  Now that we have moved to using the Common Core standards, the probability work has shifted toward grade 7 and we no longer do these units in grades 4 and 5.  I want to make sure my students are still getting some of these opportunities to work with fractions and decimals together.  I like how many of the activities suggested in this chapter are game based.  I am going to make sure we have a set of math stations next year that really work on this fraction and decimal connection.

Two activities I added a few years ago when we stopped doing the probability unit that I think can be really helpful and are very similar to the double number line lesson presented in this chapter are the Meter Stick Number Line Lesson and the 100 Bead String Number Line Lesson.  

How do you make sure your students have a good understanding of how fractions and decimals relate?  

Looking forward to reading your responses in the comments below!

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Beyond Pizza and Pies Book Study Part 2

Welcome to week 2 of our book study on Beyond Pizzas and Pies.  For more information this summer's book studies, check out this post.  If you need more convincing about how much this book has to offer, check out this short introduction video!

I am so excited that you are joining me on this journey to learn more about teaching fractions.  I know many folks are participating by following along.  Even if you are not caught up on the reading, please feel free to comment and share your own experiences with teaching fractions.

The posting schedule for Beyond Pizzas & Pies (all Wednesdays)
June 10th Chapters 1&2
June 17th Chapters 3&4
June 24th Chapters 5&6
July 1st Chapters 7&8

Chapter 3: Understanding Equivalency

I love the opening scenario in this chapter.  Kids following a procedure that their teacher taught them without any real understanding of the concept or context is so common in our current mathematics instruction.  If this teacher hadn't dug a little deeper and asked a context question like this one, they might never have known that their students had no understanding of the idea of equivalency.  I have had this happen to me and seen it happen to other teachers over and over again.  When you move from teaching procedures to teaching conceptually, it can be hard seeing how little your students understand.  

I am blown away by the video clips in this chapter and the entire lesson on measuring with Cuisenaire Rods.  I spend a lot of time on equivalency using area models and a number line but this lesson seems like a great way to bridge the two.  This lesson is simple and easy to replicate but seems like a brilliant way to look at equivalency and to move from an area model to a linear or number line model.  The follow up lesson where the rods are used on the number line also looks very effective.  These two lessons will definitely be a part of my students' work on equivalency next year.  

Fraction Kits: Friend or Foe?

I love the subtitle of this chapter.  I have a love/hate relationship with fraction kits.  When I first started transitioning to using more manipulatives and visual models, I thought fraction kits were the best thing ever.  Then I realized many of my students were using their fraction kits like calculators.  Something that was meant to be used as a tool to move them toward conceptual understanding was now being used as the only strategy they had for solving problems.  Since then I have been on a quest to find the right balance between hands on experiences and helping kids to develop mental models and conceptual understanding.  

I found the research the author conducted about using fraction kits to be similar to my own experience.  I love when this happens!  She talks about how she worked with 2 different groups of students on part-whole fraction ideas.  Cuisenaire Rods were used with both groups.  One group used them as a fraction kit where each piece was always the same fraction.  The other group used them with more flexibility where the whole would change and therefore the names of the other pieces.  The second group made more gains in their understanding than the first group.  When I started using pattern blocks in addition to fraction kits, I saw the same thing.  Although problems were initially harder for kids as the whole was changing, the developed a better understanding of fractions over time. 

Based on this reading and my own experiences, I think fraction kits still have a place and I will be keeping my making fraction strips lesson in third grade.  However, I will be adding the lessons in the book using Cuisenaire Rods and will continue to think about how to make sure students are not using fraction kits as calculators.  

I leave you with this quote from the end of the chapter:

"They (fraction kits) can support students' reasoning about fractions and help them make sense of basic fraction computation.  When used in a superficial way, however, fraction kits may lead students to develop superficial understandings of part-whole relations.  Students may come to understand fraction names such as one-fourth to be merely the name of a piece from a fraction kit, not a name that implies a specific mathematical relationship between a part and a whole." 

