The Extraordinary Educators Podcast
Best practices, tips, and stories to help you be extraordinary in your classroom and beyond, featuring Curriculum Associates' Director of the Educator Community Sari Laberis.
The Extraordinary Educators Podcast
Transforming Middle School Math: Engaging Strategies with Stacy Monsman
Unlock the secrets of engaging middle school math classrooms with Stacy Monsman, Curriculum Associates' Math Content and Pedagogy Specialist. This episode promises transformative strategies that will breathe life into your teaching practice. Stacy shares her wisdom on the unique dynamics of middle school environments, where educators juggle content mastery and the nuances of adolescent growth. Discover how movement-based activities can elevate learning, encouraging students to engage with math concepts actively and meaningfully.
Prepare to be inspired as Stacy walks us through practical techniques like quick writes and interactive peer discussions. These strategies help activate prior knowledge and foster collaborative learning experiences that captivate students' attention. Stacy's innovative approaches, such as using journal prompts to drive student movement and conversation, are designed to keep learners invested in their educational journey. Don't miss out on these invaluable insights that offer creative and effective methods to transform middle school classrooms into hubs of higher-level thinking and engagement.
Read Stacy's blog: CurriculumAssociates.com/blog/math-for-middle-schoolers
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Have feedback, questions, or want to be a guest? Email ExtraordinaryEducators@cainc.com to connect with us!
Hello and welcome back to the Extraordinary Educator podcast. This is Sari. For this episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with one of my awesome colleagues, stacey Monsman, who is the content and pedagogy specialist for math at Curriculum Associates, and Stacey's main area of focus for this back to school fall season was middle school, and so we really dove into what makes a middle school classroom unique and then also how can you address that through your teaching practice. So Stacey provided some great ideas for engagement strategies, for a way to get students moving around the classroom and really get those extra at-bats with higher level thinking. I really enjoy talking to Stacey, and I know you will too. So here's my conversation with Stacey. Welcome, stacey, it is so great to have you on the podcast.
Speaker 2:Well, it's great to be here, Sari. Thanks for spending some time with me today.
Speaker 1:Of course. So just diving right in what has been on your mind lately, this fall.
Speaker 2:Well, I'll tell you, what's really been on my mind lately is middle school math classes and what makes them special or distinct from elementary level math classes and definitely those high school math classes. So I've been thinking a lot about that during this back to school season of ours.
Speaker 1:Awesome, and Stacey just wrote a blog about this topic as well, which we will link in the show notes. So tell us what is different about middle school classrooms, what makes them unique?
Speaker 2:Well, I think really what makes them unique are the middle schoolers themselves. We know they're not elementary students anymore, but they're not ready to be those high school students yet either are they. So I think that's what makes them so special. And I think that's what makes middle school teachers so special is the fact that not only are they those content experts, but they're also experts at navigating this age group. So I think what makes it so special are the teachers and the kids.
Speaker 1:Absolutely so. In terms of thinking about how that then translates into instruction. What are some strategies or tips our middle school educators could use in thinking about the unique needs of their students?
Speaker 2:I think something that I always try to consider for middle schoolers is we know we want them to be on the move. They love to be on the move, so it's always great if you can get them on the move but still give them a really clear math idea, productive focus to their movement. So a few general ideas to try to help. This is if you're trying to maybe activate prior knowledge or you want to connect to some learning that's coming up, one thing you might want to try is a quick write Throw out some kind of a concept, whatever concept you're doing irrational numbers, percents, what have you and have the kids take really a short amount of time two to four minutes, gather your thoughts, two columns, what I've already learned and what I still need to learn, and after those couple of minutes have passed and they've collected their thoughts, just have them go visit. Have them go visit and their goal for the visit isn't just share and move on, but you have to find somebody who maybe had the same or very similar idea to you, circle it and then find somebody else who has a brand new idea that you agree with and add that to your list and always put the initials of whomever you spoke with so you can see from the conversation who was talking and where those ideas came from. And if that's too much for you, you can always scale it down to a single prompt. If that's just more than you need the two columns do a single prompt. Just say write what you know, but you can still do the same idea about visiting other classmates and finding somebody with the same idea and finding somebody with a brand new idea.
