{"id":89,"date":"2015-05-15T14:23:09","date_gmt":"2015-05-15T18:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/annie.mathematicalthinking.org\/?p=89"},"modified":"2018-06-13T09:09:45","modified_gmt":"2018-06-13T13:09:45","slug":"noticewonder-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/annie.mathematicalthinking.org\/index.php\/2015\/05\/15\/noticewonder-love\/","title":{"rendered":"#NoticeWonder Love"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Before you read anything else, go play <a href=\"http:\/\/gameaboutsquares.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Game About Squares<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0Seriously.\u00a0\u00a0Don&#8217;t come back here until you&#8217;ve gotten to Level 8.\u00a0\u00a0But do come back &#8211; don&#8217;t let it suck you in permanently!<\/p>\n<p>(Did you really go play?\u00a0\u00a0Honest?\u00a0\u00a0Because if you didn&#8217;t, the latter part of this post won&#8217;t be as much fun to read.)<\/p>\n<p>Last month we were in Boston for the NCSM and NCTM yearly meetings, and as has recently happened at large math ed events, I was occasionally hailed with some version of, &#8220;We just used your video in our talk!&#8221; or even &#8220;OMG!\u00a0\u00a0We use your video in ALL of our PD! You&#8217;re famous in [insert state, county, or district here]!\u00a0\u00a0Can we take our picture with you??&#8221;\u00a0\u00a0Invariably, they&#8217;re referring to the very first Ignite talk I gave, which was at NCTM in Indianapolis in 2011 (though it wasn&#8217;t technically part of NCTM, since the session didn&#8217;t get accepted, so we did it in a bar).\u00a0\u00a0If you haven&#8217;t seen it, or haven&#8217;t watched it lately, I encourage you to check it out.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Ever Wonder What They\u2019d Notice?: Annie Fetter\" width=\"525\" height=\"394\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/a-Fth6sOaRA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Many groups are using this video as a launch for professional development because it can start conversations about moving beyond answer-getting and instead valuing as many of students&#8217; mathematical ideas as possible.\u00a0\u00a0As of this writing, the video has been viewed over 15,800 times.\u00a0\u00a0That&#8217;s really exciting!\u00a0\u00a0And I certainly don&#8217;t mind being stalked at math ed conferences.<\/p>\n<p>This past year I wrote math curriculum, mentored college students doing academic tutoring, and did some tutoring myself for a group of high school sophomores from under-resourced schools participating in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.swarthmore.edu\/news-events\/a-blueprint-success\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Project Blueprints<\/a>, an after school youth empowerment program hosted by Swarthmore College. One thing we focused on early in the year was developing and emphasizing mathematical habits of mind and working towards getting the students to believe that they have mathematical ideas and that those ideas are important.\u00a0\u00a0We did a lot of Noticing and Wondering!\u00a0\u00a0In fact, one of the first activities we did when they got the new iPads was to play Game About Squares.<\/p>\n<p>Now, these are kids who are taking high school geometry and are about to take the state&#8217;s Algebra exam for a second time (their district doesn&#8217;t have a very high success rate &#8211; one kid claimed that nobody from their district has ever passed).\u00a0\u00a0Isn&#8217;t this supposed to be math support?\u00a0\u00a0Do they really need to play a game?<\/p>\n<p>Well, yes.\u00a0\u00a0Students opened the game and were confronted (as were you, if you followed my directions to <a href=\"http:\/\/gameaboutsquares.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">play before reading<\/a>) with this:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-90\" src=\"https:\/\/annie.mathematicalthinking.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/GameAboutSquaresLevel0.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"179\" height=\"359\" srcset=\"https:\/\/annie.mathematicalthinking.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/GameAboutSquaresLevel0.png 179w, https:\/\/annie.mathematicalthinking.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/GameAboutSquaresLevel0-150x300.png 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 179px) 100vw, 179px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What are we supposed to do?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;How does it work?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Where are the directions?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Uh&#8230;.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Those were a few of the comments I heard from the two pairs of students I was working with that day (and the one other adult in the room, who had pulled out her phone to try playing).\u00a0\u00a0I just said, &#8220;Figure it out.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Not surprisingly, they did.\u00a0\u00a0They noticed, they wondered, they tried things, they guessed and checked, they made mistakes, they groaned, they backtracked, they started over, they laughed, they talked to each other a <em>lot<\/em>, they persevered, and they were excited by and proud of their progress.