What are your experiences with fraction kits? How about teaching equivalency? Let us know in the comments below!  

Join us next week as we look at the importance of context in identifying the unit and making sense of fraction and decimal notation.  Be the first to see new posts by following my blog (look in the upper right hand hand column for ways to follow me) or my Facebook page.

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Beyond Pizzas & Pies Book Study Part 1

Welcome to week 1 of our book study on Beyond Pizzas and Pies.  For more information this summer's book studies, check out this post.  If you need more convincing about how much this book has to offer, check out this short introduction video!

I am so excited that you are joining me on this journey to learn more about teaching fractions.  My go to book for fraction teaching for the last few years has been A Focus on Fractions.  I learned so much from that book but realized that I haven't read anything on fractions in quite some time so this summer I am making fractions a priority!

The posting schedule for Beyond Pizzas & Pies (all Wednesdays)
June 10th Chapters 1&2
June 17th Chapters 3&4
June 24th Chapters 5&6
July 1st Chapters 7&8

Chapter 1: The Problem With Partitioning: It's Not Just About Counting the Pieces

The title of this chapter really sums up this issue.  Over and over again, kids are exposed to problems that show equally partitioned shapes or number lines and are asked to find the fraction.  With these types of problems being the only ones they see, kids often develop strategies like counting the pieces and they seem to work because the only problems they see have equal parts.  

It can be very uncomfortable to begin to ask kids to solve problems where the parts are not partitioned equally.  Many teachers (myself included!) really balk at this idea at first.  It can feel like you are trying to trick your students.  What you are really doing though is not letting them rely on counting pieces and are helping them think about fractions rather than just repeating a procedure.  Yes, kids who have always seen equally partitioned areas and number lines will have some wrong answers and some disequilibrium when they first work with shapes that are not partitioned equally but this will lead to a better understanding of fractions. 

I love the classroom activity described in this chapter using Cuisenaire Rods to help kids see that fractions are a relationship between the whole and the part.  Our current math curriculum does something very similar to this using pattern blocks.  The idea of the whole changing rapidly during the lesson freaked me out the first year I did it.  I remember having a discussion with the fourth grade classroom teacher about how confusing the lesson would be to the students.  Well I was very wrong.  It was a bit confusing to the adults at first, but the kids loved it.  I could see their fraction understanding deepening and they had such rich discussions about what they were noticing.  To this day it remains one of my favorite lessons.   I love the take on this using Cuisenaire Rods.  I am one of those people who does not use Cuisenaire Rods very often even though I have met countless teachers who swear by their effectiveness.  I can see how this lesson would be a very nice way to deepen my students fraction understanding.  Because we use a similar lesson already using pattern blocks, I think this lesson would be a great for my intervention groups.  

Chapter 2: Top or Bottom: Which One Matters?

The student at the beginning of this chapter who over generalizes the idea that the bigger the denominator, the smaller the fraction could be a story about the way I learned fractions.  One of my clearest school memories was in fourth grade when I remember realizing that this rule worked.  Of course, we had just started our unit on fractions and had only been working with unit fractions.  I plugged right along in my text book thinking I was big business getting ahead of the class and doing the next several pages only to find out later that I really was doing things wrong.   I had no conceptual understanding of fractions and I don't really remember using visual models.  We had a text book and that was it.  My teacher marked most of my answers wrong and "taught me" how to find a common denominator when comparing fractions.  That is the one and only strategy I had for many years.  After having more life experience with fractions, I was able to tell which fraction was bigger or smaller if they were fairly far apart but still had to resort to a common denominator strategy for many fractions pairs.

After several years of teaching fractions the way I was taught, I began to see there was some work I needed to do.  I had found a copy of About Teaching Mathematics in my classroom and began to read it.  I started moving more of my teaching into conceptual understanding rather than procedures.  I was still pretty stuck on fractions and really lacked conceptual understanding myself on this matter.  I took a wonderful class on teaching fractions and read A Focus on Fractions.   This led to a huge shift in my own conceptual understanding which led to a huge shift in my teaching.  Now instead of teaching kids the procedure for finding common denominators, I guide them toward developing a toolbox of strategies for comparing fractions.

