As reported in the Los Angeles Times, many schools have been struggling with the math assessment coming out of the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) design. Only 33% of students in the United States meets or exceeds the educational standards.
One of the questions we frequently get while supporting schools is, “How can teachers engage and prepare students without ‘teaching to the test’?” This Webinar will focus on the most looked over of the three keys for improving SBAC elementary math; the type of strategic thinking that questions are asking students to perform. The goal is to recognize this kind of thinking and be able to create genuine learning experiences that helps to improve the targeted type of strategic thinking.
Senior Educational Consultant, Educators Cooperative
Scott Houston is a K-12 educational consultant with teaching expertise in math and science. Scott holds a Master of Arts in middle school education and a Bachelor of Arts in chemistry. He began his teaching career in Fontana where he taught both middle school and high school over an eight-year period. During this time he also taught night classes for California State University San Bernardino for teachers who wanted to get their Master of Arts degree in Middle School Education. In 2001, he earned his National Board Certification in early adolescent mathematics. He received recognition in Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers four years in a row. For the past sixteen years he has been working as a professional educational consultant helping teachers implement research based teaching strategies and most recently preparing districts for the Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards. He is currently a cooperative member in Educators Cooperative, where has been employed for the last 12 years.
Damon
Welcome everybody. My name is Damon Torgerson and we are excited to welcome you to EduCraft, a free online webinar for educators by educators. This online conference is hosted and co moderated by Classtime to class time and their CEO Valentin Ruest is here with us today and myself Damon Torgerson, CEO of Alludo, a little in Classtime, decided to partner in establishing a series of webinar sessions where educators can share their craft with other educate other educators for free. This 45 minute webinar will be recorded and shared with you.
You'll receive a link shortly after the event. So don't worry if you can't stay for the entire time or if you have a colleague who couldn't make it. Also, we'd like to make this webinar as engaging as possible. We've got a great speaker today.
So we highly encourage you to ask questions anytime in the chat and we'll try to have them answered during the presentation. At this time, I'm gonna turn it over to CEO of Classtime Valentin Ruest.
Valentin
Great. Thanks, Damon. I'm also very thrilled to welcome you to EduCraft, especially for our current session, the missing key to improving elementary aspect scores with Scott Houston. So Scott is a California based K - 12 educational consultant with teaching expertise in math and science and is in the early in his early career, he taught both middle and high school over an eight period eight year period before continuing his career as an educational consultant, helping teachers now implement research based teaching strategies and most recently also preparing districts for the common core and next generation science standards. So without further ado, I'm excited to hand over the word to Scott. Welcome.
Scott
Good afternoon, everybody. As Valentin said, my name is Scott Houston.
I will be your host for today and we're going to jump right into it. With only 45 minutes, we wanna be able to get as much done as we possibly can. But just so I can see who's here. Would you please take your name into the chat?
Just so I know exactly who we're talking to and feel free to ask questions at any time as we move through this. So, one of the first things I wanna be able to do is talk about the three keys of elementary back improvement. So many times when teachers are getting back results from the back, all they're seeing is like the specific my kids aren't doing well in algebra, algebra and operations, they're not doing well in the number system expressions and equations. So what we want to be able to say is get a little bit deeper into why that's happening because they don't know if it's content, they don't know what's going on in a lot of those cases.
So how do we target it? Just a little bit stronger and a little bit better. So the first key that we're gonna be talking about is the one we're gonna be working with today, which is the one with the fancy key on top and it all has to do with the strategic thinking. So many of the questions the kids aren't missing because they don't know the content, they are missing it because they do not understand what the questions asked or they don't understand the technology behind the question.
And so teachers get it back and like I could have swore my kids knew how to add and subtract fractions, but they didn't do well in the fraction section. I don't know what happened. All right. So we really want to be able to like explore that today and get in depth.
The other two keys that could be talked about are how they're gonna be doing a performance task and how to improve upon that. And then the tech that could be used to really help get the kids ready for experiencing that tech above and beyond, just say the practice test or the IEBs. But that number one thing is what we're really gonna be focusing on today. So the goals for this particular training are here.
