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 15 – What If I Don’t Understand Their Thinking? - Guest: Ryan Flessner

    Season 3 | Episode 15 – What If I Don’t Understand Their Thinking? - Guest: Ryan Flessner
    Apr 3 2025
    Ryan Flessner, What If I Don’t Understand Their Thinking? ROUNDING UP: SEASON 3 | EPISODE 15 “What do I do if I don’t understand my student’s strategy?” This is a question teachers grapple with constantly, particularly when conferring with students during class. How educators respond in moments like these can have a profound impact on students’ learning and their mathematical identities. In this episode, we talk with Ryan Flessner from Butler University about what educators can say or do when faced with this situation. BIOGRAPHY Ryan Flessner is a professor of teacher education in the College of Education at Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana. He holds a PhD in curriculum and instruction with an emphasis in teacher education from the University of Wisconsin–Madison; a master of arts in curriculum and teaching from Teachers College, Columbia University; and a bachelor of science in elementary education from Butler University. Prior to his time at the university level, he taught grades 3–7 in Indianapolis; New York City; and Madison, Wisconsin. RESOURCES Nearpod Pear Deck GeoGebra Magma Math TRANSCRIPT Mike Wallus: “What do I do if I don't understand my student’s strategy?” This is a question teachers grapple with constantly, particularly when conferring with students during class. How we respond in moments like these can have a profound impact on our students' learning and their mathematical identities. Today we'll talk with Ryan Flessner from Butler University about what educators can say or do when faced with this very common situation. Welcome to the podcast, Ryan. Really excited to talk to you today. Ryan Flessner: Thanks, Mike. I'm flattered to be here. Thank you so much for the invitation. Mike: So, this experience of working with a student and not being able to make sense of their solution feels like something that almost every teacher has had. And I'll speak for myself and say that when it happens to me, I feel a lot of anxiety. And I just want to start by asking, what would you say to educators who are feeling apprehensive or unsure about what to do when they encounter a situation like this? Ryan: Yeah, so I think that everybody has that experience. I think the problem that we have is that teachers often feel the need to have all of the answers and to know everything and to be the expert in the room. But as an educator, I learned really quickly that I didn't have all the answers. And to pretend like I did put a lot of pressure on me and made me feel a lot of stress and would leave me answering children by saying, “Let me get back to you on that.” And then I would scurry and try and find all the answers so I could come back with a knowledgeable idea. And it was just so much more work than to just simply say, “I don't know. Let's investigate that together.” Or to ask kids, “That's something interesting that I'm seeing you do. I've never seen a student do that before. Can you talk to me a little bit about that?” And just having that ability to free myself from having to have all the answers and using that Reggio-inspired practice—for those who know early childhood education—to follow the child, to listen to what he or she or they say to us and try to see. I can usually keep up with a 7- or an 8-year-old as they're explaining math to me. I just may never have seen them notate something the way they did. So, trying to ask that question about, “Show me what you know. Teach me something new.” The idea that a teacher could be a learner at the same time I think is novel to kids, and I think they respond really well to that idea. Mike: So, before we dig in a little bit more deeply about how teachers respond to student strategies if they don't understand, I just want to linger and think about the assumptions that many educators, myself included, might bring to this situation. Assumptions about their role, assumptions about what it would mean for a student if they don't know the answer right away. How do you think about some of the assumptions that are causing some of that anxiety for us? Ryan: Yeah. When the new generation of standards came out, especially in the field of math, teachers were all of a sudden asked to teach in a way that they themselves didn't learn. And so, if you have that idea that you have to have all the answers and you have to know everything, that puts you in a really vulnerable spot because how are we supposed to just magically teach things we've never learned ourselves? And so, trying to figure out ways that we can back up and try and make sense of the work that we're doing with kids, for me that was really helpful in understanding what I wanted from my students. I wanted them to make sense of the learning. So, if I hadn't made sense of it yet, how in the world could I teach them to make sense of it? And so we have to have that humility to say, “I don't know how to do this. I need to continue my learning trajectory and to keep...
