Status & Mindset Interventions
In her book Strength in Numbers: Collaborative Learning in Secondary Mathematics, Ilana Horn writes: “Judgements about who is smart based on prior achievement or social categories violate a fundamental principle of equity and are consequential: learning is not the same as achievement” (2012, p.20). The resources below were curated to help you redefine "smarts" in math, disrupt status divisions, develop growth mindsets, and foster a collaborative math community.
Anticipatory Planning
How often does your planning for math involve searching for the "best" problem and then thinking about how you want to teach the problem? It's safe to say this is how most of us approach(ed) lesson planning. The problem with this approach, however, is that it is teacher focused and neglects to consider how students might perceive and respond to the problem. Conversely, anticipatory planning focuses planning efforts on imagining how students might respond to a problem and using that information to plan questions that will push and clarify student thinking and build understanding by sequencing and connecting approaches students are already using.
If you've ever tried to facilitate constructivist math learning in your classroom and it fell short of your expectations, it's likely because the key factor, anticipatory planning, was missing! The template below can help you prepare to facilitate constructivist math learning in your classroom. Grab a planning buddy and give it a try!
Anticipatory Planning
How often does your planning for math involve searching for the "best" problem and then thinking about how you want to teach the problem? It's safe to say this is how most of us approach(ed) lesson planning. The problem with this approach, however, is that it is teacher focused and neglects to consider how students might perceive and respond to the problem. Conversely, anticipatory planning focuses planning efforts on imagining how students might respond to a problem and using that information to plan questions that will push and clarify student thinking and build understanding by sequencing and connecting approaches students are already using.
If you've ever tried to facilitate constructivist math learning in your classroom and it fell short of your expectations, it's likely because the key factor, anticipatory planning, was missing! The template below can help you prepare to facilitate constructivist math learning in your classroom. Grab a planning buddy and give it a try!
Research & Clarify
Getting Started!
During the first 6 meetings the research team determines a research question, develops a theory of action, chooses a math topic to explore, and determines a mathematical goal and an equity goal for their research lesson. Below include links to agendas teams can use to guide them through these steps of the research lesson planning cycle, as well as blog posts that share some of our key learnings from engaging in the process ourselves.
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Meeting #1: Hopes and Dreams for Students and our blog post with key take-aways
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Meeting #2: Identify Strengths & Funds of Knowledge and our blog post with key take-aways
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Meeting #3: Determine a Research Question & Develop a Theory of Action and our blog post with key take-aways
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Meeting #4: Choose a Research Lesson Topic and our blog post with key take-aways
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Meeting #5: Explore the mathematical content and our blog post with key take-aways
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Meeting #6: Determine a mathematical goal & an equity goal and our blog post with key take-aways
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Overview
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Gather & Organize
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Research & Clarify
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Hopes and Dreams for Students
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Identify strengths & funds of knowledge
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Determine a research question and theory of action
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Determine a content and an equity goal
Research & Clarify
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Anticipate & Plan
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Plan the research lesson
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Anticipate student thinking
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Conduct a mock lesson!
Anticipate & Plan
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Observe & Collect Data
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Debrief & Look at Student Work
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What did focus students say or do?
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How well did the lesson achieve the content & the equity goals?
Reflect & Share
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To view videos from research lessons including an overview of the research team inquiry process, visit our memorialization blog posts from some of our public research lessons:
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We are grateful to JFF, KnowledgeWorks’, and the Student-Centered Learning Research Collaborative and its funders for their support. Learn more at sclresearchcollab.org