\u00a0\u00a0What teacher wouldn&#8217;t want those things to happen in their math classroom on a regular basis?<\/p>\n<p>An especially fun moment happened when Ashley, one of the coordinators of the program, came into our room.\u00a0\u00a0She asked what they were doing and one of the students reset the game to Level 0, handed the iPad to her, and said, &#8220;Here.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>She asked, &#8220;What am I supposed to do?&#8221;, and the students just grinned and wouldn&#8217;t say a word.\u00a0\u00a0I gave her a &#8220;don&#8217;t look at me!&#8221; shrug.\u00a0\u00a0They watched Ashley&#8217;s finger hover over the screen to see what she would click on.\u00a0\u00a0They snuck glances at her face to see if they could tell how she was feeling.\u00a0\u00a0They grinned some more.\u00a0\u00a0They elbowed each other gently when she made the same mistakes they had made.\u00a0\u00a0They watched her slowly figure out how the game worked.\u00a0\u00a0It was almost magical to observe them watching an adult go through the same learning and figuring out process that they had just gone through.\u00a0\u00a0They seemed almost entranced!<\/p>\n<p>Then we talked about the game for a bit, and discussed the &#8220;habits of mind&#8221; they had employed to figure out the game &#8211; noticing and wondering, guessing and checking, persevering, struggling productively, learning from mistakes without worrying about making mistakes (since they knew the only way they were going to make progress was to make mistakes and learn from them), and working together.\u00a0\u00a0We talked about how these skills are as important as any content they learn in their school classes, and how they can use those skills to make progress on math problems they&#8217;re not sure how to solve.\u00a0\u00a0In fact, much of the math programming we did the rest of the year employed huge doses of Noticing and Wondering and generating ideas about math situations, or scenarios (a math problem with no stated question).\u00a0\u00a0Anecdotal reports suggest that by the end of the year, most of the students felt pretty confident that they could generate ideas about most math situations we handed them.\u00a0\u00a0Big win!<\/p>\n<p>These days we talk a lot about the importance of implementing and practicing the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.corestandards.org\/Math\/Practice\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Standards of Mathematical Practice<\/a> in classrooms.\u00a0\u00a0Sometimes it&#8217;s hard to make that practice explicit, but students do need to know when they&#8217;re developing and using (and getting better at) those habits.\u00a0\u00a0One way to do this is to do activities, such as Game About Squares, where there isn&#8217;t any real math &#8220;content&#8221;, but there is a lot to mess around with and figure out and enough support that students can do that without a lot of guidance from any adults.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;d love to hear about your favorite such activities, and what sorts of subsequent conversations you have with your students about habits of mind.<\/p>\n<p>Now go play <a href=\"http:\/\/gameaboutsquares.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Game About Squares<\/a> some more.\u00a0\u00a0After a hiatus, I&#8217;m currently working on Level 19, so I&#8217;ve got a lot of things to figure out!<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><em>[originally posted to my now-defunct blog at The Math Forum]<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Before you read anything else, go play Game About Squares.\u00a0\u00a0Seriously.\u00a0\u00a0Don&#8217;t come back here until you&#8217;ve gotten to Level 8.\u00a0\u00a0But do come back &#8211; don&#8217;t let it suck you in permanently! (Did you really go play?\u00a0\u00a0Honest?\u00a0\u00a0Because if you didn&#8217;t, the latter part of this post won&#8217;t be as much fun to read.) Last month we were &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/annie.mathematicalthinking.org\/index.php\/2015\/05\/15\/noticewonder-love\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;#NoticeWonder Love&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/annie.mathematicalthinking.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/annie.mathematicalthinking.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/annie.mathematicalthinking.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annie.mathematicalthinking.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annie.mathematicalthinking.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/annie.mathematicalthinking.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97,"href":"https:\/\/annie.mathematicalthinking.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions\/97"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/annie.mathematicalthinking.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annie.mathematicalthinking.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annie.mathematicalthinking.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}