It's All About Growth!
2/8/2019
Parent Lunches are a unique and wonderful benefit of being a part of the PNA community. Our goal is to come together as a middle school family to share a meal and allow parents to experience a little taste of a school day. This week we had a fun lunch together focused on mathematical mindset.
Since we are always looking for ways to get more "bang for the buck," the 6th/7th graders used our lunch as content for an English language arts lesson on writing a summary. In their words, our Parent Lunch went like this: At a recent Parent Lunch at PNA with the middle school students and parents, everyone learned about mathematical mindsets while eating delicious food. The parents brought in many dishes and desserts for the group to share. Everyone got their food downstairs, and then ate upstairs in the classrooms. Next, the group watched a video on mathematical mindsets while finishing their lunch. The video, by Dr. Jo Boaler of Stanford University, talked about how anyone can be good at math with the right mindset. Then the families worked on finding growth patterns with tile figures, resulting in many creative designs. The next step was to define equations or rules from the growth patterns they saw. After the activity and delicious food, the group was full - of knowledge AND food! - and happy. Overall, the parent lunch was a success, and the group realized that you can learn anything with the right mindset - even math! Our activity came together after Ms. Mariner and Mrs. Henke attended an Effective Instruction Conference, where they learned from some of the best minds in the field about math instruction, productive group work, and effective grading and assessment. The sessions on math instruction were particularly interesting: it turns out that the CPM curriculum we use aligns really well with what research is showing about effective math instruction. Working in groups; verbalizing thought processes; making conjectures and debating them; creating visual representations; struggling through complex problems: all of these are critical to building a mathematical brain. We learned that anyone can achieve to high levels in math, you don't have to be fast at math, and your brain grows when it makes mistakes - even if you don't know you made them! Most of all, we learned that having a growth mindset is critical: believing that you can learn, that you can grow, and that smart is something you BECOME, not something you ARE. Dr. Boaler laughingly says that if her child comes home and says, "I got every problem right," she say,s "Oh, I'm sorry, your brain didn't get a chance to grow today!" If you are interested in learning more about Dr. Boaler's work to revolutionize math learning, check out the video we watched and then explore her website filled with activities and resources. Comments are closed.
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Sarah Mariner
Ms. Mariner earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Biological Science from Colorado State University, and was awarded a teaching certificate through the University of Alaska, Southeast. Her varied background includes being an environmental education field instructor in Massachusetts, Colorado, and Baja, Mexico. She also served two years as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Dominican Republic. Archives
April 2021
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