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Next year, grade 9 math will be destreamed. Our school is in the planning phases right now. A thread.
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Our principal reached out to our staff to see if anyone would be interested in learning about destreaming. We got a decent response from staff (especially with our increased workloads at this time). Ts from many different subject areas.
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Today was our first meet as a big group. We started with a short video from Jason To about the history of streaming. Then we got the Jamboard to get thoughts about “excited about” and “worried about”.
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After some discussion, I led an activity that I’ve used in my class. My idea was to provide a grade 9 math activity as it directly relates to next year, and I figured we’d get a lot of different perspectives on what it’s like to do math.
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I gave a short intro then visibly randomized everyone into different breakout rooms in groups of 3. They worked on a common Jamboard, with the expectations that everyone in the group had to understand everything their group wrote/put down.
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I used wording in some of the questions that was purposely ambiguous to create discussion amongst each group (with each other and in comparison to other groups).
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Groups worked for about 25 minutes, and I popped into each group at least once to give feedback, check understanding, and ask clarification questions. I modeled a #ThinkingClassroom activity without referencing this name directly.
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At the end, we came back together and discussed what it felt like to do this as a group. Lots of feelings came through:
Felt comfortable with their peers
Uncertain (having not done math in a long time) but relieved to discuss with others
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Felt comfortable with their peersUncertain (having not done math in a long time) but relieved to discuss with others/8
Worried about being the math/science person in the group and “not knowing”Felt like it would be good differentiation for students with different abilitiesWant to know more about assessment in a destreamed class/9
Thoughts that I have:
I chose a curricular task. What if I had chosen a non-curricular task, something with more entry points for different people?
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I chose a curricular task. What if I had chosen a non-curricular task, something with more entry points for different people?/10
Ts said they felt math phobia and math anxiety while doing this activity. How can we reduce this feeling for Ss as well as Ts (so the biases Ts have don’t get passed inadvertently to Ss)?How can we continue to learn how to best serve our Ss from different subject areas?/11
What should we focus on as a school to work together in helping serve our students in the best ways possible?/end