One thing I think I still struggle with in my teaching is making sure kids are not over generalizing rules like the larger the denominator the bigger the fraction.  I get so excited when kids make conjectures that I sometimes forget to stop and ask them if it always works.  I recently read a blog post over at Traditionalist Becoming Non Traditional about journal prompts that ask kids if something always, sometimes or never works.  I think adding in journal prompts about these conjectures kids make could really help make sure over generalization does not happen.

Watching the video clips and reading about the activities in this chapter makes me really rethink some of the number line activities I do and change them around to use the Cuisenaire rods.  This seems like a powerful manipulative for number lines and I am currently not using them at all in my fraction instruction.

Now it is your turn!  What did you think about these chapters?  What ideas can you take back to your own classroom?  What are some things you are doing well?  Let us know in the comments section below!

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Fraction Book Studies

It has been a busy couple of weeks around here and I am really looking forward to the slower days of summer.  My collection of professional reading has been mounting and I have good intentions of doing a lot of reading this summer.  I am currently reading About Teaching Mathematics which is the newest version of a wonderful book by Marilyn Burns.  I can tell it will be my go to reference book for years to come.  Look for a review in the next few weeks right here on my blog.

This summer, I really want to dig deeper into fractions and do some overhauling of my teaching and intervention materials for fractions.  I have two books about fractions that I really want to read and dig deeper into this summer.   These books also come with DVDs which I think is a great way of seeing the writing in action.  They also make a great addition to professional development that I lead as part of my role as a math coach.  

I would love for you to join me reading one or both of these books.  They are both a very reasonable length and I will be breaking each book into a 4 week book study.   Once a week, I will post my thoughts and ideas from a few chapters in the book.  You can respond in the comments with your own thoughts and ideas or if you have a blog you can write a post about it and link it in the comments.  

A little bit about each book:

Beyond Pizzas and Pies

Check out this video introduction!

From Math Solutions... 

The focus of Beyond Pizzas & Pies, Second Edition, is on foundational understandings. The authors help teachers and students understand fractions as numbers, including the use of equivalency and thinking about benchmark numbers, so that when students start to compute with fractions (see the companion volume, Beyond Invert & Multiply), they have a solid foundation. You’ll find:

• Classroom Scenarios that address common challenges students (and teachers!) encounter as they acquire an understanding of fractions;

• What’s the Math? sections intended to clarify the mathematics;

• What’s the Research? insights that show why “that’s the way we’ve always done things” might not be the most successful approach;

• Classroom Activities with friendly, step-by-step instructions and video clips demonstrating how to teach the concepts;

• Reproducibles that are also available in a downloadable, printable format;

• Study Questions at the end of each chapter that encourage readers to set concrete goals for implementing what they’ve read; and

• Connections to the Common Core for those states implementing the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics.

 (The accompanying DVD features 30 video clips filmed in actual classrooms. Clips range from 1 minute to 6 minutes in length with a total viewing time of approximately 70 minutes.)

You can get this book at Math Solutions.  If you buy it through math solutions and use the code MAY201530, you will save 30% off the list price until June 1st.  You can also get it on Amazon and it ships free with Prime.

The posting schedule for Beyond Pizzas & Pies (all Wednesdays)
June 10th Chapters 1&2
June 17th Chapters 3&4
June 24th Chapters 5&6
July 1st Chapters 7&8

Beyond Invert & Multiply

Check out this video introduction! 

From Math Solutions:

Beyond Invert & Multiply builds on the foundational understandings that are described inBeyond Pizzas & Pies: 10 Essential Strategies for Supporting Fraction Sense, Second Edition, and applies them to situations involving fraction computation. You’ll find:

• Classroom Scenarios that address common challenges students (and teachers!) encounter as they learn to operate with fractions;

• What’s the Math? sections intended to clarify the mathematics;

• What’s the Research? insights that show why “that’s the way we’ve always done things” might not be the most successful approach;

• Classroom Activities with friendly, step-by-step instructions and video clips demonstrating how to teach the concepts;

• Reproducibles that are also available in a downloadable, printable format;

• Study Questions at the end of each chapter that encourage readers to set concrete goals for implementing what they’ve read; and

• Connections to the Common Core for those states implementing the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics.

