Reflect after you have planned a task for your thinking classroom:
Give it a try! Plan a lesson that includes some of the strategies you have learned in this book. What will you include that will provide your students with a rich math experience in your thinking classroom?
Consider the following questions:
- What strategies did you include?
- What are you anticipating?
- How might you need to spontaneously differentiate?
Respond and Interact
After planning a lesson for your classroom, please post your response to one {or more} of the prompts above. Read our colleagues' reflections. Feel free to respond to someone by sharing a comment, insight or interesting possibility.
I decided to plan a lesson that I would do during the first week of school. Since it is the beginning of the year, I was sure to include the first toolkit of practices - a non-curricular thinking task, visible randomization, and vertical non-permanent surfaces. It was difficult to not plan for more at the get-go. I am anticipating random grouping with cards will be a little confusing and new, so I'll introduce this earlier in the week or even the same day as a mix/mingle type of activity to get to know each other and the random grouping. The non-curricular thinking task I selected was one about sharing 6 cupcakes between the student and 2 friends. I envisioned verbally giving students the task within the first 5 minutes and then showing the picture of the cupcakes for reference before randomly distributing numbered cards. I anticipate needing to briefly define sharing and fair. Thinking about differentiation and early finishers - extending it by asking what they would do if only 4 of the cupcakes had icing on them. In planning this lesson for the beginning of the year, I'm already thinking about the fine line of just enough versus not enough or too much that creates chaos or the beginning of a non-thinking classroom. My students aren't the only ones who will be doing more thinking!
ReplyDeleteI planned a lesson for Grade 1 Unit 2 - Addition and Subtraction Story Problems. I used a few strategies that were discussed in the book to plan this lesson. I would want students to work in groups to solve story problems. To do this, I would use randomized animal cards (my math lead created these for us!). They match students based on an animal card that they pull randomly from a pile. After getting students into groups, I would want to try the method of having students work vertically on a combination of whiteboards and anchor chart paper. The book talked a lot about how this motivates students especially when working in random groups. I anticipate that once students are in their groups, it will take them a few minutes to get comfortable and start working together with their partners. I will need to be walking around the room to help students and encourage them as needed and will try responding to questions in productive ways to encourage students to seek answers on their own.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading the last chapter, I decided to put my focus into Unit 1 and implement the practices from toolkit #1. These tend to lean towards student behavior and fall naturally into how I set up norms, procedures, and expectations in my classroom at the beginning of the school year. The biggest challenge will be for me and not necessarily the students since I teach first grade. Putting students in random groups daily is new for me. I like the idea of using animal cards to do this. I have been researching white boards to use vertically. I am not a fan of using chart paper but may have to begin this way since I have large post it note paper that can be adhered to walls and cabinets. In the past, students have used their small white boards on the floor, however, I want these to be vertical and larger so students can stand up and use the idea of knowledge mobility with their work visible to other groups. A lot of teaching will be how to collaborate with a partner, how to share the pen, how to be an active learner. It will require me to walk around and encourage discussion. I am excited to try it all!
ReplyDeleteLike many others, I feel impleneitng the ideas in Toolkit #1 with our first Unit in IM would be best. As we start the year learning our norms, building our groups, learning how to use materials and manipulatives and most importantly learning how centers work, the ideas here will help to build a strong community of thinkers and I hope to beging to implment Toolkit #2 by Unit 2.
ReplyDeleteI feel lucky that this will be my second year with IM and so I am excited to try some of the ideas I learned from this book. I believe the hardest for me will be the random groups. I am going to push myself and have an ipen mind. We will see how it goes.
I feel in the dark with our new math program (it feels unclear and murky) so my goal is to implement Toolkit #1 first until I feel like I am not treading water with the new math program and have a handle on the concepts in the first toolkit. After flipping through kindergarten unit 1 book, it looks like they start the year working in groups of 2 and exploring our math tools. I like the idea of finding animal cards or other cards to create the random groups.
ReplyDeleteStarting with toolkit #1 seems very doable and easy. I have already started using random groups in my class. I have a variety of different partner cards, that I would switch from month to month. As the year went on, I even made my own to match our curriculum (coins on one card and the amount on another card) and this year I hope to make more. I also really liked the thinking tasks at the end of each chapter. While building our math community, I will use the “What Color am I?” (p69) and “Jellybeans: (p80) to introduce thinking tasks and vertical whiteboards. Toolkit #2 seems more challenging to me, specifically defronting my classroom. It is hard for me to see where students could be standing and writing on other surfaces. I think “answering only keep thinking questions” will help students learn to look around for other ideas from other groups, thus building their autonomy. Students will need coaching on this activity.