I want you to know the types of strategic thinking that the SBAC is demanding from the students that when you see it, you can recognize it. Two, I want you to be able to like really like be able to target it when you're looking at an IEB when you're looking at a release item or even if you're just kind of walking through the classroom during the SBAC, like you gaze at a question, you're like, oh, I know the kind of strategic thinking that is I know how to target that. I want people to just be able to do it automatically as if they see an addition problem and know it's addition, like we wanna be able to get it that strong.
And then the last piece is to really say, all right. So if that's the kind of thinking I want to engage in, I wanna bring that in and I wanna have engaging interactive activities that will help target that because if kids can't have fun with it, then they're gonna have a hard time learning it. We don't want that. So these would be the three goals for the session that we're gonna be working with today.
So let's go and talk about the CST a little bit. And if you remember the CST, a few years back there were two common stressors which were content. The kids either knew the content or they didn't. That was a big case of why they missed the question, the vocabulary.
If they didn't understand the wording of the question, that would sometimes throw them off. But those were the two main stresses, the CST that SBAC comes along and they add in two brand new stressor. One is that type of question, do kids know how to drag and drop? Can they interact with it?
What about those checkbox questions? Checkbox questions drop scores by like 30-40% depending on how strong the kids are on the content. So, I mean, that's a big one and then the type of thinking in this case, we have a an example of recognizing operations. How good are the kids at reading a word problem and knowing if it's a sub track multiply divide, do they know what kind of percentage and how to put that together?
Like how good are they at that particular skill? So when we're looking at how the stressors of the aspect have changed, the teachers are still a lot of times operating under stressors one and two where they're really teaching the content, the the books going after it, they're doing the vocabulary, everything they used to do on the CST and they scored much higher. But the types of questions the tech of the questions are dropping the scores because the kids just aren't ready for them on a regular basis. So that's what we're gonna be looking at today.
Is that type of thinking? And how to like target that for our kids. So here's the first activity I'd like you guys to do. So take a look at these 10 types of strategic thinking and you may be familiar with some of them, you may have seen the language with some of them, but are there any of these types of strategic thinking that you're like?
Well, what exactly does he mean by that? What, what types are there? What kinds of things do I want more information on? So that if I were to spend a little more time on one than the other, that might be useful for you?
So take about like 30 seconds, kind of look them through and then as you're doing that, type them in over here and then I'll be able to see exactly which ones you may want to focus on and take a look at all right, converting word problems to expressions. Thank you, Melinda. All right. And the comparing, yeah, that shows up a lot.
All right. And plus one for word problems. OK. Oh I see. That was for me, Damon.
OK. Claims excellent. All right. So as we move forward, when we put together all the data, we wanted to look at all the test released items and you'll see question one and we broke it down.
Type of problem is it's a word problem that tended to be about 53% of the test. , K3-7 grade, there was like 53% word problems. So kids were struggling a lot of times on those. then we would see the short answer typing a lot of times kids would be typing in the answers and they would have the right answer. But because of the way they typed it in, like they added the expression, the whole expression instead of just the answer and they would miss the question.
Not because they didn't know math, but because they didn't know how to really navigate like the the typing and tech part, right? And then over here you're gonna see the recognizing operations. So it basically said that kids know to add to track multiplier divide around double digit addition within a word problem. So this would break down every single question for you.
There is a link at the top that Valentin can put into the chat and what it'll do is it'll take you right to that document. And if you wanted to look at it and then just get an idea of the kinds of tech, the kinds of thinking how often they showed up for grade levels three through six, you would get to see all of that. So I just wanted to explain why that was there and how it could be a useful tool for you. All right.
So one of the first things that you guys were talking about is you wanted to see something along the lines of like kind of a almost like a conditional problem A comparing problem. So here's an example of one that fits two categories, situational analysis with comparing. OK. So all of this, they have to compare to each other.
But what makes this a situational analysis? So the numbers are used in the statement. So you have to use those four numbers and then you have to select all the statements that are true about them. And it's in a checkbox format.
So we're seeing kids score like 19% on this question on the IEB. And why is that? Because they're only checking one box. So sometimes it's the tech but a lot of the times they're looking at just the number here and they're not looking at the deeper reasoning behind it.
