Rounding Up

By: MLC - Mike Wallus
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  • Summary

  • Welcome to Rounding Up, the professional learning podcast brought to you by The Math Learning Center. Two things have always been true in education: Ongoing professional learning is essential, and teachers are extremely busy people. Rounding Up is a podcast designed to provide meaningful, bite-sized professional learning for busy educators and instructional leaders. I'm Mike Wallus, vice president for educator support at The Math Learning Center and host of the show. In each episode, we'll explore topics important to teachers, instructional leaders, and anyone interested in elementary mathematics education. Topics such as posing purposeful questions, effectively recording student thinking, cultivating students' math identity, and designing asset-based instruction from multilingual learners. Don't miss out! Subscribe now wherever you get your podcasts. Each episode will also be published on the Bridges Educator Site. We hope you'll give Rounding Up a try, and that the ideas we discuss have a positive impact on your teaching and your students' learning.
    2022 The Math Learning Center | www.mathlearningcenter.org
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Mathematics Science
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Episodes
  • Season 3 | Episode 9 – Breaking the Cycle of Math Trauma - Guest: Dr. Kasi Allen

    Season 3 | Episode 9 – Breaking the Cycle of Math Trauma - Guest: Dr. Kasi Allen
    Jan 9 2025
    Dr. Kasi Allen, Breaking the Cycle of Math Trauma ROUNDING UP: SEASON 3 | EPISODE 9 If you are an educator, you’ve likely heard people say things like “I’m a math person.” While this may make you cringe, if you dig a bit deeper, many people can identify specific experiences that convinced them that this was true. In fact, some of you might secretly wonder if you are a math person as well. Today we’re talking with Dr. Kasi Allen about math trauma: what it is and how educators can take steps to address it. BIOGRAPHY Kasi Allen serves as the vice president of learning and impact at The Ford Family Foundation. She holds a PhD degree in educational policy and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and its history, both from Stanford University. RESOURCES “Jo Boaler Wants Everyone to Love Math” — Stanford Magazine R-RIGHTS Learning to Love Math by Judy Willis TRANSCRIPT Mike Wallus: If you're an educator, I'm almost certain you've heard people say things like, “I am not a math person.” While this may make you cringe, if you dig a bit deeper, many of those folks can identify specific experiences that convinced them that this was true. In fact, some of you might secretly wonder if you're actually a math person. Today we're talking with Dr. Kasi Allen about math trauma: what it is and how educators can take steps to address it. Well, hello, Kasi. Welcome to the podcast. Kasi Allen: Hi, Mike. Thanks for having me. Great to be here. Mike: I wonder if we could start by talking about what drew you to the topic of math trauma in the first place? Kasi: Really good question. You know, I've been curious about this topic for almost as long as I can remember, especially about how people's different relationships with math seem to affect their lives and how that starts at a very early age. I think it was around fourth grade for me probably, that I became aware of how much I liked math and how much my best friend and my sister had an absolutely opposite relationship with it—even though we were attending the same school, same teachers, and so on. And I really wanted to understand why that was happening. And honestly, I think that's what made me want to become a high school math teacher. I was convinced I could do it in a way that maybe wouldn't hurt people as much. Or it might even make them like it and feel like they could do anything that they wanted to do. But it wasn't until many years later, as a professor of education, when I was teaching teachers how to teach math, that this topic really resurfaced for me [in] a whole new way among my family, among my friends. And if you're somebody who's taught math, you're the math emergency person. And so, I had collected over the years stories of people's not-so-awesome experiences with math. But it was when I was asked to teach an algebra for elementary teachers course, that was actually the students’ idea. And the idea of this course was that we'd help preservice elementary teachers get a better window into how the math they were teaching was planting the seeds for how people might access algebra later. On the very first day, the first year I taught this class, there were three sections. I passed out the syllabus; in all three sections, the same thing happened. Somebody either started crying in a way that needed consoling by another peer, or they got up and left, or both. And I was just pretty dismayed. I hadn't spoken a word. The syllabi were just sitting on the table. And it really made me want to go after this in a new way. I mean, something—it just made me feel like something different was happening here. This was not the math anxiety that everybody talked about when I was younger. This was definitely different, and it became my passion project: trying to figure how we disrupt that cycle. Mike: Well, I think that's a good segue because I've heard you say that the term “math anxiety” centers this as a problem that's within the person. And that in fact, this isn't about the person. Instead, it's about the experience, something that's happened to people that's causing this type of reaction. Do I have that right, Kasi? Kasi: One hundred percent. And I think this is really important. When I grew up and when I became a teacher, I think that was an era when there was a lot of focus on math anxiety, the prevalence of math anxiety. Sheila Tobias wrote the famous book Overcoming Math Anxiety. This was especially a problem among women. There were dozens of books. And there were a number of problems with that work at the time, and that most of the research people were citing was taking place outside of math education. The work was all really before the field of neuroscience was actually a thing. Lots of deficit thinking that something is wrong with the person who is suffering this anxiety. And most of these books were very self-helpy. And so, not only is there something wrong with you, but you need to fix it yourself. So, it really centers all ...
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    27 mins
  • Season 3 | Episode 8 – Helping our students build a meaningful understanding of Geometry - Guest: Dr. Rebecca Ambrose