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    22 mins
  • Season 3 | Episode 14 – Supporting Neurodiverse Students in Elementary Mathematics Classrooms - Guest: Dr. Cathery Yeh

    Season 3 | Episode 14 – Supporting Neurodiverse Students in Elementary Mathematics Classrooms - Guest: Dr. Cathery Yeh
    Mar 20 2025
    Dr. Cathery Yeh, Supporting Neurodiverse Students in Elementary Mathematics Classrooms ROUNDING UP: SEASON 3 | EPISODE 14 What meaning does the term neurodiverse convey and how might it impact a student’s learning experience? And how can educators think about the work of designing environments and experiences that support neurodiverse students learning mathematics? In this episode, we discuss these questions with Dr. Cathery Yeh, a professor in STEM education from the University of Texas at Austin. BIOGRAPHY Dr. Cathery Yeh is an assistant professor in STEM education and a core faculty member in the Center for Asian American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. Her research examines the intersections of race, language, and disability to provide a nuanced analysis of the constructions of ability in mathematics classrooms and education systems. TRANSCRIPT Mike Wallus: What meaning does the term neurodiverse convey and how might that language impact a student's learning experience? In this episode, we'll explore those questions. And we'll think about ways that educators can design learning environments that support all of their students. Joining us for this conversation is Dr. Cathery Yeh, a professor in STEM education from the University of Texas at Austin. Welcome to the podcast, Cathery. It's really exciting to have you with us today. Cathery Yeh: Thank you, Mike. Honored to be invited. Mike: So, I wonder if we can start by offering listeners a common understanding of language that we'll use from time to time throughout the episode. How do you think about the meaning of neurodiversity? Cathery: Thank you for this thoughtful question. Language matters a lot. For me, neurodiversity refers to the natural variation in our human brains and our neurocognition, challenging this idea that there's a normal brain. I always think of… In Texas, we just had a snow day two days ago. And I think of, just as, there's no two snowflakes that are the same, there's no two brains that are exactly the same, too. I also think of its meaning from a personal perspective. I am not a special educator. I was a bilingual teacher and taught in inclusive settings. And my first exposure to the meaning of neurodiversity came from my own child, who—she openly blogs about it—as a Chinese-American girl, it was actually really hard for her to be diagnosed. Asian Americans, 1 out of 10 are diagnosed—that's the lowest of any ethnic racial group. And I'll often think about when… She's proud of her disabled identity. It is who she is. But what she noticed that when she tells people about her disabled identity, what do you think is the first thing people say when she says, “I'm neurodivergent. I have ADHD. I have autism.” What do you think folks usually say to her? The most common response? Mike: I'm going to guess that they express some level of surprise, and it might be associated with her ethnic background or racial identity. Cathery: She doesn't get that as much. The first thing people say is, they apologize to her. They say, “I'm sorry.” Mike: Wow. Cathery: And that happens quite a lot. And I say that because–and then I connected back to the term neurodiversity—because I think it's important to know its origins. It came about by Judy Singer. She's a sociologist. And about 30 years ago, she coined the term neurodiversity as an opposition to the medical model of understanding people and human difference as deficits. And her understanding is that difference is beautiful. All of us think and learn and process differently, and that's part of human diversity. So that original definition of neurodiversity was tied to the autism rights movement. But now, when we think about the term, it's expanded to include folks with ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia, mental health, conditions like depression, anxiety, and other neuro minorities like Tourette syndrome, and even memory loss. I wanted to name out all these things because sometimes we're looking for a really clean definition, and definitions are messy. There's a personal one. There's a societal one of how we position neurodiversity as something that's deficit, that needs to be fixed. But it's part of who one is. But it's also socially constructed. Because how do you decide when a difference becomes a difference that counts where you qualify as being neurodiverse, right? So, I think there's a lot to consider around that. Mike: You know, the answer that you shared is really a good segue because the question I was going to ask you involves something that I suspect you hear quite often is people asking you, “What are the best ways that I can support my neurodiverse students?” And it occurs to me that part of the challenge of that question is it assumes that there's this narrow range of things that you do for this narrow range of students who are different. The way that you just talked about the meaning of neurodiversity probably means that you have a different ...