You can get this book at Math Solutions.  If you buy it through math solutions and use the code MAY201530, you will save 30% off the list price until June 1st.  You can also get it on Amazon and it ships free with Prime.

This book study will start the week after the other one ends.  Here is the posting schedule.

July 8th Part 1: What is a Fraction?
July 15th Part 2: Addition and Subtraction with Fractions
July 22nd Part 3: Multiplication and Division with Fractions
July 29th Part 4: Discourse with Fractions

Who is ready to learn more about teaching fractions?  Make sure you share this with teacher friends in grades 2-6!

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What to Expect When You are Applying: Math Coach

Recently, I have had several folks ask me about my role as a math specialist and what exactly it is that I do at work.  I have also had several folks contact me through my Facebook page with questions about roles and responsibilities as a math leader.  This week I will be sharing some of the different roles I play as an elementary math specialist.  Because I work in a small school, I have several roles to play.  In larger schools it is often the case that one of these roles is a full job.  Yesterday I gave some details about what to expect as/from a math interventionist.  Today I want to share with you another of my roles.

Math Coach

Building Relationships

If you are going to be getting into teacher's classrooms and really making a difference for them and their students than it is vitally important that they find you helpful and they trust you.  Building strong relationships with the teachers you are going to be working with is the foundation that the rest of this role is built on.  Present yourself to teachers as someone who is helpful and ready to work together.  Be a good listener and try to understand where other folks are coming from!  Being the neutral party that everyone gets along with can really pay off for a math coach!

Start With Teachers Who Want Your Help

So many teachers are used to closing their classroom door and doing the best they can with the knowledge and experiences they have.  They might not be ready to make a change or might be terrified of any number of things associated with your presence in their classroom.  There will also be teachers who are eager for your help and guidance.  These are the teachers you should start with.  If you work with the folks eager for change, you create a positive climate and shared experience.  As other teachers in the building see changes in instruction and climate, they might be more open to changes.  I have found that some of the teachers who were most reluctant to give my ideas about constructivist teaching and letting kids figure out their own strategies are now some of the ones who embrace the ideas the most.  You might have a small group of teachers that you feel like you really haven't influenced even after many years but you can't let that overshadow the work you do with others.  Focus on the positive.

Communication

Find the best way to communicate with the teachers you are working with.  Follow up conversations with emails and reminders.  If I meet with a teacher to co-plan a series of lessons, I take notes on my computer or tablet while we are meeting.  Then I email this to any teachers who were part of the discussion.  This reminds folks what we talked about and makes sure we are all on the same page.  If planning time happens more than a few days in advance, I send out reminder emails.  Take the time to follow up with extra communication and things will run much smoother for you.

Resource Manager

As the math coach in the building, you will be expected to know a lot about various resources.  This might mean physical resources such as manipulatives and books and it also means virtual resources and ideas.  A teacher might come to you with questions about teaching fractions.  A parent might ask how they can best help with homework.  You are expected to be the expert on all things math related and having knowledge of resources that are available in  your school and online can really help answer these questions.

Professional Reading

A great way to stay up on what resources are available is to do a lot of professional reading.  This can be a lot of different things but might include reading several math teaching books (I try to read 1 per month!).  You get the knowledge from these books and you put them on your shelf at school.  If someone asks a question, you can point them in the direction of one of these books.  This also could mean reading math blogs and other online resources.  I love how the format of blog posts allows me to share information in small pieces.  When I find a blog post I think a teacher would benefit from or find interesting, I send them a link in a quick email.  I find teachers are much more likely to read a short blog post than an entire book!  Sometimes a few short blog posts around one particular subject qets their interest piqued enough to ask for a book recommendation.

