I spent the bulk of my MAT year in Room 184, which Miss Shepard and Mr. Strogoff graciously shared with me despite there not being enough space for a third desk. In the mornings, I observed and assisted Miss Shepard and her students in that classroom, and then taught my eighth grade integrated math class there for the last period of the day.

My home base, Room 184

The classroom had six tables instead of individual desks, which encouraged collaboration among students. Most activities in my math classes involved some extent of group work, and the classroom set-up reflected that. A beloved Elmo projector stood at the front of the room near the white board. I frequently used the Elmo to model assignments, work through problems with students, show examples of student work, or ask students to display their work for their classmates to see. 

Since my integrated math class met the last period of the day and students were coming from electives, we spent the first five minutes of class practicing mindfulness to ease their transition back to a core class. Students were encouraged to take that time to quietly do whatever they needed to refocus themselves, whether that meant coloring pictures I printed out for them or putting their heads down on the table. After some debate, every other day we switched between playing calming music that I chose and playing music that the students chose.

Looking at Ms. Pacman’s movements for the starter during our transformations unit

After mindfulness, students worked on a starter activity, which usually introduced them to the math that they would be exploring that day by building upon previous knowledge, exposing common misconceptions, or introducing a real-world context. Students then shared their responses to the starter with the class either verbally or using the Elmo or the board.

Throughout the period, students were encouraged to work closely with the others at their table and to show all their mathematical thinking. Students were also constantly asked to explain verbally, visually, and in writing why their mathematical thinking made sense.

Due to space issues, I taught my numeracy class in Room 183, the English classroom next door. The classroom was set up similarly to Miss Shepard’s with tables, an Elmo projector, and a whiteboard.

My numeracy class in Room 183

Since numeracy fell in the middle of the school day when students were generally more focused, we skipped the mindfulness component and began immediately with the starter. My numeracy students were much more willing to show their classmates their work than my integrated math students were at the beginning of the year, so our starters often lasted 10-15 minutes as students debated whose answer was correct or came to the board to show a different method they had used to solve the problem. Watch the video below to see a particularly heated debate over a starter in which my students used the unit rate to figure out how long it took my dad to thaw the turkey for Thanksgiving:

The same expectations for showing and explaining mathematical thinking applied to my numeracy students, although my numeracy students often elected to do more individual work than group work.