So they might see here that the hundreds place is larger in 8361. But because the inequality was true, they checked it, but they didn't look through the whole thing. So a situational analysis question forces kids to really look at it in depth one at a time. And because it looks so much like a multiple choice problem, a lot of times kids are just choosing it once and then moving on.
So this kind of situational analysis question the kids struggle on a lot. It's usually in a checkbox format and then we see scores drop and you'll see a lot of comparing questions that do stuff like this, comparing questions show up a lot in the check boxes, comparing questions show a lot up a lot in the tables. So we're going to see those kinds of things pop up and they really affect the kids scores. But when the data comes back on this, it looks like your kids don't know place value, but it was the type of question that got them, not because they didn't know the place value.
So, Scott, if I may ask here at this point, do you see any difference throughout the grade levels with, you know, the recognition of the differences and the question types? Not necessarily because as the content grows, the types of questions tend to go right there with it. And so we will see the kids doing as bad at the checkbox questions in sixth grade as they are at third grade. And a lot of times it's because the textbook isn't training them how to handle these kinds of questions.
And then if the teachers don't not see it in the textbook and then they're not being asked to focus on these things, it can be very difficult. That's why you need a platform that really helps you get better with checkbox questions, right? The IEBs only have maybe one or two of these in there and they only have that same question over and over again. So where can kids go to practice this kind of thing?
And this is where you bring in some of that tech. Like, for example, Classtime would handle this kind of question perfectly because they have the checkbox format, right? So did that answer your question? Valentin?
Wonderful. OK. Now, here's a recognizing operations question that once again scored less than 20% for most of the kids who were taking it. And it was just a simple multiplication of fractions, not that difficult.
But the way the questions were worded, the way the fractions were put into each expression or statement really threw kids off, they couldn't tell which ones were addition, subtraction, multiplication or division. And so this is something that really will throw them off if they're not exposed to it on a regular basis. Most of the time kids are asked to read a word problem and find the expression that goes with it and they're not very good at that either for the most part. But when it's something like this, when it's a reverse word problem, they really have a hard time differentiating between the choices.
So in this case that recognizing operations can really cause problems for a lot of kids if they're not giving explicit practice on how to do that, right? And then as we move to our last example that we're gonna be looking here once again, comparing was on the list. This is a lot of times how they're gonna be doing comparing. They have to look at a statement up on top here and then they have to do the math on this and then do the math on every single one of these and then click every single one of those correctly in order to get the answer, they miss one the whole question bombs.
So if you don't know unit rate, of course, you bomb this question. But if you don't understand how to read and understand this kind of comparing question, it throws you off very badly. So a lot of kids will say I but I knew unit rate but they made one mistake. Whole thing goes down.
So comparing has all sorts of different looks, but it almost always goes, there's something in the statement in the question, then they have to look down at the answers whether it be multiple choice or check box or in this case, a table question. And we're just seeing as soon as they get to that kind of tech and these kinds of questions, the kids are not doing nearly as well as they could be doing. And this is why when teachers get back some of their scores, they feel defeated because they taught unit rate and their kids probably could have scored 70 80% on a typical multiple choice question, but now they're scoring 40% because, you know, they made one small mistake.
So at this time, I would just take like to take about another 30 seconds. Any questions so far on taking a look at some of the different kinds of strategic thinking because in the next few questions, I'm gonna have you take a look at a question and, and kind of do your own little analysis. So I'll always do like about like 30 seconds of thinking time before we we head back in. So any kind of questions before we move into your analysis that you're gonna be looking at?
All right? And as you're writing your questions, if you are, I am then now going to move into our question sharing analysis. So this is something we want teachers to be able to do at every single level. We want you to be able to look at a question and then look at that strategic thinking chart.
And this next one I'm gonna show you has actually three right answers. There's three types of strategic thinking buried into this one question. So just kind of look at it type in what kind you think it is. And then we'll talk a little bit about which ones are there and why and give yourself a point over on the side if you got it right?
