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While reading the Burns Article, I can easily make connections between the nine strategies and the struggles I witness my students face on a daily basis in math class. I especially thought the sixth strategy of making explicit connections was one of the strongest approaches. Of course, I see the value of creating learning experiences in which students can discover patterns and makes connections from one piece of information to the next. However, I am struggle to figure out what this looks like for my 7th grade students who do not have the necessary foundational skills to create those connections. I  see the immediate merit for using these strategies in an elementary classroom where students are still building the math foundation necessary to move forward.  However, always goes back to the same questions of how do I balance this need of my students while still providing them with the skills to access the 7th grade content.

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This article by Marilyn Burns is very much in line with my own philosophy of teaching math as well as the foundation of our mathematics curriculum. I was particularly drawn to her explanation of "Build in a routine of support." The way she detailed used simpler examples of multiplication with more than 2 products to help highlight different strategies reminded me of what we call Number Strings. Number Strings are number sense exercises we do with students where we begin with a easy problem and strategically select related problems to aid students in making connections between various approaches. Number Strings incorporate many of Burns' essential strategies in that they provide scaffolding, foster student interaction (this is typically a student-led exercise with the whole class or in small groups), make connections among concepts explicit, and encourage mental calculation (we usually do not have paper when we do strings).
Something else that stuck out was Burns' point about pacing lessons carefully. It is true - everyone knows what a class of confused faces looks like and feels like, but pushing ahead for the sake of "getting threw material" is an easy trap to fall into. Even though I tell myself year after year to slow things done and not move on until I am 100% confident the majority of the room has mastered the concepts, I still struggle with pushing on aimlessly. This article reinforces how important it is for students to take the time they need to internalize new concepts. If I allot sufficient time to incorporate the other strategies effectively (building in support and building in practice, among the others), my students will take away more from our lessons that simply pushing ahead without actually mastering the concepts.

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I believe that Marilyn Burns' strategies in "Nine Ways to Catch Kids Up" integrate different types of learners. As a Self- Contained teacher, I find myself integrating similar concepts into my teaching. These strategies can be used as forms of differentiation to help ensure all students needs are addressed.

I find that sometimes it's hard to implement because it can become repetitive and often feels like you are not getting anywhere, however if it helps even one student engage to the content, I believe it is worth using. This allows us to hold our students accountable, but also ourselves as educators.

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Much of what Marilyn Burns outlines in "Nine Ways to Catch Kids Up" seems like solid practice for teachers regardless of content area. The idea of deliberately paced lessons which build student engagement is not new.

I liked the idea of giving students ownership over the concepts by having them use them in multiple situations.

I could use a similar approach for teaching social studies skills. Rather than multiple at-bats for a math problem, I could provide students with multiple different opportunities to use some of the writing to learn skills we saw in the textbook.

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As a math teacher, I found the article Nine Ways to Catch Kids Up, Educational Leadership by Marilyn Burns to be very interesting and helpful. I agree with Ms. Burns (2007) that math lessons should be paced out carefully. If students are not grasping the math concepts taught in a lesson, it is important for teachers to stop and clarify the math concepts. Teachers should not move on until all students have a clear understanding of the lesson taught. I also agree that teachers should always build in review and support of the lesson before they move on to the next concept. And lastly, it is important for students to practice what they are taught so they can learn to master the mathematical concepts and apply them.

I currently apply all these techniques in my math classes. I always make sure all my scholars completely understand the lesson before I move on to additional instruction. Additionally, I always review my instructional lessons and give my scholars plenty of reinforcement and practice problems to practice and master what was taught.

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As a first year math co-teacher, I found a lot of the strategies mentioned in the article to be very helpful. One of the strategies that the author mentions is in regards to pacing the Lessons carefully to ensure that all of the students are understanding the content. As a student who struggled with Math immensely, I was very appreciative when the teacher's would stop to answer questions or explain the strategies once again. However, the sad truth is that not all teachers will stop to answer questions. As the article mentions, "curriculum demands keep teachers pressing forward, even when students lag behind." As a result of this, students who do not fully understand the material are moving forward with the content without fully understanding it yet. As the Special Education teacher, I have  provided the additional support for these students that struggle. However, I have noticed that although my students with IEP are being serviced, there are non students IEPs that are falling behind as well who do not want to speak up. My co-teacher and I have learned to become very mindful and although, we may not get through the entire lesson, we try our best to stop, ask questions and explain the content once more.

At present, the techniques that my co-teacher and I use in the classroom are: Foster Student Interaction, Build In Vocabulary Instruction & Provide Practice. These strategies have proven to be greatly beneficial and have helped our students. By having our students work with a peer, not only are they able to share out their responses but they are able to share out the thinking process that went on as well. I find this to be very useful especially when a student is not sure how to get to the answer and he or she learns from his or her peers the methods/steps that were taken.

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I have struggling students in all of the classes that I teach and I wish I could wave a wand and they all be caught up and on grade level. Though I am not currently teaching math, I do have a bit of experience teaching it. A major takeway from this piece is building in a routine of support. The four stages is the ideal workshop model. It ensures that teachers are capturing studnets before they have time to sit in confusion.

In my own classroom we do the I-do, We-do, You-do, however, following the four stages, the we-do portion of the lesson would include both a teacher lead active enagement, but also a group practice.

Although I am not teaching math, this concept works cross subject. This will ensure that what ever concept is being taught, students will have the tools to work independently.

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A major take-away from the piece, which resonating with my very much, is the idea that mathematical concepts must feel fluid for students.  Too often to units and even lessons feel like isolated ideas.  To students, that means that they have hundreds of new ideas every year to separately memorize, as the author explained it was for Paul.  Not only does that make it dramatically more difficult for students, but it also deprives them of actual understanding of the math that is connected at almost every turn.  So much of new concepts builds directly off of elementary ideas in math, and when students have a strong foundation they are ready to tackle new versions of those ideas.  When they're pushed along without that strong foundation, every new idea requires them to reset themselves.

Additionally, as teachers who desperately want our students to "get it," we must resist the urge to accept correct answers without a strong mathematical argument for why it's correct.  That accountability needs to be put on students as early has possible.  Without expecting the reasoning, we allow students without a strong understanding to move forward under the guise of "getting it."  The further along students are pushed without that concrete foundation, the more we put them at risk of being confused down the road to a point that they've already lost their momentum.

In my classroom, this means creating lesson plans that include frequent pulse checks to make sure students are on track for the lesson goal holistically. If students can confidently hit those checkpoints, they're more likely to understand the overall conceptual goal of the lesson because it relates to what they already got on board with at the beginning of the lesson. This also means that lessons themselves need to be fluid. Each new lessons should clearly build off the previous one or find access points based off of previous knowledge before diving into something new. While this should be true for all good teaching, it's particularly necessary in mathematics because mathematicians use their number sense to assess new problems everyday. Ideally, students should feel ready to tackle any math problem, within their grade level, by at least connecting what they observe to what they already know. They should go into problems knowing that regardless of how the question looks, they'll need to access the same mathematical principles as they've always used. Those "ah-ha" moments students have when they realize that something truly makes sense based off of what they already know are invaluable.

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Write a 1 paragraph reflection answering the following questions:

What are some major takeaways from this piece?

How can you apply what you have learned to your own classroom?

If you do not currently teach math, how could you use one of these strategies to assist one of your students who is struggling to master math concepts?