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    26 mins
  • Season 3 | Episode 13 – Assessment in the Early Years - Guest: Shelly Scheafer

    Season 3 | Episode 13 – Assessment in the Early Years - Guest: Shelly Scheafer
    Mar 6 2025
    Assessment in the Early Years Guest: Shelly Scheafer ROUNDING UP: SEASON 3 | EPISODE 13 Mike (00:09.127) Welcome to the podcast Shelley. Thank you so much for joining us today. Shelly (00:12.956) Thank you, Mike, for having me. Mike (00:16.078) So I'd like to start with this question. What makes the work of assessing younger children, particularly students in grades K through two, different from assessing students in upper elementary grades or even beyond? Shelly (00:30.3) There's a lot to that question, Mike. I think there's some obvious things. So effective assessment of our youngest learners is different because obviously our pre-K, first, even our second grade students are developmentally different from fourth and fifth graders. So when we think about assessing these early primary students, we need to use appropriate assessment methods that match their stage of development. For example, when we think of typical paper pencil assessments and how we often ask students to show their thinking with pictures, numbers and words, our youngest learners are just starting to connect symbolic representations to mathematical ideas, let alone, you know, put letters together to make words. So When we think of these assessments, we need to take into consideration that primary students are in the early stages of development with respect to their language, their reading, and their writing skills. And this in itself makes it challenging for them to fully articulate, write, sketch any of their mathematical thinking. So we often find that with young children in reviews, you know, individual interviews can be really helpful. But even then, there's some drawbacks. Some children find it challenging, you know, to be put on the spot, to show in the moment, you know, on demand, you know, what they know. Others, you know, just aren't fully engaged or interested because you've called them over from something that they're busy doing. Or maybe, you know, they're not yet comfortable with the setting or even the person doing the interview. So when we work with young children, we need to recognize all of these little peculiarities that come with working with that age. We also need to understand that their mathematical development is fluid, it's continually evolving. And this is why Shelly (02:47.42) they often or some may respond differently to the same proper question, especially if the setting or the context is changed. We may find that a kindergarten student who counts to 29 on Monday may count to 69 or even 100 later in the week, kind of depending on what's going on in their mind at the time. So this means that assessment with young children needs to be frequent. informative and ongoing. So we're not necessarily waiting for the end of the unit to see, aha, did they get this? You know, what do we do? You know, we're looking at their work all of the time. And fortunately, some of the best assessments on young children are the observations in their natural setting, like times when maybe they're playing a math game or working with a center activity or even during just your classroom routines. And it's these authentic situations that we can look at as assessments to help us capture a more accurate picture of their abilities because we not only get to hear what they say or see what they write on paper, we get to watch them in action. We get to see what they do when they're engaged in small group activities or playing games with friends. Mike (04:11.832) So I wanna go back to something you said and even in particular the way that you said it. You were talking about watching or noticing what students can do and you really emphasize the words do. Talk a little bit about what you were trying to convey with that, Shelley. Shelly (04:27.548) So young children are doers. When they work on a math task, they show their thinking and their actions with finger formations and objects. And we can see if a student has one-to-one correspondence when they're counting, if they group their objects, how they line them up, do they tag them, do they move them as they count them. They may not always have the verbal skills to articulate their thinking, but we can also attend to things like head nodding, finger counting, and even how they cluster or match objects. So I'm going to give you an example. So let's say that I'm watching some early first graders, and they're solving the expression 6 plus 7. And the first student picks up a number rack or a rec and rec. And if you're not familiar with a number rack, it's a tool with two rows of beads. And on the first row, there are five red beads and five white beads. And on the second row, there's five red beads and five white beads. And the student solving six plus seven begins by pushing over five red beads in one push and then one more bead on the top row. And then they do the same thing for the seven. They push over five red beads and two white beads. And they haven't said a word to me. I'm just watching their...
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    30 mins

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