Like I said, there's gonna be about three correct answers on this one. So everyone take a look and then you'll notice at the top these are the four questions the teachers want to be asking themselves when they see an IEB question or when they see a test release item is first, what's the content? So in this case, we're comparing fractions right to whole numbers. So that's our, that's our content.
Is this computational conceptual? Is it problem solving? Is it a what? And a why? What and why means they have to give a reason.
Is there any place here where we give a reason? If no, then it's not a what and a why kind of question? Are we analyzing a word problem? If not, probably not a problem solving.
But do I need to know more than just computational thinking in order to get this question? Right, in this case? Absolutely. This is conceptual, right?
Then we get to watch the tech. So what do kids have to do technology wise to pass this question? So we take a look and we see right here. I've got five numbers.
I've got six boxes that freaks some kids out right away because they feel like they can only use each number once. And so as they start filling in the numbers, they're like, I don't know what to do now, right? They don't think they can use the five twice for the ones I've seen kids just go like, I'll put it as close as I can and do like a 2/3. And it's just because they haven't been trained on this type of question, right?
But, so that's the tech, that's the conceptual, this is comparing fractions to whole numbers. But what's the thinking? So if you go back in the training to hear which one of those do you see as being part of that problem? So if you wanna kind of open up like this, take a screenshot.
So you can see this picture compared to what we're doing, that might be a useful thing for you as you are looking at the question itself. So any guesses from anybody and then you know, Valentin, Damon, you guys want to play, take a look at it. What do you guys think? And then anyone in the the chat just kind of throw out your answer.
What kind of strategic thinking do you see being asked for here? Comparative? Absolutely. So, since we're comparing whole numbers?
Yep, visual analysis, all right. So we have to be able to look at the boxes. Absolutely and be able to figure that out. Then algebraic reasoning because we have missing numbers that we're trying to put in there.
That's gonna be something that we've got to make, right? And then the other one that's gonna be in here is going to be the conditional like there are tons of answers that will make this true 2/2, 3/3, 4/4 tons of answers here. Tons of answers here. But I have to meet each condition in order to get this question right.
And I have to do it for every single one of these. If I make a mistake in one of them, it's all done. If I don't know how to use this delete button, tech wise, I, if I make a mistake, I may not know how to fix it. All of these things comes into comes into play with this kind of question.
But absolutely, we got comparative thinking, we got algebraic thinking and we've got conditional thinking in this particular question. So great job if you using any one of those three great. Now visual analysis is more like do you need the visual in order to answer this question? So I'm just gonna go back a little bit to address the visual analysis question and visual analysis looks a little bit something like this.
You are given some kind of picture chart graph that is absolutely essential to the question itself. Like I can't answer this question without that visual there. So this is a really good example of a visual analysis question kids as a whole because it was type in their answer. We saw lots of mistakes with this kind of thing.
When it was a multiple choice kind of question. Kids did far better in visual analysis with this kind of question than they did. When they had to type it in, we saw drops of like 15 to 20% between this kind of thing. So just wanted to kind of get on what, like how visual analysis was just a little bit different here.
All right. So once we've deter what, excuse me, once we've determined what kind of question it is, then what kind of activities do we do to target that question? Something that engages kids, makes kids think that way. What can, what can increase algebraic thinking?
What can increase conditional thinking? What can increase in comparative thinking? That's fun for the kids. So here's an activity that does that called the elimination computation.
So basically, let's take a look first at the conditions of the question. So everyone take about 10 seconds, read the directions and see if you can identify every condition that you would need in order to answer this correctly, just take about 15 seconds and just think it through right. So first off condition number one, I've got these nine numbers and I have to use each of them. Condition one, condition two, you can only use each of the numbers above once and then condition three.
I have to make all of these things true. Now, there are several right answers. But what I want you guys to do is I don't want you to necessarily to solve this. I mean, if you want to solve it at home.
Absolutely. But what I want you to do is I want you to kind of look at this and tell me where's your starting point? Where's your medic cognition on this? Because we want to help kids look at something like this and be able to think their way through it.
So what are the first things that you would do? How would you target this question? So take about 30 seconds type in your answer over on the side. Which one would you start with or how would you start this process?