    Season 3 | Episode 8 – Helping our students build a meaningful understanding of Geometry - Guest: Dr. Rebecca Ambrose
    Dec 19 2024
    ROUNDING UP: SEASON 3 | EPISODE 8 As a field, mathematics education has come a long way over the past few years in describing the ways students come to understand number, quantity, place value, and even fractions. But when it comes to geometry, particularly concepts involving shape, it’s often less clear how student thinking develops. Today, we’re talking with Dr. Rebecca Ambrose about ways we can help our students build a meaningful understanding of geometry. BIOGRAPHIES Rebecca Ambrose researches how children solve mathematics problems and works with teachers to apply what she has learned about the informal strategies children employ to differentiate and improve instruction in math. She is currently a professor at the University of California, Davis in the School of Education. RESOURCES Geometry Resources Curated by Dr. Ambrose Seeing What Others Cannot See Opening the Mind's Eye TRANSCRIPT Mike Wallus: As a field, mathematics education has come a long way over the past few years in describing the ways that students come to understand number, place value, and even fractions. But when it comes to geometry, especially concepts involving shape, it's often less clear how student thinking develops. Today, we're talking with Dr. Rebecca Ambrose about ways we can help our students build a meaningful understanding of geometry. Well, welcome to the podcast, Rebecca. Thank you so much for joining us today. Rebecca Ambrose: It's nice to be here. I appreciate the invitation. Mike: So, I'd like to start by asking: What led you to focus your work on the ways that students build a meaningful understanding of geometry, particularly shape? Rebecca: So, I taught middle school math for 10 years. And the first seven years were in coed classrooms. And I was always struck by especially the girls who were actually very successful in math, but they would tell me, “I like you, Ms. Ambrose, but I don't like math. I'm not going to continue to pursue it.” And I found that troubling, and I also found it troubling that they were not as involved in class discussion. And I went for three years and taught at an all-girls school so I could see what difference it made. And we did have more student voice in those classrooms, but I still had some very successful students who told me the same thing. So, I was really concerned that we were doing something wrong and that led me to graduate school with a focus on gender issues in math education. And I had the blessing of studying with Elizabeth Fennema, who was really the pioneer in studying gender issues in math education. And as I started studying with her, I learned that the one area that females tended to underperform males on aptitude tests—not achievement tests, but aptitude tests—was in the area of spatial reasoning. And you'll remember those are the tests, or items that you may have had where you have one view of a shape and then you have a choice of four other views, and you have to choose the one that is the same shape from a different view. And those particular tasks we see consistent gender differences on. I became convinced it was because we didn't give kids enough opportunity to engage in that kind of activity at school. You either had some strengths there or not, and because of the play activity of boys, that may be why some of them are more successful at that than others. And then the other thing that informed that was when I was teaching middle school, and I did do a few spatial activities, kids would emerge with talents that I was unaware of. So, I remember in particular this [student,] Stacy, who was an eighth-grader who was kind of a good worker and was able to learn along with the rest of the class, but she didn't stand out as particularly interested or gifted in mathematics. And yet, when we started doing these spatial tasks, and I pulled out my spatial puzzles, she was all over it. And she was doing things much more quickly than I could. And I said, “Stacy, wow.” She said, “Oh, I love this stuff, and I do it at home.” And she wasn't the kind of kid to ever draw attention to herself, but when I saw, “Oh, this is a side of Stacy that I didn't know about, and it is very pertinent to mathematics. And she needs to know what doorways could be open to her that would employ these skills that she has and also to help her shine in front of her classmates.” So, that made me really curious about what we could do to provide kids with more opportunities like that little piece that I gave her and her classmates back in the day. So, that's what led me to look at geometry thinking. And the more that I have had my opportunities to dabble with teachers and kids, people have a real appetite for it. There are always a couple of people who go, “Ooh.” But many more who are just so eager to do something in addition to number that we can call mathematics. Mike: You know, I'm thinking about our conversation before we set up and started to record the formal ...
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    36 mins
  • Season 3 | Episode 7 – How you say it matters: Teacher Language Choices that Support Number Sense Guest: Dr. James Brickwedde

