For most, the virtual and hybrid learning during the past 1+ years has reduced student voice and participation and negatively impacted the community in our classrooms. A variety of things change for the better when our classrooms feel like communities: learning improves, student’s opinions about mathematics improve, and student’s ideas about themselves as math learners improve. Notice and Wonder is a mathematically productive routine that creates an abundance of opportunity for student voice and can help bring about a much needed return to real community in the classroom come Fall 2021.

The article, Capturing Mathematical Curiosity with Notice and Wonder by Aaron M. Rumack and DeAnn Huinker provides two classroom examples of the Notice and Wonder routine and details classroom implementation. Washington OSPI, using language from NCTM, describes “Notice and Wonder” routine the following way: “this routine supports students in becoming successful, perseverant problem solvers by leveraging multiple mathematical competencies and drawing on multiple sources of knowledge. Students observe a visual image, video, or other stimulus and share their natural noticings and wonderings. Notice and Wonder can be a short routine used to activate student thinking at the launch of a lesson, or a stand-alone routine to encourage curiosity and math reasoning. Because students are invited to bring their own ideas and questions into the classroom within this routine, regular use of this protocol helps to establish a safe classroom environment. “When students are given opportunities to pose mathematics problems, to consider a situation and think of a mathematics question to ask of it – which is the essence of real mathematics – they become more deeply engaged and perform at higher levels” (Boaler, 2016, p. 27). (Notice and Wonder Process and Resources Sheet, OSPI, April 2019)

May Reading: Capturing Mathematical Curiosity with Notice and Wonder, Aaron M Rumack and DeAnn Huinker. Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School. Volume 24: Issue 7. May 2019