And I just kind of wanna know what you're thinking and Valentin, Damon while they're doing that, I'd like to have a conversation about this. What's your thinking? Where, where do you think this would go? Yeah, you, you've almost got me stumped.
It's difficult. Yeah, I would do process of, for me, I would do process of elimination. I would just start plugging numbers which would not probably be a very good strategy. OK.
So for you, it would be just like start making things that are true. But where would you start making the things that are true? Where would be your first target? Probably the, probably the fractions because I'm gonna eliminate because there's only certain fractions that can combine into that.
So that can combine to that. So this would only be 1326 or 39. So there's a very limited amount of numbers that would fit in that particular fraction that makes good sense. I see Melinda over there.
She was saying that she would target this one first, right? And so a lot of people look at this, especially the younger kids, they know subtraction and they're like, I would target that one first because there's so many correct answers, right? And so all of these could have different end points. But what you want the kids to do is say when I have this many different end points, how do I start thinking around it in such a way that I can do it the fastest?
Because if I spend too much time on an S A question, I start getting frustrated. And if I've never seen anything like this before, then once again, the type of thinking in the tech get me. But if I've been doing this kind of thing in class, I have a medic cognitive process for jumping into this. Right?
And that's one of my favorite things to do too. Dame is I like to go after that one third. There's only so many numbers that will fit in there. And so then I might start doing a little bit of guess and check.
I also like going after that four down there on the bottom because you see how there's a red, a blue and a green that indicates different numbers. So that's gonna be a double digit over a single digit. I was wondering, yeah, so I'd go like 246 right for that one. And then as soon as I do 246, that leaves just 13 for that top one.
So now I've used 1324 and six and now I'm looking over here on the other side and there's so many options for that greater than 1/8. I mean, there's tons of options for that. Right. I'm saving that to the end because there's so many ways I can get there.
And then with this one, the three, now, if I've already used 1324 and six, like do I have anything left that will get me to that three, right? I have eight and I have five. There you go. So that would get me to where I'm going.
But kids don't naturally think this way without prompting and activities that bring us there. And so this is what I mean by teachers need to be able to not only recognize questions, but they need to be able to create activities that help generate algebraic thinking, conditional thinking, comparative thinking, right? The book doesn't necessarily do things like this. The book tends to really focus on their computation and their word problems.
So when kids get things like that last problem, we saw they struggle because they've never seen anything quite like it. All right. So and thank you for all your comments over on the side. Love to see all everything that's going on over there.
Thank you for the participation. now we look at something like this. OK? And once again, I'm gonna take us through the the process content.
We're comparing fractions once again, right? Definitely conceptual the tech check boxes, we can see the check boxes are happening there, right? And then we go to the thinking. So if you go back to our 10 types of thinking, what do you see in this one?
So once again, take about 15, 30 seconds over on the side, go back to it type in one because there's, once again, there's about two kinds of thinking that you're really gonna see in this one. So balancing, do me a favor, just kind of look at this question, describe it for me. What do you see happening in this question? Yeah, so I'm looking at the A I see, definitely see like visuals, right?
Some sort of visual analysis that, that I have to do. I look at the answers. So I need to understand the different operations that are there not what they mean? So recognizing operations, I guess.
OK. And so when it's recognizing operations, it's like, are you looking at the problem? And then saying, I have to figure out what the operation is in order to solve it. Like, do you have a doubt as to what kind of operation you're gonna use?
Like when you see an equal sign, you probably know what that means, but are you looking at the problem itself and having to figure out what kind of operation to use that makes something recognizing operations? But the visual analysis, absolutely, you cannot solve this question without doing this. And then I see that over on the side, Melinda was comparing absolutely converting visuals to expressions in this particular case, it's not exactly doing that. And here's why it's because these down here are they're not asking you necessarily.
Well, I guess, yeah. No, I think you're right, converting visuals to expressions would fit this because they're saying, does this match this this expression matching that visual? So yes, absolutely. So when you look at something like this, if I were to add this one, I would like you guys to tell me if you think you would checkbox, the one I'm throwing in there.
