Application to Your Classroom, Part 1

With your PLC, discuss how you will apply the ideas from this module in your classrooms.

Select a Clothesline Math using Numerical Expressions routine to try in your classroom. As a PLC, decide if everyone will select the same set of expressions in their classrooms or if you will adapt the routine for different classrooms. We recommend everyone in the PLC select the same routine with the same conditions to facilitate conversation. Feel free to use the expressions from the two examples you learned in Activity 2a and Activity 2b or create some of your own.
Discuss how you will support students in justifying the placement of different expressions on the whiteboards or clothesline. What prompts will you give? What questions will you ask?
Decide on the specific classroom artifact you would like each person to collect and bring back to the PLC after trying this in their classroom. Given the interactive nature of the clothesline math activities, we recommend video clips from the partner work and/or the whole group discussion. However, pictures of students' work on whiteboards during the activity, or pictures of the clothesline taken at various points in the discussion may also be useful.

Run lesson with classroom

Application to Your Classroom, Part 2

After all members of the PLC have had a chance to try a Clothesline Math using Numerical Expressions in their classrooms, discuss the results. Each member of the PLC should bring one or more artifacts from their classroom to support this discussion (e.g. video clips).

To guide your discussion of the data, we have provided a discussion structure adapted from the protocol, "Save the Last Word for ME." This protocol is designed to support a focused discussion about classroom data.

Choose a timekeeper (who also participates). Read the through the protocol steps and decide as a PLC the length of time you would like to spend on steps 4-7.
Each participant identifies a significant idea or aspect of the classroom artifact(s) that they brought to the PLC meeting (e.g. a snippet from the video).
When all members of the group are ready, one person volunteers to be the presenter. The presenter briefly describes the class where the artifact was collected and then presents the classroom artifact. At this time, the presenter should avoid giving too much information and specifically not state what he/she noticed in the artifact, what he/she found interesting, or why this artifact was chosen. Please let the artifact speak for itself and avoid describing student work as being high, medium, or low.
All members of the group pause for a moment to silently consider the artifact before moving to the next step.
Other members of the PLC (not the presenter) discuss what they notice and wonder about the artifact. The presenter is silent and taking notes during this time. Typically, 3-5 minutes for this step is a good length of time.
The presenter then has time (3-5 minutes) to explain why he/she chose the artifact and to respond to and build on what he/she heard from the others during Step 5.
Repeat steps 3-6 until all members of the PLC have had a chance to be the presenter and to have “the last word.”
End with an open dialogue about the artifacts. What questions and ideas were raised that you want to follow up on? What next steps will you take?