I just finished 3 full days of NCSM (National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics) Conference in Oakland. There were so many amazing presenters that I did not attend presentations by Jo Boaler, Dan Meyer, Matt Larson, Bill McCullum, Cathy Seeley, Deborah Ball,…

Here are highlights of some of the presentations I did attend:

• Jason Zimba – Procedures are for procedural tasks. There are too many tasks in our world to teach a procedure for each one. We do not have an infinite amount of memory. Do not teach procedures for conceptual tasks.

• Patsy Kanter and Steve Leinwand – The best way to teach the 9 multiplication facts is to do x 10 minus one group. (9 wants to be ten –nibbler 9) So 9 x 8 should be solved as 10 x 8 = 80 minus one group of 8. 80-8 = 72.

• Sherry Perish – Has written a Fraction, Decimal, and Percent number talk book, which should be out at the end of summer 2016. I can’t wait!

• Doug and Barbara Clarke – Researchers from Australia – Talked about productive struggle as controlled floundering or the zone of confusion. If genuine learning is to take place, you have to be in the zone of confusion.

• Max Ray – Have people give I notice / I wonder feedback. “I notice that you _______. That was awesome because _____________” “When you said _________________, I wondered __________________________.”

• Annie Fetter – Orally read a math task that is not posted for students. Have them share, what did you hear, what do you wonder to promote listening comprehension. She also talked about writing and the revision of writing in math. We revise our writing in ELA on improve our writing and improve the clarity of our thoughts. Why not write and revise in math?

• Lizzy Hull Barnes –Program Administrator for Mathematics and Richard Carranza, Superintendent – San Francisco Unified School District – In 2014 they passed a board policy and curriculum pathway that does not permit ability grouping until 11th grade. They have the highest math achievement on the Smarter Balanced assessment out of all large urban school districts in California. In every grade level in SFUSD, the number of students whom scored at or above grade level on the SBAC was above the state average in 2015. They believe that all students can learn and have data to support that heterogeneous groups in mathematics, do not take away from the achievement of the high students.

• Francis (Skip) Fennel and Gary Martin – Why not let students use calculators when there is 30 years of research that states that calculators do not take away from computational skills.

• Nicholas Gilbertson and Jia He – In-depth conceptual understanding of the division of fractions is not easy to develop.

• Loria Allen – Do a rich task everyday, and when we do, know what we are looking for from the students.

• Connie Schrock and Kit Norris – http://www.mathsisfun.com/games/broken-calculator.html is a really great game.

• Marilyn Burns – 1 on 1 interviews allow a glimpse into student thinking in a way you can not access with paper and pencil, especially with primary students.

• I also met with Sheela Sethuraman from CueThink. Great conversation about the use of technology and she made me wonder more about technology integration. I am looking forward to trying CueThink with students. My favorite implementation idea is having an older buddy class teach the program and give feedback on the work of little buddies.

• I wrapped up my conference with Ignite talks. Graham Fletcher was amazing. He very clearly stated, “If we want our students to talk more, we need to talk less.” Ask questions to help students develop understanding, and when they do share their thinking, stop rephrasing or clarifying their words. It takes away their ownership and tells the other students that they don’t have to listen to the ideas of their classmates.

What an amazing 3 days!