Rethinking Rigor, Rapport and Real-Word Math: Takeaways from VACMS

Joanna Gjeldum, Tallwood High School

December 2025

This past week at the Virginia Council of Mathematics Specialists (VACMS) conference was a fantastic opportunity to recharge, connect with fellow educators, and gather new strategies for our classrooms. I had the chance to explore great sessions on leveraging AI tools to make our lives as educators easier, and even had the privilege of co-facilitating a session on how math coaches can best focus on student needs.

While all the sessions were valuable, two themes really stood out to me and wove together in a powerful way: academic rigor and student connection.

Beyond Rigor: Connecting with our Students

While I found the session on rigor and using the Performance Level Descriptors (PLDs) to be extremely valuable, it all comes back to a foundational truth: none of it works without first having rapport with our students and incorporating Social Emotional Learning (SEL) into our classrooms. Which is why I attended "Mathematizing the World," which drove this point home. We explored the "What do you notice? What do you wonder?" model, a fantastic way to spark curiosity. But then, the session proposed a key addition: “What math questions can we ask about this?” This simple change moves the model to Notice, Wonder, and Math Questions. It's a small tweak that transforms an observational activity into a student-led mathematical inquiry.

We then took that model a step further by incorporating some culturally responsive practices. So, how do we make this model connect back to our students and be more culturally responsive?

Ask students to fill out a short questionnaire about their culture, interests, or hobbies.
Have them attach a picture that relates in some way to their culture or themselves.
Use these student-submitted pictures as the prompts for your "Notice, Wonder, and Math Questions" routine.

The impact of this is huge. Students are immediately engaged because it's their life, their culture, and their peers' interests on display. The student who submitted the photo is now the resident expert, present to help answer context questions that other students may come up with. They get to proudly showcase their culture or interests, and the entire class gets to practice seeing and questioning the math that exists all around them in their own community. It builds rapport, validates student identity, and fosters a safe learning environment—all through the lens of math.

A New Lens for Rigor: The VA SOL Performance Level Descriptors (PLDs)

This foundation of rapport is what allows us to then push our students toward the academic rigor they need. The key to unlocking this lies in the new Virginia Standards of Learning (2023 SOL) Assessment Performance Level Descriptors (PLDs).

These PLDs provide a powerful lens we can use to analyze everything we put in front of our students—our notes, our daily assignments, and our unit assessments. By looking at our materials through this PLD lens, we can clearly identify the true rigor of each question and, more importantly, see if it meets the standards required for our students to be successful.

This connects directly back to our October discussion on using data to take action. Back then, we talked about using the PLDs as a reference to help us "go backwards"—to look at our data, identify where students were struggling, and use the descriptors to scaffold materials down to build their foundational skills.

Now, we're leveraging that same tool in the opposite direction. It’s not just about filling gaps; it's about building bridges. By using the PLDs, we can intentionally make our questions more rigorous, pushing students from basic recall to proficient application and advanced interpretation. We're strategically scaffolding up so they are better prepared for the SOL and for the complex thinking they'll need beyond it.

The process is straightforward. We can classify any question, task, or problem into categories, depending upon the mathematics level:

Algebra 1, Geometry, or Algebra 2: Fail/Does Not Meet, Pass/Proficient, and Pass/Advanced
Grades 3 - 8 Mathematics: Fail/Below Basic, Fail/Basic, Pass/Proficient, and Pass/Advanced.

We can analyze our DTAL unit assessments and ask: What is the balance of the rigor of our items? Are we incorporating enough Pass/Proficient and Pass/Advanced questions to give our students a real shot at success?

But it doesn't stop with formal assessments. If our assessments are rigorous, but our daily work is not, we're setting our students up to fail. We must also look at our notes and class assignments. Are we giving students enough practice with Pass/Proficient and Pass/Advanced level thinking before they get to the test? Are we modeling the kind of critical thinking they need to be successful, not just on the SOL assessments, but in life?

After reviewing our materials, we can make simple, targeted changes to elevate the rigor. A great way to start this work is in our Professional Learning Communities (PLCs). Could you imagine the impact if every PLC collectively reviewed its upcoming Unit Assessments and Reviews through the lens of the PLDs? We could easily identify specific questions or even entire standards that need to be made more rigorous and then use the PLDs as our guide to get them there.

By making meaningful connections with our students and diving into the rigor of our materials, we can give students the roadmap to success in our classes, on the SOL, and in their everyday lives.

Below are examples of a portion of the Grade 7 Mathematics Performance Level Descriptors and the Algebra 1 Performance Level Descriptors. Note that all these documents are currently in draft form as of Spring 2025 from the Virginia Department of Education and may be subject to revision.

Example of a Portion of the Grade 7 Mathematics Performance Level Descriptors

Example of a Portion of the Algebra 1 Performance Level Descriptors

Check out the Coaches Corner in the DTAL December Newsletter for tasks created by your Secondary Mathematics Coaches in response to last year's assessment data.

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