Rounding Up

ROUNDING UP: Assessment in the Early Years with Shelly Scheafer Mike: How is the work of assessing young children different from assessing students in upper elementary grades or in grades six through 12? And what actions can we take to ensure we understand our youngest learners' thinking? Today we're talking with Shelly Schafer, senior manager of Content Development with the math Learning Center a...

ROUNDING UP: Inside Out: Examining the Meaning and Purpose of our Questions wit Dr. Victoria Jacobs Mike (00:03): The questions educators ask their students matter. They can have a profound impact on students' thinking and the shape of their mathematical identities. Today we're examining different types of questions, their purpose and the meaning students make of them. Joining us for this conversa...

ROUNDING UP: Affirming Students' Mathematics Identities with Dr. Karisma Morton In this episode, we will explore the connection between identity and mathematics learning. We'll examine the factors that may have shaped our own identities and those of our students. We'll also discuss ways to practice affirming students' identities in mathematics instruction. BIOGRAPHIES Dr. Karisma Morton is an assi...

ROUNDING UP: Building Productive Partnerships with Sue Kim & Myuriel von Aspen In this episode, we examine the practice of building productive student partnerships. We'll talk about ways  educators can cultivate joyful and productive partnerships and the role the educator plays once students are engaged with their partner.  BIOGRAPHIES Sue Kim is an advocate for children's thinking and providing t...

ROUNDING UP: Breaking the Cycle of Math Trauma with Dr. Kasi Allen If you are an educator, you've likely heard people say things like "I'm a math person." While this may make you cringe, if you dig a bit deeper, many people can identify specific experiences that convinced them that this was true. In fact, some of you might secretly wonder if you are a math person as well. Today we're talking with...

ROUNDING UP:  Helping Our Students Build a Meaningful Understanding of Geometry with Dr. Rebecca Ambrose As a field, mathematics education has come a long way over the past few years in describing the ways students come to understand number, quantity, place value, and even fractions. But when it comes to geometry, particularly concepts involving shape, it's often less clear how student thinking de...

ROUNDING UP: How You Say It Matters: Teacher Language Choices That Support Number Sense with Dr. James Brickwedde Carry the 1. Add a 0. Cross multiply. All of these are phrases that educators heard when they were growing up. This language is so ingrained that many educators use it without even thinking. But what's the long-term impact of language like this on the development of our students' numbe...

ROUNDING UP: Building Asset-Focused Professional Learning Communities with Summer Pettigrew and Megan Williams Professional learning communities have been around for a long time, in many different iterations. But what does it look like to schedule and structure professional learning communities that help educators understand and respond to their students' thinking in meaningful ways? Today we're t...

ROUNDING UP: Nurturing Mathematical Curiosity: Supporting Mathematical Argumentation in the Early Grades with Drs. Jody Guarino and Chepina Rumsey Argumentation, justification, conjecture. All of these are practices we hope to cultivate, but they may not be practices we associate with kindergartners, first-, or second graders. What would it look like to encourage these practices with our youngest...

ROUNDING UP: Making Sense of Unitizing: The Theme That Runs Through Elementary Mathematics with Beth Hulbert During their elementary years, students grapple with many topics that involve relationships between different units. In fact, unitizing serves as a foundation for much of the mathematics students encounter during their elementary years. Today, we're talking with Beth Hulbert from the Ongoin...

ROUNDING UP: Choice as a Foundation for Student Engagement with Drs. Zandra De Arajuo and Amber Candela As educators, we know offering students choice has a big impact on their engagement, identity, and sense of autonomy. That said, it's not always clear how to design choice into activities, especially when using curriculum materials. Today, we're talking with Drs. Zandra De Araujo and Amber Cande...

ROUNDING UP: Principles for Responsive Curriculum Use with Dr. Corey Drake When it comes to curriculum, educators are often told to implement with fidelity. But what does fidelity mean, and where does that leave educators who want to be responsive to the students in their classrooms? Today we're talking with Dr. Corey Drake about principles for responsive curriculum use that invite educators to re...

ROUNDING UP: Grouping Practices That Promote Efficacy & Knowledge Transfer with Dr. Peter Liljedahl We know from research that student collaboration can have a powerful impact on learning. That said, how we group students for collaboration matters — a lot. Today we're talking with Dr. Peter Liljedahl, author of Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics  , about how educators can form productive,...

