Embedded Files
Building Agency In The Math Classroom
Research Team
Research Team
Julie Rea - Host - 8th grade Math/Science teacher at HTMNC
Morgan Philips - 10th and 11th grade Math teacher at HTHMA
Freddy Miranda - 10th grade Education Specialist at HTHNC
Yekaterina Milvidskaia - Knowledgable Other, Math Specialist, and Improvement Coach for HTH GSE
Classroom Equity Theme: We will support students’ agency and confidence as math learners with expressing their mathematical thinking, making sense of each other's ideas, and engaging in thoughtful conversations and high-quality mathematical tasks. Students will be given the opportunity to share their ideas publicly in order to foster ownership of their thinking.
Let's Dig Into The Lesson!
Lesson Content Understanding Goal:
Students will understand how to create their own expression for a set of given inputs and outputs. Then, students will be able to restate another classmate’s thinking to demonstrate understanding and provide evidence of the function.
Common Core Standards:
7.RP.A.2
Recognize and represent proportional relationships between quantities.
8.F.A.1
Understand that a function is a rule that assigns to each input exactly one output. The graph of a function is the set of ordered pairs consisting of an input and the corresponding output.*
8.F.A.2
Compare properties of two functions each represented in a different way (algebraically, graphically, numerically in tables, or by verbal descriptions). For example, given a linear function represented by a table of values and a linear function represented by an algebraic expression, determine which function has the greater rate of change.
8.F.A.3
Interpret the equation y = mx + b as defining a linear function, whose graph is a straight line; give examples of functions that are not linear. For example, the function A = s2 giving the area of a square as a function of its side length is not linear because its graph contains the points (1,1), (2,4) and (3,9), which are not on a straight line.
The Lesson: Google slides, worksheet, whole class work, and focal student reflections
Photos of student work shown on the board during the lesson
Focus Students: Background information, our hopes, and their exit ticket/lesson reflection
Focus Student #1
Focus Student #1
This student is very kind, thoughtful, and always welcoming other students into her group.
She has mentioned her fear of falling more behind in the math class and not being able to be successful this semester and school year.
Our Hopes: Encourage her to ask more questions in class and share her work with classmates and peers.
Focus Student #2
Focus Student #2
This student is very bright, loves sports, and is always wanting to try and learn more. This student struggles with his social/emotional learning due to his tendencies to be highly influenced by other classmates. He is eager to build his mathematical understanding.
Our Hopes: To support student with building confidence in sharing their work aloud to the class and not just in small groups
Focus Student #3
Focus Student #3
This student is a joy to have in class, she makes sure all student feel welcomed and kind to all. She feels confident with using a calculator but struggles with mental math. She is quiet but shares with her tablemates and friends. She doesn’t participate much or ask questions in front of the entire class. She wants to build up her math confidence especially to prepare her for high school.
Our Hopes: Help build mathematical confidence and encourage her to share her voice to the entire class and new friends/classmates.
Focus Student #1
Focus Student #2
Focus Student #3
Lesson Debrief:
Julie: We are excited that we were able to complete the lesson. Happy that kids were participating. Happy to see the full picture of the lesson study process. At the beginning it was challenging to see what we were going to be doing. Now that we were able to complete the process we have a good foundation on what we could do for next trimester. We can continue to build on the equity theme.
Morgan: Being able to experience the full cycle of lesson study allowed us to build a foundation to move forward. We heard a lot of student voices. All three of Julie’s focal students shared. I hope that the lesson communicated to the students that it is ok to come up with different strategies.
Freddy: One of my biggest fears as an ed specialist is around lesson planning and student engagement. We were able to see that students were engaged and that Julie’s classroom had a good classroom culture. Every student that I spoke to had something to say about mathematics. Hunter had his math in his journal. One student was able to share her ideas and she had accurate math strategies in her math notebook.
Missed opportunities:
Questioning the why? Pushing students to justify their thinking. Helping students not to assume that one way is correct. We wish we had more time to hear student discussions.
We did not have an opportunity to talk about the table much. We wanted to discuss if this function is the only one that works for these two points. Would have asked the question to students, “Are these two points all that we need?”
Timing was another issue to think about them. How do we plan for adjustments/adaptability in our lesson that still allows us to cover the major components of the lesson.
We should meet in person and do the dress rehearsal in person to help us think about certain aspects.
Student Data:
Freddy: Giselle and Nethra were able to share a lot of their thinking and strategies in the class. This shared that they felt very comfortable in the math content. I’m curious as they were another table that was strong in mathematics but did not share many ideas.
Julie: Ava shared a strategy at the board and this was her first time sharing this year. Super proud of how much engagement that was happening. Nethra, Giselle, and ___ are always sharing and it was good to hear more voices.
Morgan: Found it was very challenging to collect my own data while interacting with students. I thought it was very interesting how much we heard Giselle’s voice on the board, in class, and in her group. Got a sense of intrinsic motivation because she wanted to share a lot of her ideas. She is also an includer. You can tell that she doesn’t let anyone sit back.
Discussion Question:
How do ensure that student voices are valued in the classroom?
How do we support students in sharing their ideas?
Next steps:
1. Keep up the positive classroom culture
2. Practice cold calling but in a safe way
3. Continue with students airing their ideas or a classmates idea
4. Make final connections with how each piece is connected, reflect on entire lesson
5. Add more layers onto the discussion conversations
6. Give students more time to talk intentionally in the classroom
1. Individual think time
Next Steps for Learning:
Reflecting on our group lesson, we pinpointed multiple areas for improvement with our planning, teaching, and goals for the lesson. As educators, we can always learn from each other and continue to improve our practice. Some of the best learning takes place when I step back and can watch how others teach. This was a successful first lesson study! Although I learned a lot, I feel grateful that I was the first host for the lesson study. Being the host, I was well informed about the content, the students, and the classroom culture. The results were exactly what we were hoping for with the whole class and my focus students. One specific highlight to share is that one of my focal students, who typically is very quiet, lacks the foundational math understanding, and usually doesn’t share with the class, shared her expression on the board! Quite a remarkable accomplishment, and since then, she has been actively participating more in the classroom. I believe this group lesson excited the students and has brought them to a new level of learning. Receiving specific feedback from my research group and teachers has better supported my classroom teaching and math understanding.
Final Lesson Presentation of Learning
Sharing celebrations, major takeaways, student data, and an overall reflection of the first lesson study cycle.
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