Speaker 2:Another one I would say is I know when I was teaching middle school I would always come across really good journal prompts that I wanted my students to tackle, journal prompts that I wanted my students to tackle and to incorporate. That where we finally got some movement and some great conversation as opposed to just a solitary writing experience is I tried writing just one journal prompt on several pieces of paper. So maybe there's five journal prompts, that's five pieces of paper. You write the prompt on top and you have enough for your rows, your groups. However you do it and the students visit each prompt. They write their answer at the bottom. Phrases are fine, bullet points are fine, that's all they write. And when they're done again a couple minutes, fold up that paper and you move on to the next one Again. Answer as close to the bottom as you can Fold it up.
Speaker 2:So we're moving, we're thinking, we're experiencing a lot of different journal entries and then, when we get to the end of this and everyone's seen every question in the set, the next thing they can do is you can give a completed set to a group of students. So now they're focused on one journal prompt, but they've got the responses from all their classmates and they can come together and put it on chart paper. They're going to come up with one response using the input from all their classmates. So a lot of that too. Yes, they're moving around, but you're also incorporating a lot of writing in the content area and you're also giving them a chance to write, read, listen, speak all those types of skills that we want to encourage for our math students. So I would say getting them on the move is really something important.
Speaker 1:Those are both such great ideas, and I think, too, it helps in terms of student buy-in and ownership of their learning, because they're creating that artifact of either what they know or don't know, or their answer to the prompt and how cool would it be to use that later. In a data chat, for example, you said you didn't know this, now look at how far you've come or in class discussions as a reference point. That's not just teacher driven. Those are really great. You had mentioned too, when we were talking about planning this podcast, something about the last word, and I think middle school teachers would know very well how middle schoolers love to get in the last word, so just love to hear from you on your thoughts about that.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely the last word. We know middle schoolers love to get the last word right, so they also love to quote, unquote, get the answer right. They love to get the last word, they love to get the answer, and I think we can let them have the last word, as long as the last word is not the answer. That is interesting during a middle school class is to start asking questions after that answer is established, not only to the student who offered this answer but to the entire class, like how do you know that's reasonable? How many different strategies do you think there are to figure out that answer? How are the strategies alike and different? Or, okay, how could you explain this to someone who is in this grade level, same as you, but not in our class right now? Or how would you like to explain this to somebody who is in the grade just below yours? How do you think you'd do that? Or things like what questions and challenges came up as you work? Did you need to make any changes? How was solving this problem similar to some other problems we've been working with in class? Or how do you think it's different? Did anybody notice some math terms that we were using when we were discussing our strategies and our solutions and I think one of the real like what this hinges on asking questions after the answer.
Speaker 2:What it really hinges on is making this post-answer questioning a habit. So kids get used to the fact that all solutions, even the correct ones, are going to be discussed, because there is so much more to think about in math other than let's get the answer. And at first don't be surprised if somebody volunteers an answer that they are absolutely sure is correct and you question them. They might get nervous a little bit, but as you establish this with the beginning of the year, as this gets more and more established as a routine, they won't get nervous anymore. They know we have discussions about solutions, even the correct ones, to the point like, if you forget, a student will ask you like aren't you going to ask me about that? They'll prompt you if you forget and you're in a hurry and you move on. So yeah, give them the last word, but don't let it be the final answer. That's what I would say about that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so great Because again you're normalizing culture of error.
Speaker 1:If no matter what, you're going to ask a question and that aligns so well with the standards for mathematical practice, right, like using their vocab and attending to precision, making sense of the problem. And you're preparing them for high school in a way, because they're going to get used to saying the answer is seven. I know because or this was hard, you know that's. That's really powerful. So thank you so much, stacey. Unfortunately, that is all the time we have for today, but really appreciate you sharing these strategies and insights for our middle school teachers.
Speaker 2:Terry, it's been a lot of fun. Hope everyone has a wonderful school year out there and go middle school.
Speaker 1:Get inspired by following us on social media and please tag us in your posts on X at Curriculum Asoche and on Instagram at my Eye, ready. If you have feedback about the podcast, a topic of interest or if you want to be a guest email extraordinaryeducators at cainccom. Please subscribe where you listen to podcasts and if you'd like to help more educators, just like you, join the conversation and please leave a review. Remember, be you, be true, be extraordinary. The Extraordinary Educators podcast is produced by Curriculum Associates, editing by Shane Lowe, social media by Atsiti Hannon, guest booking by Sari LaBarris and production by Haley Browning. This podcast is copyrighted materials and intellectual property of Curriculum Associates.