ReplyDeleteBeginning the year implementing Toolkit #1 and the new math curriculum seems like a very natural way to set up a thinking classroom. As mentioned, beginning the year with these routines will be met with less resistance and students will adjust quickly to the new "normal". Presenting students with thinking tasks and randomly grouping them right off the bat at the start of the year will also help build community in the classroom. I have really enjoyed this book and am excited to use these strategies in my future classroom!
ReplyDeleteThank you all for carving out the time for this book study. I know how busy life is and your commitment and enthusiasm to continue learning is inspiring. Feeling grateful! 🧡
ReplyDeleteThis chapter had me thinking about how I can revamp an existing lesson, counting collections, using toolkit #1. I would begin right away with a thinking task.
ReplyDeleteThen, I plan to randomly pair students using picture cards that show where they will be working. For example, the card might show a picture of the easel, which would be that pairs work space. Students will find their partner and work space and select a collection to count. They will have a variety of VPN surfaces to work on, such as white boards, poster paper, the easel and the interactive board. I will be able to walk around and observe, answering questions that encourage more thinking.
As a way to check for understanding, students count and record one collection on their own. This might have to be something we work up to after we have practiced in pairs a few times.
Toolkit #1 feels like an easy way to dip my toes into this book and our new curriculum, without feeling overwhelmed.
Like Cindy said, I plan to put more value and weight on our Mathematical Community chart in Unit 1. With my students help and in kid language, we will co-create our chart together, adding to it as we go making it a living chart that we can reference. I may even add photos throughout the year. As we move into creating rubrics for desired competencies, I hope to have those placed near our poster for students and I to access quickly. There are many things I will do different in year 2, immediate changes will be my classroom setup and intentional placement of groups to help foster knowledge mobility. Added to my clipboard will be the ten questions (ways) to answer stop-thinking questions or proximity questions as well as a better system to record the day to day classroom evidence of learning using the six symbols. I enjoyed this book so much, I plan to buy my own copy. Thanks, Renae!
ReplyDeleteThis chapter has me thinking about our math intervention group lessons and putting the teaching practices together to help build our own thinking classroom. One area that I think could be more of a challenge is creating collaborative groups. With on a few students in very small groups, this may not always work as efficiently as it would in a regular classroom with more students with multiple groupings.
ReplyDeleteI think there is great value in using some or part of the toolkits when practical for our groups. After establishing norms and guidelines for collaborations, we can still use tasks for students thinking, learning, and to share ideas. I think it would also be easy to incorporate the vertical surfaces, and teaching the students how to ask questions.
It will take some time to establish these routines, and to help students articulate their thinking and ideas. I am looking forward to how we can incorporate some of these great strategies into our work with the new curriculum. I think that these strategies, and the new IM curriculum pair nicely!
After reading Chapter 15, I am going to focus on implementing toolkit one. I looked through the first few lessons and feel a little unsure of how they will go so I am going to first spend some time really teaching the curriculum before adding in extra things. I am going to use random grouping and the vertical surfaces whenever possible. There were a lot of great thinking tasks in this book. I wonder if there is a document started that says which of the thinking tasks in the book align with our units to help us get started. I feel like this book was a peek into the new IM curriculum and gave me a lot of ideas on how to best support my students as we take on this new style of learning together!
ReplyDeleteI plan to implement some of toolkit #1 to start. I found this book really interesting, and I got me thinking more about why students do what they do (slacking, stalling, faking, mimicking and actually trying on my own from chapter 1) and how I can change my teaching to helping them think and learn. De-fronting the room and randomizing my partners are two things I will try to implement. Also, mobilizing knowledge in my class so that I am not the only know with the answer. From what I have seen from IM it seems like a lot of these tools will be easy to implement. Thanks so much for a great book study!
ReplyDeleteThe benefit to finishing this book study before the start of the year is that I can establish some of these norms rather than make adjustments to previously established norms halfway through the year. The downside is that there are several elements that will be hard to accomplish, such as randomizing groups since we are working with small groups to begin with and will not be able to change who they work with. Since our MAP team has moved locations, however, it will be easy to implement the changes in our setting or to establish that it is continually changing. I would like to encorporate the rubric of data collection in chapter 14 that referenced understanding in a group setting, or with help, and then independently. I think this will give me a larger understanding of where to move forward with that student. Giving that student a chance to see what comes next and to look at that rubric to understand where they are at will be interesting to see. Will that empower them to move forward, or will it not make a difference?
ReplyDelete