Kentwood — On a whiteboard in the front of the classroom, Bowen Elementary fourth-grader Lian Cang jotted down “Strategy A” for determining the total length of five 12 ¼-inch strips of fabric using addition.
Next to him, Jayden Maxim wrote down “Strategy B,” completing the same problem using multiplication.
Fellow fourth-graders took notes and referenced how they had come up with the correct answer: 61 ¼. Then they discussed their work in pairs and as a class.
“There’s more than one strategy,” Lian said, explaining that it’s good to know a few ways to get to an answer. “You can check your answers with other (strategies). If we don’t know something, we can partner up with someone else and teach each other.”
The scenario of students modeling math strategies to each other is happening every day in the district’s elementary and middle schools, said Debbie Schuitema, director of new teacher development and curriculum.
‘We want all students … to experience math in a way that pushes against that hierarchy of who is seen as good at math.’
— Debbie Schuitema, KPS director of new teacher development and curriculum
“I was just in a second-grade classroom where the teacher had three students’ (math strategies on the board),” she said. “They were all mathematically sound, super amazing and they could make a connection across the three.”
The newly implemented math curriculum for KPS kindergarten through eighth-graders, i-Ready Classroom Mathematics 2024, has students tackling math in different ways and knowing it’s OK to do so. They are learning that their first instinct for how to solve a problem might be just as correct as any other approach.
“You could do the problem with a number line. Or maybe times,” explained fourth-grader Elizabeth Lousey as she considered how to best add the fabric strip lengths. “We can learn it in an easy way.”
Lessons start with “Try It” — a few minutes when students wrestle with a new concept and teachers gain an understanding of how students are thinking and what other strategies need to be modeled.
“They’re not trying to solve a problem, they’re talking about ways that math works,” said fourth-grade teacher Jessica Andrus-Wyman. “They are showing their thinking in multiple different ways. They are making connections between each other’s strategies.”
Andrus-Wyman also sees students realize they can do the math. Demonstrating their work on the board is a big deal, she said.
“I think their confidence is building because they have the opportunities to share with their peers. I will intentionally pick students that maybe didn’t or wouldn’t share, so they are like ‘My math problem was so good that the teacher called me up there.’”
Aligning Instruction Across Grades
Schuitema said i-Ready aligns K-5 with 6-8 instruction, content-wise and with grade-level standards. A district committee of educators from every grade level and building started exploring new resources in December 2023. Goals were to create a better foundation of math over the years, bridge the transition between elementary and middle school and have students learn to demonstrate their understanding.
The committee first crafted a vision of what they dreamed of math looking like, using words like “joyful,” “problem solving” and “collaboration.” They prioritized a focus on equity and high expectations for all.
Schuitema said she wants to change the hard-to-shake notion that math is “scary” and a “set of magical procedures” many don’t grasp.
“We want all students to see themselves as mathematicians, but we also want them to be challenged,” she said. “We want students to experience math in a way that pushes against that hierarchy of who is seen as good at math.”
‘If we don’t know something, we can partner up with someone else and teach each other.’
— fourth-grader Lian Cang
Bowen Principal Mary Campione said previous generations learned math through step-by-step procedures that indicated just one way of solving problems. i-Ready helps students learn to think conceptually about numbers and not just learn algorithms.
“It really honors student voice and problem-solving approaches. The ‘Try It’ is all about ‘there’s no one way.’”
Kindergarten teacher Aubri Schultz said the early education focus is on “moving things around and exploring things.”
On a recent Friday, kindergartners worked on counting lines of dots into the teens.
“We are doing a lot of hands-on activities; I’m using a lot more manipulatives and math kits than I did in years past,” Schultz said.
She’s using the same routine as older grades with students — trying math, discussing it in pairs and connecting as a class.
“I like that the format is the same, and it kind of builds into harder math concepts,” she said.
Read more from Kentwood:
• Mulligans OK as students code, debug & putt
• What does an AP student look like? You!