Embedded Professional Development

As part of my math coaching role, I do a lot of embedded professional development.  This can vary greatly but is good math practice broken into little chunks.  I might model a number talk or explain the research behind a particular method for teaching fractions.  I follow up my words with links to blog posts, books or other resources.  I also am often asked to lead lesson studies or professional learning communities around particular topics.

In-service Days

When my district has an in-service or teacher training day, I am often asked to provide professional development to the teachers, administrators and/or paraprofessionals around various math topics.  This used to be one of the most challenging aspects of my job because getting up in front of adults and teaching them something used to be terrifying to me.   With practice, this has gotten much easier and now I really look forward to getting to do in depth professional development with the adults in my district.

Communications with Administration 

As the math expert in your building you will need to spend some time communicating with administrators about your schools' math program and what you and the teachers you work with need in terms of professional development, time and materials.  You will probably be asked to attend several additional meetings each year around these issues.

Create a Math Community

Creating a school culture around math may be part of your responsibility.  Organizing family math nights and communicating with parents about how math is taught in your school might be part of your job.  You also might have to showcase assessments, construct bulletin boards or attend school board meetings.  Getting your math message out to the community can be a great way to build long term support for your position.

For more ideas and some specific suggestions, head over to math solutions to check out this article!

Are you a math coach?  I would love it if you shared your tips and experiences in the comments section below!  Got a question about being a math coach?  I would love to try to answer it!  Leave it below!  

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What to Expect When You are Applying: Math Interventionist

It seems to me that math support positions have been becoming more common in schools across the country.  In the last few weeks, I have received several emails and Facebook messages from folks who have applied or are thinking about applying for various elementary math positions.  Many people are looking for advice and ideas and others are really asking what to expect.  I know expectations for these types of jobs vary widely but I want to share what I have learned over the last 10 years.  Over the next few days, I will be describing some of the roles that I have played as a "math specialist" and my best advice for doing a great job in each role.

Math Interventionist

Providing Additional Instruction

This is the backbone of what your role will be as a math interventionist.  The majority of your time will be spent working with small groups of students who require additional instruction to meet standards.  There are many math intervention programs available commercially which your school may or may not use.  My school does not have a commercial program and I create what I use with my students.  I tend to keep much of my interventions game based, especially with primary students and get a lot of mileage out of my place value card decks.  With my older students I do a lot of hands on practice with manipulatives and concrete models and linking those to the representational and abstract simultaneously.  When I first began this job my interventions looked very different and I sometimes struggled to figure out what I needed to do and what tools I needed.  If you are new to being a math interventionist and do not have a commercially available program, see if you can spend some time talking with another math interventionist about what they use with their students and how they know it is successful.  It can be a lot of work to start from scratch.  I do like being in charge of making my own intervention materials now that I have had a lot of experience, I find that I can really customize my interventions to individual students in a way that would not be possible with a commercially available program.  

Know Your Assessments

Students are referred to me based on assessments, both observational and formal.  Some of it is formative assessment and others are local assessments that we use as screening tools or provide intervention for follow up.  Students who are currently on my case load get assessed several times a year.  They usually get an assessment when school starts, in January and in May.  They might also get one before a parent conference or report card if I am looking for more information.  For K-2 kids, I use a local assessment that is an individual interview.  It is great to get this level of detail on my intervention students.  For older students, I have recently started using the Math Reasoning Inventory which is part written and part interview.  Marilyn Burns was one of the authors so like all of her stuff, it is awesome !  You can check it out here.  

Tracking Data

You have all those assessments, now how are you going to track and share data?  If you use the Math Reasoning Inventory, much of this is done for you.  If you use local assessments or a combination of things you might have to invent your own data tracking system.  I use Excel to track data in a variety of ways.  If you do not know how to use Excel I highly recommend you learn!  I learned how to use it to my full advantage 6 years ago while I was taking a statistics class.  Understanding how data can work for you and what tools are available to you can really help.  Knowing the basics of statistics and how to use a spreadsheet program can be really helpful for a math interventionist.  