So they've given us four situations, the two that are correct already check boxed, right? I'm gonna throw 1/5 1 in there. So I would like everyone kind of playing at home. Tell me, would you checkbox?
What I'm about to say? If so type in a yes and then Damon Valentin just kind of throw in your answer with a yes or a no. OK. So I know, I love you guys.
I know there you go. One third equals 3/18 one third equals 3/18. Would you guys wanna check on that? No, no, no.
OK. How about this? One, 26 equals 4, 12. Would you put a check mark on that one?
Yes. Why? Well, partially because it's already there. But dang it 36 equals five tens. I was like in my head, 36 equals five tens.
36 equals five tens. So yes, it does. Would you put a check mark on it? Not, it, it, if my understanding is correct and that I have to have that I'm comparing the models to the fractions, then no, I wouldn't.
Aha Exactly. But so many kids on this type of question will miss this because there'll be a true statement down on the bottom. But because it says select all the statements that can be supported using Anna's fraction models. So you did not fall into the trap.
Excellent. I probably would have, if I was a kid, I probably would have fallen into it for sure. Right. And so many kids do and will do that kind of thing, right?
So you're like, OK, great. So now that I have this kind of thinking and it's visual analysis, it's comparative. What do I do about it? So in this particular place, there's a website that actually comes from math playground where you can manipulate five different fraction bars all the way up to 1/20 and you can create all these different kinds of things that they can compare with one another.
You can create visual analysis questions super fast and you can have an unlimited amount of them and you just keep asking questions kind of like I did. Does this model support this question that I'm asking? Can you analyze what I am saying here? And so if you guys are interested in looking at this particular website, you just go right there and you can see that you can like change.
The colors are gonna be purple, blue, green, orange, yellow, they're gonna be very clear for the kids to be able to use and manipulate. And you could use this for equivalent fractions, adding fractions, dividing fractions. So many different things that you could do. That helps target the kinds of thinking that you see in this question, right?
But once again, the books don't necessarily do it in this way, most of the time they'll ask kids to say, what is this fraction? So a lot of kids will just type in 1/6 like that's the kind of thing they'll do. But for a deeper analysis that says, does this expression match this model? Prove it yes or no.
Most of the time our books are not doing things like that. And this is why kids are missing the questions that they're missing, right? That's a tough, that's a tough question. It is, right?
And these are, these are typically the kinds of questions that are just not the things that the kids are ready for. But if teachers are getting them ready for these kinds of things and they're doing it. in conjunction with what the book's doing, you'll see lots of kinds of, of that thinking improvement that the kids so desperately need. But most of the time it educators just like how do we do this?
We're not sure what's our direction. And so this kind of helps see that if they analyze the questions, recognize the kind of strategic thinking and then have the tools they need to get there. This is how s a scores improve. But most of the time this kind of conversation isn't going on.
So this is what I call the most infamous fifth grade question ever. Take a look. I'm gonna give you guys like 45 seconds, just kind of read through it really quick and then give me just your impressions on what you notice happening here and we're gonna talk about the kind of strategic thinking that's going on. So I'm gonna be quiet for 45 seconds.
Everyone just take a look, see what you think is going on here. OK. Oh, all right. So Damon just, just describe what you're seeing to me.
Fifth grade is hard. That's why I'm not asking you to solve it just so. So there's, there's, there's, there's multiple things going on from my perspective. So one, I've got some constraints, I can only order full, full pizzas so I can either order cheese or pepperoni, but I can't order half of a pizza. , and the kids want portions that add up to more or two, less than those whole pizzas. , and then there's the kids that, that want specific pizzas in there.
So that's, that's what I'm, that's, that's, those are kind of the constraints that I'm seeing in the problem and you're using the word constraints, which is a great word. , the word, uh, we tended to use in the strategic thinking were the conditions, right? So this particular one has like eight conditions in order to solve it. You've got to know that he wants half, Becca wants two thirds. Cam wants 2/4.
You can only give the minimum number like that's the most constraining thing down on the bottom. Otherwise you could put any number to meet the original question. Exactly. Right.
