Overview

Session Summary

In this session you will consider ways to:

• consider physical classroom set up
• establish a learning community where students feel safe, take risks, listen to each other, use their mistakes as opportunities to learn and are challenged to think and reason
• involve students in setting norms and expectations for learning
• group students in different ways
• help students see how collaborating and talking math helps them learn math

Getting Started: The Classroom

When students enter a classroom, they take a look around – this space will be their ‘home’ for the next nine months. How is it set up? Where will they sit? Who will sit by them? Where will they put their ‘stuff’?

This is not only students’ ‘home’, it’s also your home! It requires thought and planning to set up a classroom. There is not one way to do this, but all the questions raised above (and others) do need to be considered as you create the learning community that is your classroom.

Work Setting: Students will be working alone, in pairs, in groups and as a whole group during math class. One lesson could involve students moving from one setting to another. The classroom needs to be arranged in a way that they can easily transition between settings.

• How can you set up the furniture (desks or tables, shelves, carpet) so students can easily transition from one work setting to another? The student seating needs to be organized so students can easily work in pairs and groups.
• What part of the room is the best for space where the class can meet for whole group discussion and sharing strategies? What math tools (linking cubes, 100’s chart, number line, anchor chart) will students need in this space?

Wall Space for Strategies, Anchor Charts and Displays

Students need access to math tools such as anchor charts, sentence stems, 100’s chart or number lines.

 

Manipulatives and Tools: There are a number of math resources that need to be stored in the classroom. Some materials are frequently used and other materials are used for a limited amount of time. Think about how you’ll store the materials so students have easy access.

Make math manipulatives and tools accessible so students know where to find these and where to put them back after using them. Make your life easier: make them your partners in keeping things in order and handy.

• What manipulatives do you need for your grade level?
• What math tools need to be accessible to students on a daily basis?
• How do you store the materials they are using so they can be easily distributed?
• Where are materials (e.g, individual whiteboards student books, journals, manipulatives) located so students can easily access them?
• How will you organize and store the Math Workshop resources for the unit you are working on? How can you store Math Workshop resources for other units so you can access them easily when you need to use them?
• Do students need some of the tools –such as individual 100 charts, number line, individual white board, marker and eraser – stored at their seat? If so, how will you organize these resources?

Looking ahead…
Once the classroom is set up and the students arrive, the community building and learning can begin. We will address this in Activity 1.

Activity 1: Setting Expectations and Norms

In this activity, you will watch, read, and think about how to set expectations for mathematics learning in your classroom. Setting expectations for math class needs to happen at every grade. You will see how expectations and norms are set in one 5th grade classroom.

Chris Opitz, a teacher at Willard L. Bowman Elementary School, Anchorage School District shared the following…

 

An Ideal Classroom

Scenario: Imagine you are an elementary school student and your teacher has asked you to work in a small group to develop a class working agreement.

Imagine your ideal classroom. Record your ideas for the questions below.

• How would people act?
• How would people interact?
• What will your classroom look like?
• What would your classroom sound like?

Working Agreement and Classroom Promises

Watch and listen to Lisa, a 5^th grade teacher, as she shares how she builds the learning community by establishing a classroom agreement with her students at the beginning of the school year.

All classrooms and grades need to establish expectations for students to work in a safe math learning community. As Lisa shared, the agreement is revisited through the year. Even though the learning environment activity you experienced in this activity takes place in a 5^th grade classroom, other grades can use and adapt the idea.

Notebook

Jot down in your notebook any ideas you are thinking of using or adapting for setting norms and expectations in your classroom.

Activity 2: The Math Community Across the Grades

In this activity you will read cases written by teachers from different grade levels. In their classrooms learning is central, mistakes are opportunities, and all children are supported in learning math.

Read

Read at least two of the cases below.

Setting Up the Mathematical Community Cases

• Gr K Getting Started: Using the Calendar Routine to Develop a Math Community
• Gr 1 Modeling, Molding and Maintaining the Classroom Community
• Gr 2 Seize the Moment
• Gr 3 The Value of Disagreeing
• Gr 4 Who are the Students in My Classroom? What do they think?
• Gr 5 First Steps for Creating the Mathematical Community

Notebook

In your notebook respond to the questions at the end of two of the cases you read. Specify which cases you read using Grade and the name of the case.

Activity 3: Mindsets and Mathematical Practices

In this activity you will look at the mathematical practices and how they impact student learning in the math classroom. You will also learn about Carol Dweck’s work with mindsets and how they impact learning outcome.

The Standards for Mathematical Practices

The Common Core mathematics standards include both content and process standards. Content standards include the mathematical knowledge and skills students should learn. The process standards (Mathematical Practices) specify the mathematical ways of thinking students should develop while learning mathematics content. These Mathematical Practices build on the NCTM Process Standards and the five strands of mathematical proficiency outlined in the National Research Council’s (Adding It Up: Helping Children Learn Math).

The Impact of Growth Mindsets and Teacher Beliefs

Read and listen to Carol Dweck as she shares her findings about Growth Mindsets. Then read and reflect on a chart developed by NCTM that describing unproductive and productive beliefs about teaching and learning mathematics.

Notebook

In your notebook, describe how you will embrace productive teaching and learning beliefs to enact a math learning community where CCSS Mathematical Practices, a growth mindset and praise focused tangible evidence are central to students’ math learning and your teaching practices.

As you work through this course, consider how productive beliefs, a growth-mindset and enacting the Mathematical Practices will help you support the math learners in your classroom.

Discussion

Reflect back on your experiences in this session. Share one “aha!” and one question related to establishing a community that supports math learning.

Go to the Discussion Forum

Go to the Aha! Forum

Notebook

Complete the Session 1 Notebook page using the indicated prompts. In the final field of your notebook, reflect on the key take-aways from this session for your own learning and record ideas that you will implement to support math learning.

Key Learnings

• Establishing norms and setting expectations with students for mathematics class (whole group, small group, pair and individual) are important to do right from the beginning of the year
• Involving students in creating the behavioral norms is a critical piece of establishing a safe learning community
• Developing the learning community is an ongoing process (Do all learners feel safe and respected? Are all learners involved?)
• The classroom set-up and math learning community impact students’ ability to learn
• A growth mindset creates greater confidence and greater persistence
• Difficulty and challenge and productive struggle means ‘not yet’
• Praising intelligence makes students vulnerable. Praising process and effort helps students develop Mathematical Practices
• Math abilities can grow through hard work… the power of ‘yet’ - when math learning creates growth mindset environments steeped in ‘yet’, equality can happen