Communicating with Parents

So now you have identified students in need of intervention.  The next step is to let parents know and introduce yourself to families.  I work in a very small school and after 10 years I know most of the families.  I find a quick phone call to let a parent know when I am doing intervention with their kid to work well for me.  This mostly is due to the fact that I already know the family.  If I need to do intervention with a kid whose family I do not know, I often have the classroom teacher get in touch with the family and let them know I will be working with their child.  Then I make contact by phone or in person and start developing that relationship with the family.  For students whose families already know me or for students who are on my case load the most frequently, I find that email is a great way to communicate updates and quick shares about what we have been working on.  I try to be in email contact with parents at least twice per month with a quick update.  This takes a lot less time than it may seem and really helps parents feel connected.  I also meet with families at parent conference time.  I mostly set it up so the parents can see myself and the classroom teacher in the same conference.  This makes for less meeting for the parent and keeps everyone on the same page.

Each job is going to be different but these are some of the things I have experienced as a math interventionist.  I will be detailing other roles that I have taken on as a math specialist this week so check back or make sure you are following me on Facebook!

If you have any tips or experiences
about being a math interventionist to share please let us know in the comments!  Any questions I can answer for you would be great as well!

Want to know what being a math coach is like?  Head over to part 2 of this series!

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Mathematics Through Play Book Study: Part 4

Welcome to the final week of our Math Through Play Book Study!  I have been doing a lot of thinking and planning about how to get more play into math class.  I started a Pinterest board with #MathPlay ideas and it is quickly approaching 100 pins.  I will also be starting a weekly series on #MathPlay ideas here on my blog.  

Here is the posting schedule for this book study:

Sunday March 29th: Chapters 1-3

Sunday April 5th: Chapters 4&5

Sunday April 12th: Chapters 6&7

Sunday April 19th: Chapters 8&9

Without further ado, lets wrap up this book study!

Chapter 8: Planning, Organizing and Assessing Independent Play

The ideas in this chapter about planning and organizing independent play reminded me a great deal of how I try to organize and plan math centers during Guided Math time.  One of my favorite ideas is the idea of a play menu that shows kids what is available that day and helps keep them focused on the areas that are open for them to use during this time.  This has been a huge help during Guided Math and other choice times in my own practice.  Also with various adults in and out of the rooms I work in, having written prompts and key questions posted in stations has been a huge help to making sure everyone is on the same page.  The idea of assessing through observation is certainly not new to me either and the idea of creating a notebook full of observations is something I have found beneficial.  A few years ago, I saw another teacher used post it notes to jot down observations and then stuck them in a notebook with a page dedicated to each kid.  I moved to this model 2 years ago and haven't looked back!  I love how the post it note system lets me move and organize my observations and assessments as I am reviewing what I know about a child.  

Chapter 9: Parents as Partners: Involving Parents in Mathematics and Play

As a teacher who spends a huge percent of her day teaching math and thinking about teaching math, it is so disheartening to me when I hear parents say in front of their children how they are not good at math or do not like math.  So much of a students' ability to do well in math seems to come from their perception of it and we need to stop letting students hear parents (and teachers!) say that they do not like math or are not good at it.  I believe that passion and enthusiasm for math are the 2 things that make me a good math teacher and make my students good learners.  I know math can have a bad reputation and not everyone has had a positive experience with learning math but it is certainly my mission to change that.  

Almost 10 years ago, a colleague and I did our first Family Math Night and it has continued to grow and evolve.  It has helped tremendously to have this positive experience for students and parents to share together and has really helped parents in our school see how much fun our students have learning math.  I have been thinking a lot lately about Family Math Night and how it can continue to evolve in our school and what our next steps might be.  I think we need more parents in the school and would love to have more classroom volunteers.  I am thinking about how I can use Family Math Night to help with this mission and would love some suggestions from other teachers and parents about what makes classroom volunteers work in their schools.  

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