    Season 3 | Episode 7 – How you say it matters: Teacher Language Choices that Support Number Sense Guest: Dr. James Brickwedde
    Dec 5 2024
    ROUNDING UP: SEASON 3 | EPISODE 7 Carry the 1. Add a 0. Cross multiply. All of these are phrases that educators heard when they were growing up. This language is so ingrained that many educators use it without even thinking. But what’s the long-term impact of language like this on the development of our students’ number sense? Today, we’re talking with Dr. James Brickwedde about the impact of language and the ways educators can use it to cultivate their students’ number sense. BIOGRAPHIES James Brickwedde is the director of the Project for Elementary Mathematics. He served on the faculty of Hamline University’s School of Education & Leadership from 2011–2021, supporting teacher candidates in their content and pedagogy coursework in elementary mathematics. RESOURCES The Project for Elementary Mathematics TRANSCRIPT Mike Wallus: Carry the 1, add a 0, cross multiply. All of these are phrases that educators heard when they were growing up. This language is so ingrained, we often use it without even thinking. But what's the long-term impact of language like this on our students’ number sense? Today we're talking with Dr. James Brickwedde about the impact of language and the ways educators can use it to cultivate their students’ number sense. Welcome to the podcast, James. I'm excited to be talking with you today. James Brickwedde: Glad to be here. Mike: Well, I want to start with something that you said as we were preparing for this podcast. You described how an educator’s language can play a critical role in helping students think in value rather than digits. And I'm wondering if you can start by explaining what you mean when you say that. James: Well, thinking first of primary students—so, kindergarten, second grade, that age bracket—kindergartners, in particular, come to school thinking that numbers are just piles of ones. They're trying to figure out the standard order. They're trying to figure out cardinality. There are a lot of those initial counting principles that lead to strong number sense that they are trying to integrate neurologically. And so, one of the goals of kindergarten, first grade, and above is to build the solid quantity sense—number sense—of how one number is relative to the next number in terms of its size, magnitude, et cetera. And then as you get beyond 10 and you start dealing with the place value components that are inherent behind our multidigit numbers, it's important for teachers to really think carefully of the language that they're using so that, neurologically, students are connecting the value that goes with the quantities that they're after. So, helping the brain to understand that 23 can be thought of not only as that pile of ones, but I can decompose it into a pile of 20 ones and three ones, and eventually that 20 can be organized into two groups of 10. And so, using manipulatives, tracking your language so that when somebody asks, “How do I write 23?” it's not a 2 and a 3 that you put together, which is what a lot of young children think is happening. But rather, they realize that there's the 20 and the 3. Mike: So, you're making me think about the words in the number sequence that we use to describe quantities. And I wonder about the types of tasks or the language that can help children build a meaningful understanding of whole numbers, like say, 11 or 23. James: The English language is not as kind to our learners [laughs] as other languages around the world are when it comes to multidigit numbers. We have in English 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. And when we get beyond 10, we have this unique word called “eleven” and another unique word called “twelve.” And so, they really are words capturing collections of ones really then capturing any sort of tens and ones relationship. There's been a lot of wonderful documentation around the Chinese-based languages. So, that would be Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Hmong follows the similar language patterns, where when they get after 10, it literally translates as “10, 1,” “10, 2.” When they get to 20, it's “2, 10”—”2, 10, 1,” “2, 10, 2.” And so, the place value language is inherent in the words that they are saying to describe the quantities. The teen numbers, when you get to 13, a lot of young children try to write 13 as “3, 1” because they're trying to follow the language patterns of other numbers where you start left to right. And so, they're bringing meaning to something, which of course is not the social convention. So, the teens are all screwed up in terms of English. Spanish does begin to do some regularizing when they get to 16 because of the name “diez y seis,” so “ten, six.” But prior to that you have, again, sort of more unique names that either don't follow the order of how you write the number or they're unique like 11 and 12 is. Somali is another interesting language in that—and I apologize to anybody who is fluent in that ...
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    26 mins

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