I hadn’t planned on attending the Asilomar conference this year, as both my proposed presentations had been rejected. However I was on the waiting list, and was invited at the last minute, presumably because there was a cancellation.
Once again, it was a smaller conference than pre-Covid, and I saw fewer familiar faces among the attendees. Some of my favorite presenters were not there, and there was little emphasis on mathematical content, so I found the program as a whole rather disappointing. Still, Pacific Grove is a great place to be, and it was nice to see ex-colleagues, meet people who find my website useful, and say hello to a fan who had already purchased my new book.
Here are some notes from that day.
Grace Kelemanik
Grace is famous as the co-creator of classroom routines such as “contemplate then calculate”, which Robin Pemantle and I referenced in Chapter 3 of There Is No One Way to Teach Math. In this presentation, she introduced a not-unrelated idea: give students two or three minutes of think time before they tackle a problem, and make clear that this is different from starting to work on the problem. It’s a time to “ask yourself” various (teacher-supplied?) questions before you jump in. (For example, “what am I being asked?”, “what is the important information I was given?”, and so on.)
At the other end, once the problem has been solved, she has students report their solution in pairs. One kid stays at their desk, and talks through the solution, while the other is at the board silently pointing at the relevant images, equations, or whatever. Another student can then be asked to rephrase or clarify, and this time the teacher may do the pointing. She calls this: “Let’s see what you’re saying”.
These are “Engagement Routines that Promote Student Agency” (the title of the session.) They do not take much time, but they do slow down the pace of the lesson which allows more students to get on board. Zeroing in on such classroom discussion micro-techniques is a way to highlight what many of us do intuitively, or have learned from each other in classroom visits or from mentoring. Naming the techniques, as Grace does, makes it that much easier to promote them.
For some of the techniques I use to maximize participation in class discussion, see these blog posts: Project SEED | Every Minute Counts.
Frank Cassano and Anya Sturm
Frank and Anya shared excellent Algebra 2 activities. They start the course on Day 1 with interesting number-based problems that require no knowledge beyond basic algebra. This helps set the tone for the course: the message to students is that this course will involve thinking! (See my Day 1 manifesto here.) They shared an anchor activity on exponential functions, one that is not unlike my Rolling Dice, and ended the session with a nice set of problem-based introductory activities for a unit on quadratics.
The main point of their session was about “Integrating Argumentation and Problem-Solving” into any math course. The idea is to have explicitly labeled “argumentation” (proof) and “problem solving” sections in daily work and in assessments. This work is evaluated with specific rubrics that distinguish those skills from content mastery. One benefit of this policy is that it highlights what makes math important even to students who have no interest in pursuing a STEM career.
This is a department-wide practice, and thus students accept this kind of work as a normal part of doing math. It follows that they do not object to writing in math class, or to being asked to solve problems without having been told ahead of time how to do it. I hope Frank, Anya, and their colleagues will share this approach broadly.
Kevin Dykema
Kevin is a past President of NCTM, a long-time 8th-grade teacher, and a promoter of “productive struggle”. In fact, he opened his talk by pointing out that struggle is indeed part of learning anything worth learning, whether math, swimming, or riding a bike. He made clear that for learning to happen, the teacher needs to be right there, supporting the student: a swimming instructor does not throw the kid into the pool and walk away! (I made that point in my last blog post, but this is a great way to put it!) The session’s topic was “Manipulatives in Middle School”, and he likened manipulatives to training wheels. They are one way to support the learner, but they are not the goal of instruction.
I could not find a seat in the overcrowded session, so I left early on, but not before seeing Kevin’s introduction to Algebra Tiles. It involved telling students “we’re not in Base Ten Blocks land any more!” I wish he knew about the Lab Gear, which is largely compatible with Base Ten Blocks, but so it goes.
Henri Picciotto
My session was titled “Practical Strategies to Reach the Full Range of Students”. I managed to talk for 80 minutes about teaching heterogeneous classes, with only a few interruptions for participants to discuss this or that. If you have attended my workshops and presentations in the past, you’ll know that this is not typical for me: I usually reserve the majority of the time for attendee participation. Still, it went well, I think. I had intended to point to specific chapters in There Is No One Way, but as it turns out the topic required mentions of ideas from just about all the chapters. If you’re interested in buying the book, you should make your move, as the publisher offers a 20% discount until January 31 if you use the code SMA24.
For more information on the book, see these blog posts: 1 | 2.
For more information on that session, including many links to free materials and all the slides, see my Talks page.
Henri's Math Education Blog 