And you'd be right if it wasn't for that last condition. Right? Not quite right. How many kids miss this kind of thing is they don't know how to navigate or understand all of the information being thrown at them.
This is like paintballs of information being thrown their way, you know. And yes, Melinda kids don't think about the leftovers. They want the exact number, right. And something like this finds it really hard to get to that exact number.
It's so big, it's so convoluted and conditional thinking is one of the hardest kinds of thinking and it's one of the rarest kinds that you see in the textbooks, but it's fairly common amongst the aspect, we'll see these in about two or three questions per 30 questions that, that they're investigating, that they're being put forth in and these tend to be some of the lowest ones. And then this would be an activity that we would use to target it. Something along these lines. Now, there's tons of ways we can target it.
There's great websites that will actually target it. But something like this where if you want to engage the kids, you bring some cards out, you throw like three numbers down. Like here we've got the numbers 38 and five, right. So now the kids have to look at conditions 1234 and five, and they'll have their deck of playing cards out in front of them.
So they're manipulating it and they have to come up with a three number combination that meets all of those conditions due to our time. I'm not gonna actually have you guys kind of interact or play with this particular one. This is, I know you guys are like, oh my God, I know we have to be this hard. I wasn't even looking anymore trying to solve it ahead of time.
Uh But you can see here there's going to be six conditions. It looks like five, but there's actually six because the six conditions is the three, the eight and the five itself, the very first few cards has the comparison thing going with this. So you are going to see all sorts of language being thrown in here along with the conditional kinds of thinking that that that's being asked to be put forth. And then this last one because someone mentioned not only conditional thinking, someone mentioned they wanted to see claims.
So here's an example of a claims question, right? And you want to use some very specific vocabulary around claims. So here we have that Julian needs to make a box in the shape of a rectangular prism with a height of three inches and a volume of 243 cubic inches. Juliet claims that the width and the length need to be exactly the same in order for this to work.
So now if you look at the language for part A, what would support Julia's claim and then part B is what would not support, you're gonna see language like support, dispute, support refute, you're gonna be seeing that kind of thing. And so people are gonna be making claims that you've got to either say I accept this claim and here's my reasons why or I deny this claim and here's my reasons why. And then they have to type in their proof or their disproof of the answer. And there's so many ways they target claims, so many ways they do these kinds of questions.
You'll see it a lot with the step one, step two, step three step four. Where does the student make their mistake? Their first mistake. Can you identify it?
That's a type of claims question because that's a student saying I believe this, this, this and this and you have to either support or dispute their mistake, right? So this kind of question, this is 1/6 grade question, by the way, it's volume question that so many kids miss because they just type in the part, a part because that's the only part they understand and they don't understand the part B like they don't even know necessarily what it's asking for, how to figure it out because they only see this as only being one answer, right? So things like this cause some serious problems moving forward and it's not because they don't know volume.
Most of the time kids can go box measure all the sides and answer questions about volume. But because it's a claims question, the way it's introduced the kids miss this question and then it looks like they can't do volume once again, it, it just doesn't make a whole lot of sense, right? And then here's the activity that I'm like demonstrating today around claims. So if you look in the middle, you'll see a claim whenever you multiply two odd numbers together, the product will be an odd number.
Now, what you're going to do in this kind of question is you're gonna say all right, does three times five support that claim if so we turn it green. Does it refute or dispute the claim? If so we turn it red or does it have nothing to do with the claim? In that case, we turn those like yellow?
Ok. So with three times five, what color would you guys turn that? So Valentin Damon, what, what would you color? Three times five?
That would be green, green, three times five is 15 perfectly fits the claim. Damon. What about 21 divided by seven? How would you target that?
Every multiply two numbers must be 21. I would be green as well in this particular case because it says whenever you multiply two odd numbers together, we would go ahead, we would turn that one yellow because it's still right in the sense that it's the basic operation turned around. But because it's specifically saying multiply we turn it yellow because it doesn't support or refute. I see it.
It got me too, Damon. I mean, the teachers could argue. Yes, it's the, it's the opposite. And you could say it still proves the rule because seven times three, it's 21 but because we threw it in the division and we were looking at specifically at the claim, we would do it yellow.
