Thank you for watching our video! We are working hard to build more equitable high school mathematics learning environments where English learners can participate in robust classroom discussions. We are in year 3 of 5 of this project, and we are currently deep into our second design cycle. The video shows some of our work from the pilot phase and the first cycle. I'd like to invite you to join our thinking about some of the questions we have encountered in our design work.

First, recently our group has been re-considering what we mean by "participation." Often we (teachers and researchers) have a tendency to only notice verbal participation in the whole-class setting. However, by watching video recorded lessons with a camera focused on a small group of students, we are seeing evidence that other forms of participation (either in the small group discussion, or forms of non-verbal participation) may also be important. This leads to one question:

• What are some of the non-verbal ways students, especially English Learners, might participate in a classroom discussion? How could we measure these forms of participation? How can we document the effects of such forms of participation on student learning?

A second strand of our work is sharing our findings in teacher professional development. We have found that scaling this work is a challenge because the process of developing lessons together is very powerful.  

• What models have you seen as effective for scaling up or disseminating this kind of intensive professional development?

 

It's great to hear about your work with English Learners - so important! What has been the most powerful piece of the work for the teachers? That is, what trainings or strategies do you think has resulted in the most significant pedagogical shifts in the classroom? 

Also, your video mentioned integrating more active ways to learn mathematics, and that made me wondering if there might be an opportunity for a collaboration between our two projects. We have been developing and studying interactive simulations for middle school mathematics teaching, and see these tools being used by teachers to create more student-centered learning environments compared to their normal instruction. While we haven't (yet) conducted research around how these tools may benefit English Learners specifically, they provide new ways to access and communicate about mathematics. Interaction with these tools might provide access to interesting non-verbal forms of participation - e.g. showing a peer something through interaction with the sim. 

Also, I was wondering if you have taken a look at or tried using the EQUIP tool for documenting participation with its focus on equitable teaching in mathematics (One of its creators, Daniel Reinholz, is at SDSU): https://www.equip.ninja/

 I was just watching the Visual Access to Mathematics video at https://stemforall2019.videohall.com/presentations/1452 and wonder what your projects have in common, beyond the most obvious (supporting mathematics learning for students who are English learners via professional development of teachers). 

Hi Catherine-

Thanks for your question! I think there are many similarities between my project and Visual Access to Mathematics (VAM--In full disclosure, I am on the advisory board for VAM). From the VAM project we have adopted their principles for thinking about language demand, identifying language to access the task, and language to discuss and solidify understanding. The VAM team has also created amazing teacher professional development materials that influence what we do with teachers.

The biggest difference between the projects is the grade level / content focus and our goal of developing principles for the design of learning environments at the high school level. A secondary distinction is our desire to examine the effects of our designs within the classroom, as seen in patterns of participation. 

I am excited to learn more about your project. I wonder if you have additional information you can share at this point about your work on principles for the design of high school learning environments, including how these principles are specific to high school.

I appreciate your questions about non-verbal ways students might participate in whole-class discussions, and these are closely connected to our work in VAM. Although we don't focus explicitly on strategies to include non-verbal participation by students who are English learners in whole-class discussions, we do model some strategies that can be used without students speaking and that educators have reported (in general terms) to be useful in their classrooms. For example, a student might share a visual representation (without speaking or explaining), and the teacher may call on a different student to verbally describe or indicate with gestures something about that representation; the sharing student may then be able to respond in some way (either verbally or non-verbally). I also very interested in what Kathy was writing above about looking at student interactions with simulation tools or apps. We have apps in our course that teachers use and can choose to use with students, and we also haven't yet examined their use by students who are English learners.

I'm also interested in related questions, such as: What can educators do to foster a classroom culture in which students expect and feel confident about non-verbal participation as part of whole-class discussions? What strategies (or combinations of strategies) seem particularly helpful to support students as they shift from non-verbal participation in whole-class math discussions to some verbal participation?

 

Inspiring video -- so great to see teachers excited about getting students talking in high school math. Can you give some examples of the kinds of changes in their classrooms that teachers are making? 

This is such important work! Thank you for sharing! I am also interested in the question that Peter asks above about students feeling confident in their non-verbal participation in whole class discussions and their transition to verbal participation.

I am inspired by the premise of your work! And also by your willingness to learn and iterate your process. The two questions posed by William Zehner in the Public Discussion show how willing you are to rework and challenge your own perceptions. I'm very excited to see this work continue! 

Does teaching a concept in a way that encourages robust classroom discussion take longer? Do high school math teachers have the autonomy to adjust the actual content of their class to encourage this? Or are they still responsible for teaching the same content? In which case is their goal to teach the same content it in a way (and in the same amount of time) that's most conducive to these discussions? Thanks so much for any info! 

Thanks for sharing your video, Bill. It's great to hear about what you are working on. The lesson development process sounds great, with potential for getting better with each iteration and learning a lot along the way. Like you, I wonder about participation beyond simply verbal participation. We need to figure out better ways to notice, elicit, and learn from various participation styles.

I enjoyed watching the video. Looks like a very interesting project. What are some of your design principles of your professional development?

William (and team) - thanks for sharing this video!  Yes, talking and reading math matters, and I appreciate the point made here on this thread that it is not simply linguistic complexity on the task level but the conceptual clarity on the unit level. Thanks for grounding this in the actual example of conceptualizing slope. 

I realize the work is ongoing, but at some point is the goal to develop a guide/ manual on the 9th grade level for math teachers to review their lesson plans accordingly, analyzing their content across task/ unit/ learning environment?

Thank you for sharing your video on the important work you are doing!  In the initial post by William, he stated:

"A second strand of our work is sharing our findings in teacher professional development. We have found that scaling this work is a challenge because the process of developing lessons together is very powerful. "

Could you say a little more about the challenges you are having with sharing and scaling your work and, if possible, some of the ideas/approaches you are trying? 

Thanks for your question, Lisa.  At present we have not made a move to scale our efforts since we are still in the design phase. However, I asked that question because I am anticipating that in the next 16 months we will be sharing this work. We will start by sharing with local teachers (at schools where we have existing relationships), and then I anticipate we will be asking ourselves how we can share this more widely. For that work I am not sure how to sustainably scale a model that involves sustained and intensive collaboration. If you have seen models that we should be looking at, I would be happy to learn more!

I loved this video and am excited to learn more about how you are creating these professional learning experiences with teachers!

I enjoyed learning about your project. Thanks for the video!

This is an amazing project! I am in San Diego and have a research interest in improving ELLs' mathematical learning experience. So it is great to know that this important work is happening in our neighborhood. Thanks for sharing the video and would love to learn more and connect in the future.