This month, I'm participating in a blog challenge called Blaugust. To see the list of participating blogs, click on the logo above. I would encourage to you please cheer on our participants with either a tweet or a comment on their blog during this month. It can be hard to blog on a daily (or even regular) schedule! :) If you would like to join the blogging challenge, you can still sign-up anytime!
When I first picked up this book, I'll admit that I was a bit overwhelmed by its size. My typical edu-reads are not 350+ pages long, so its taken me a bit longer than normal to read this one. In general, the book is focused toward elementary teachers, but there are a lot of take-aways for secondary teachers as well. I've had a couple of chapters really blow me away and a few others that I skimmed more than read because it just wasn't as engaging to me. But, overall, this book will be on my recommendation list and will be one that I revisit over the years to try another strategy in my quest to be a better teacher.
We intentionally set the reading schedule so that we would finish the book around the time that most people are returning to school and I'm so glad we did because in the last chapters, I found some really great takeaways that have caused me to do quite a bit of pondering.
Chapter 12 is titled "Mathematicians Work Together and Alone". This was an important chapter for me because my classroom is set up in tables but I don't always leverage it well. The physical layout is due to a couple of reasons - I believe in the power of collaboration and tables allows for easier movement around the classroom, especially when its packed with 30+ adult bodies and backpacks.
However, there are some limitations to this layout and one that has frustrated me over the years - students start to rely too much on the power of the group and end up with an inaccurate reading of how well they have personally grasped the content.
My biggest take-aways from the chapter are:
- "Teach students how, why, and whether to interact."
Wow... So simple, yet so difficult. Because I teach high school, I often assume that students have some knowledge of how to work with their peers, but if that were true, my frustrations would be taken care of, right? I really like the addition of "whether" here, because there's a time and a place for groups vs independent work. In my classroom, I need to work on better defining my expectations for individual work and to help my students develop a better sense of when collaboration is valuable versus over-reliance on others. - "Students need to learn how to ask for what they need from one another and to be what they need for each other."
I've never really thought about this, but it makes so much sense. As an adult, I am comfortable saying to my spouse or to a coworker, "Hey, can I talk this through with you to get some feedback?" Or even online, we do this all the time via our Twitter PLN, but I need to explicitly teach my students how to monitor and do "self-care" for themselves academically. Some suggestions given in the book are to teach your students that it's okay to say things like "Hang on a minute - I need to wrap my head around this on my own first." or "I'm stuck... are you at a place where we can discuss this problem?" I really love this, but do need to work on how to develop this culture in my classroom. - "Students should spend most of their math time gathered around rich problems, flowing naturally among thoughtful dialogue, periods of quiet thinking, and bursts of active chatter as they make sense of mathematics."
If someone were to ask me to describe my ideal dream classroom environment, I could not have phrased it any better than Zager did in the quote above. However, while it may be my ideal, it's not where my classroom actually is and I'm not quite sure how to get it there - YET. I have some ideas to implement this year to move me closer to that ideal, which I'll be blogging about this month. I have some of the elements in place - whiteboarding, groups, etc, but I need to work on implementing rich problems and developing guidelines for productive discussions (thankfully, I have a plan for both, just need to implement!) - "New ideas only influence students' work if students resume working after being exposed to the new idea. Otherwise, those fleeting thoughts won't penetrate."
Honestly, this is probably one of the most profound statements I've read in a very long time. It applies to everything - discussions, feedback, practice - everything! I even notice it in my own professional life - I often read something or engage in a twitter conversation about a great idea, but if I don't stop to process it and intentionally *implement* the idea, then no matter how great of an idea, it will be lost in the netherworld forever. I need to be very intentional about this - I have to give students time to ACT on feedback, to use and internalize and apply what they have learned.
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