ROUNDING UP: The Promise of Counting Collections with Danielle Robinson and Dr. Melissa Hedges Earlier this season, we released an episode focused on the complex and interconnected set of concepts that students engage with when they learn to count. In this follow-up episode, we're going to examine a powerful routine called counting collections. We'll be talking with Danielle Robinson and Dr. Melis...

ROUNDING UP: Making Sense of Spatial Reasoning with Dr. Robyn Pinilla Spatial reasoning can be a nebulous concept that is hard for many educators to define. In this episode, we're talking about spatial reasoning with Dr. Robyn Pinilla from the University of Texas at El Paso. We'll examine the connections between spatial reasoning and other mathematical concepts and explore different ways that educ...

ROUNDING UP: Strengthening Tasks Through Student Talk with Drs. Amber Candela and Melissa Boston In this episode, we are talking with Drs. Amber Candela and Melissa Boston about powerful but practical strategies for supporting student talk in the elementary math classroom. RESOURCES Discourse Actions to Promote Student Access Making Sense of Mathematics for Teaching to Inform Instructional Quality...

ROUNDING UP: Making Sense of Story Problems with Drs. Julia Hagge and Aina Appova Contextualized story problems are an important tool that educators use to bring mathematics to life for their students. That said, navigating the meaning and language found in story problems is a challenge for many students. Today we're talking with Aina Appova and Julia Hagge from The Ohio State University about str...

ROUNDING UP: Mathematizing and Modeling The World Around Us with Erin Turner, Ph. D. Many resources for supporting multilingual learners are included with curriculum materials. What's too often missing, though, is clear guidance for how to use them. In this episode, we're going to talk with Dr. Erin Turner about three resources that are often recommended for supporting multilingual learners. We'll...

ROUNDING UP: Rough Draft Math with Dr. Amanda Jansen What would happen if teachers consistently invited students to think of their ideas in math class as a rough draft? What impact might this have on students' participation, their learning experience, and their math identity? Those are the questions we'll explore today with Dr. Mandy Jansen, the author of "Rough Draft Math," on this episode of Rou...

ROUNDING UP: Counting with Dr. Kim Hartweg Counting is a process that involves a complex and interconnected set of concepts and skills. This means that for most children, the path to counting proficiency is not linear. Today we are talking with Dr. Kim Hartweg from Western Illinois University about the big ideas and skills that are a part of counting and ways educators can support their students o...

ROUNDING UP: Translanguaging with Tatyana Kleyn, Ed. D. Over the past two years, we've done several episodes on supporting multilingual learners in math classrooms. In this episode, we're going back to the topic of support for multilingual learners to talk about translanguaging, an asset-focused approach that invites students to bring their full language repertoire into the classroom. We'll talk a...

ROUNDING UP: The Big Place Value Episode with Eric Sisofo, Ed. D If you ask an educator to share some of the most important ideas in elementary mathematics, most would include place value on that list. But what does it mean to understand place value, really? And what types of language, practices, and tools support students as they build their understanding? On this week's podcast, we discuss these...

ROUNDING UP: Responsive Interpretations of Student Thinking with Kim Morrow Leong, PhD What are the habits of mind that educators can adopt to be more responsive to our students' thinking? And how can we turn these habits of mind into practical steps that we can take on a regular basis? Dr. Kim Morrow-Leong has some thoughts on this topic. Today, Kim joins the podcast, and we'll talk with her abou...

ROUNDING UP: It's a Story, Not a Checklist! with Dr. John Staley There's something magical about getting lost in a great story. Whether you're reading a book, watching a movie or listening to a friend, stories impart meaning and capture our imagination. Dr. John Staley thinks a lot about stories. On this episode of Rounding Up, we'll talk with John about the ways he thinks that the concept of stor...

ROUNDING UP: Making Sense of Fractions with Susan Empson, PhD For quite a few adults, fractions were a stumbling block in their education that caused many to lose their footing and begin to doubt their ability to make sense of math. But this doesn't have to be the case for our students! Today on the podcast, we're talking with Dr. Susan Empson about big ideas in fractions and how we can make them...