Friday May 3, 2019
October 30, 2018
"Lots of student engagement"
"Students were risk-takers - they took chances in their learning"
"Lots of math vocabulary"
"Teachers were curious about students' thinking"
"Students collaborated around higher level of thinking"
"Saw continuity between grade levels"
June 11, 2018
Mr. Trill and Polly Wagner visit math classrooms for the whole day! We collect notes, take videos and pictures, and then invite teachers to a digital program, much like Class Dojo. This allowed everyone to virtually "visit", see and comment on what they noticed throughout each grade's math lesson.
Below are a few pictures from the day!
Below are pictures of collegial visits and discussions from 2016 - 2018
5th, 6th, and 7th grade math teachers meet approximately once a month to think more about middle school mathematics. We have visited each other's classrooms, looked at student work, and consider best teaching practices.
2017-2018
Watch a short video of first graders thinking about how many cubes they see in a 10-frame. Notice how Mr. Rubin gives plenty of wait-time and at the end of the clip asks a student to explain another student's idea. In what way might this help all students learn more? (Unfortunately I cut the video off too early but you'll get a sense of how students talk in math class.)
At Erving we try to visit at least one other colleague's math classroom a year - sometimes more! Here are pictures from two 1st grade collegial visits in which Shutesbury teachers, along with two professors from Antioch also joined. After the visit the professors, Heidi Watts and Ellen Doris, wanted to share some of our math classroom videos with pre-service teachers as examples of excemplary teaching!
Teachers read Strength In Numbers, did math together, analyzed videos of mathematics classrooms, and discussed how to improve our own practice so we can reach more students. We learned specific teaching practices that strengthen student learning and understanding of mathematics.
Here we are learning about implementing the, at the time, new curriculum, Investigations. We worked on math problems together, studied whole units, navigated the online aspect of the curriculum, played math games and created posters. Below is a picture of teachers and student teacher planning for upcoming math class. Notice they do the math of the lesson themselves so they can anticipate the range of student ideas.
Some teachers went to an Investigations workshop during the summer of 2017 to learn more about the importance of the practice standards. These standards help us build a mathematics culture of inquiry and perseverance while also supporting students to construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.