listening – Jenna Laib

Measuring Growth in Mathematical Reasoning: What Mia’s Thinking Reveals

29 Dec 202529 Dec 2025

Mia* is a fourth grader who participates in a small-group intervention with me that focuses on multiplication. She is enthusiastic and playful -- curling the dot in the i in…

Why Do I Love This Student Work: Examining Context & Bias

22 Oct 202423 Oct 2024

When we look at student work after school, long after the students have left the building, we make inferences -- guesses -- at what students were thinking. We ascribe meaning…

#tmwyk

The Love Graph

My 8yo daughter, S, held up a piece of paper with a jagged line drawn on it. "Mama. What do you notice? Do you see any high points? Or low…

in the classroom

A Third Grade Dilemma: Dividing by Zero

6 Apr 20246 Apr 2024

In a third grade class, students were in triads playing a game of "Headache," which is sometimes called Salute. Two students place cards on their foreheads, facing out, and the…

How Amalia Multiplies: Listening and Learning from a Fourth Grader

It's hard not to let our own bias creep into teaching situations. For one, our decision making processes thrive on context: what thinking has this student demonstrated about this topic?…

That Time I Couldn’t Hear

1 Nov 20231 Nov 2023

In early 2023, I spent two months with dramatic hearing loss. A complex infection — spearheaded by an angry colony of staph bacteria — reduced my world to underwater mumbles.…

“Is zero a number?”: Interviews with a Whole Class of Kindergartners

19 Sep 202319 Sep 2023

When I first became a math specialist in my district, I was assigned to work with upper elementary, middle school, and... kindergarten. I had never worked with kindergartners in an…

Eight Cupcakes #tmwyk

How can we arrange 8 cupcakes in a pan that has space for 12? In my last post, I wrote about a conversation I had with my 7yo daughter, S,…

Seeing the World through One Kindergartner’s Eyes

Sometimes I see Hassan, a kindergartner at my school, at the local mosque where my daughter attends Sunday School. I always wave brightly: "salamu alaykoum! Good to see you, Hassan!"…

How We Listen: Astrid’s Thinking about 5 x 6

27 Mar 202327 Mar 2023

"Clinical interviews are an opportunity to listen closely," I caught myself telling a colleague recently. But... is that enough? How we frame the act of listening changes our entire experience.…

Listening to Understand: Visualizing Adrian’s Thinking about Comparing Fractions

26 Feb 202326 Feb 2023

Marilyn Burns recently blogged about a 38 second video clip that I probably spent 380 seconds watching. (click on the image below to read the post -- but then come…

I Don’t Speak Russian, But…

My mother-in-law speaks three languages fluently -- and none of them are English. Her speech dances between Arabic and French and Algerian, and I do my best mental gymnastics to…

formative assessment…

Secret Squares and Stop Signs

I wrote a deeply sad post today. As I went to publish it, I hesitated. Yesterday was my last day of school, and instead of ending with sadness, I'd like…

formative assessment…

Understanding Negative Numbers: In Praise of Tiny Games

1 Feb 202217 Jun 2022

"Is this right?" Inaya asked me, pointing to the equation she'd recorded on her paper: 5 + (-8) = -13 We are one week into our 7th grade unit on…

five practices…

“Look! I showed my work!”

8 Sep 20218 Sep 2021

It's surreal to be back at my school, in person, after 18 months away. I feel a tremendous sense of vertigo when I look around at this place that is…

How Much Is Enough: Using Student Feedback to Reflect on Practice

28 Jun 202112 Jul 2021

Do students need to finish every problem? When I have asked this of colleagues, everyone has responding with a resounding no! Definitely not!Not every student needs that much practice.It's okay…

#tmwyk

Caterpillar Math

20 Jul 202020 Jul 2020

This spring, my children fell madly in love with insects. Ants. Bees. Butterflies. We read books. We went exploring outside with magnifying glasses. We developed elaborate pretend play rituals based…

Assessments: Capturing a Moment in Time

20 Feb 20205 Feb 2022

It can be tempting to overgeneralize what we learn from an assessment. See how that second grader drew tally marks to solve 54 + 28? He's a direct modeler. He…

Everyone Gets A Handful: Preschoolers Explore Division

28 Jan 20205 Feb 2022

One bag of cheese puffs. Four hungry children. My two children -- ages 4 and 2 -- had been playing with friends -- ages 4 and 8 -- when my…

Problem Based Lesson #3: Learning From One Another in Grade 4

9 Jan 202026 Jun 2020

This is a post in a series about problem based instruction in fourth grade -- centering on a series of lessons classroom teacher Claire* and I taught about symmetry. This…