So when you go through all of these, you would find that there's quite a few green, quite a few yellow, but there's not a single red, right? And if that's the case you move here. So did the table have any evidence to dispute the claim in this case? Nothing, nothing turned red.
Nothing to dispute it. Can you think of any evidence to dispute the claim? So now kids are gonna do their own kind of free styling. Can they come up with anything that will target this claim?
And so this is a place where they would discuss it and if they can't come up with anything at all, then this would be considered a mathematical rule. If however you dispute it just once, it's not a rule in math, in order to be a rule, it must be right every single time, right? So this is an example of a claim activity to go along with a claim type of question. And there's so much more that could be going with this.
But we really just wanted to emphasize in today's training that you could be able to identify the kind of thinking and that you would have ideas on how you could strategically target, have some engagement with the class as you did it. So those are some of the things we really wanted to target in today's training. And then the very last slide I use Classtime a lot in order to target all these different kinds of tech types and to create some of these strategic thinking questions that I could have because I can create tables check boxes. I can use visual analysis, I can do almost all of these using the Classtime setting.
So any questions with the whole minute I got left, I mean, while the audience may be is thinking of questions in terms of, you know, a teacher who understands now, the deeper strategic thinking, the challenges, what are the, you know, small first steps I could take as a teacher to improve on this. The first thing is just look at these release items and just kind of look at the types of thinking and just get familiar with them, like being able to just recognize them as the very first step because once, if you don't recognize them, you can't teach with them, right? A lot of times teachers will say, well, aren't we teaching to the test?
Absolutely not. We're teaching them to think in a certain way. You're analyzing a situation, life skill, right? You're looking at a picture or a chart, life skill, you gotta be able to visualize and understand what's going on with it, right?
You've got to understand claims and be able to make claims and support your claims. So all of those things and with Melinda with the reading items analysis that you've got going on there, Most of those tend to be straight off of the S A standards. There's a document that says these are the kinds of questions you're gonna ask and almost all of them are pretty straightforward in terms of like, what's the authors say? They don't do as much playing around with the types of thinking that math does, they do much more like very specific types of strategic around, , the reading comprehension standards.
And so it's, it's a little bit different. That's why I'm talking math is because it's so much more, complicated than the English ones. But, , please, you can email me at Scott Houston at educators dot Coop and I'll just type this in here for anyone who would like to contact me. We also go to schools and do trainings like this with the teachers.
We spend two days, we do some individual, we go into the classroom model this with the kids. So we do all of these different kinds of things. Educators Cooperative does with kids in the schools 11 quick uh follow up for you, Scott. Do you also, are you active on Twitter?
Damon
Do you have, do you want to share your Twitter handle with folks that might, that might wanna engage you?
Scott
Actually, no, I'm not really active. Sorry, I didn't mean to, I have one but I don't even think I know what it is off the top of my head.
Damon
No worries. No worries. Anything else? Well, the last thing I'll say is, is thank you very much Scott.
I really appreciate the, the, the time and, and also to the people that participate in the chat. Like those were really good questions and this was certainly challenging for me and I got an engineering degree. So, I'm glad I made it out before they had these questions in the sixth grade. I'll tell you that.
Uh And thank you guys for playing along. I just, I work so much better when I have like a crowd to play with. So I appreciate it. So thank you everyone for, for coming to the presentation and participating.
As we mentioned in the beginning, this is gonna be recorded. So you'll be getting that invitation for the recording as well. We've got a short survey. It takes about two minutes and it's just really to help us improve the next, the next webinar.
So your feedback is critically important. I thank you in advance for, for filling that out. Thank you for participating in EduCraftCon today. And Valentin, is there anything you'd like to wrap up with?
Valentin
No, just thanks a lot, everyone again and also Scott, thanks so much for introducing us in depth to the complexities of this as someone who has seen Scott in the classroom before. I have a much deeper appreciation now as well. So, thanks a lot. Hey, no problem.
And this was not in depth. This was the surface. Yeah, I can imagine. Thanks. Thank you.
Very much everyone for participating today. Bye bye guys. Thank you.