Johanna Kuiper 0:00
One of my favorite things about being a math teacher is seeing the aha moments, the light bulbs go off for students, especially for those who have been struggling through a problem or a concept. But in order to get kids at point they have to try. And so many kids would rather opt out, then try and fail. So how do we invite those kids into a space of trial and error. That is what we are going to be discussing in today’s episode, all about rough draft thinking. So with that, let’s get started.

Johanna Kuiper 0:32
Welcome to solving for the undefined podcast. I’m your host, Johanna, founder of Miss Kuiper’s Classroom, the place that equips teachers and creating a healthy math classroom where students can thrive, no matter their academic abilities. But it’s not always about the numbers. And that’s why I’m here, bringing you the formulas to solve your problems, math and otherwise, plus strategies on cultivating that necessary math mindset. And that’s what you can count on.

Johanna Kuiper 1:01
Hello, hello, welcome to a brand new episode. I am excited to be sharing this with you the rough draft thinking because I like to think of this as my second best teaching tip. This is something that I randomly came up with one day when I was having so much struggle with students just attempting the problem that I was like, I need something different. And so it popped in my brain rough draft thinking. So most students understand the idea of rough draft thinking because of language arts class, they know that it’s part of like the first few drafts of an essay or paper that aren’t necessarily perfect, but it’s just a space to get all of their thinking out. And I’m bringing that to the math classroom. So here’s an example of me using that in the classroom. We were working through a worksheet generating the ideas of rotations on a graph like geometric transformations, the rotation piece. And the question that I had them do this on was just a graph with a triangle in the first quadrant. And their goal was to rotate it 9180 and 270 degrees clockwise on this graph. And we haven’t necessarily talked a whole lot about rotations yet, except maybe like the directions and whatnot. And I wanted to see what kids could do with this. So I had them do their rough draft thinking, I gave them five minutes to work through the problem on their own or with their team, however, they wanted to do it. And then I said, on the directions lines, using a pencil, create a rough draft of problem seven. And then I gave them the five minutes to do it. And then after that five minutes are up, I had a video play. And if you’ve seen scaffolded, math and sciences, transformation activity, it’s a hands on thing, where you kind of cut a piece and you rotate a quadrant over, I’ll link the video in the description because I don’t think I don’t think I’m giving the description effectively to you. But we watched that video and I had those papers for students and we did the activity. And they got to see how a transformation actually rotates 90 degrees clockwise. So after we watched that video, we did that hands on activity, I had them go back and edit their thinking, I gave them an additional five minutes to on the slide it said edit your 90 degree rotation and add the coordinates below. I think the five minutes was a little excessive, because most kids were able to then generate it in less time. But my timers, as I’ve said before, are just a tool, not the law. So we can adjust as necessary. So after that 90 degree edit, that’s when we have the class discussion of what it is look like, what did you do? What did you notice? What did you wonder all of those different components, they took the time to do the rough draft thinking, we did a practice that wasn’t that problem, a hands on activity for them to see what a 90 degree what a 90 degree rotation does to a triangle on a coordinate plane. And then I had them edit their thinking. So they got three different components of teaching. That wasn’t me telling them if it was right or wrong. And to give you an idea of how well this worked is, every one of my kids was doing the problem. Kids who are behind grade level kids who rarely do work in my class. Everyone had pencils in their hands doing this problem. And as I walked around asking students to walk me through their process and what they were thinking with that rough draft thinking and then afterwards with their edit. To be honest, I was kind of floored by the creativity and thinking behind students doing what they did. And that’s amazing students who rarely worked or students who are quote unquote, not on grade level. Were able to articulate what they did for that problem. And they did it well. And that’s not to say that their rough draft was correct. There was a lot of kids who didn’t get the rough draft, right. But after that hands on activity of figuring out what it looks like to rotate something 90 degrees clockwise, and then giving them that space to edit their work, they were able to walk me through what it means to rotate something 90 degrees clockwise on a graph. And that’s amazing. In a 1520 minute activity, they went from not being able to do something to being able to do something without me directly teaching them how to do it. The power of giving kids space to try will undoubtedly change the atmosphere within your classroom. Just that opportunity of it doesn’t matter if you’re right or wrong. Just give me your best thought. What do you think of when you think of 90 degree rotation? Just try it out. It’s okay, if you’re wrong, you’ll have time to fix it later. That changed so much for my kids that day. It was amazing. It truly was.

Johanna Kuiper 6:14
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Johanna Kuiper 7:00
And I know I’ve mentioned some of the benefits already, I want to give you some more specifics on why I think rough draft thinking is beneficial as a thing to implement within your classroom. One, it prioritizes trying over perfection. When you give the space for students to try something and articulate that this is your time to just try it. You are prioritizing them attempting something over them being perfect the first time. And I think especially in math, perfection is put on a pedestal of you’re either right or you’re wrong, you’re either good at math, or you’re not good at math. And I feel like that’s just how American society portrays math abilities. And so prioritizing the space for students to just give it their best shot, whether they feel confident or not, if they feel right or wrong, is really powerful. Because benefit number two, it allows for learning by fixing those mistakes, I always say we learn by fixing mistakes, and they don’t always have to be our own. So if I’m fixing someone else’s problem, I’m still learning from that mistake, because I can see what they did, and then how to fix it. So especially if I’m working in a team or a group of three, and one of maybe one of the students didn’t get their rough draft thinking correct, which is normal, that’s okay. I can kind of help walk them through how to edit it. And so then I’m getting the practice of teaching someone how to do it, which is a concept of mastery over the subject. So rough draft thinking allows for learning by fixing mistakes, whether it’s my own, or I’m helping a teammate out. And then number three, the benefits is it helps more students feel comfortable. They’re getting the practice of trying without repercussions. And if this becomes a typical thing within your classroom, students are going to be able to take that with them to other activities. And just try something without thinking, Oh, I can’t do this problem. If I don’t know how to get started, they’re going to be able to take those problem solving skills that they’ve learned through the rough draft thinking time and be able to apply it to these situations because they’ve practice being uncomfortable, and trying anyways. So within that helping students feel comfortable, you’re help building their math confidence, which we know is a huge factor of them being able to be successful in math class, is if they feel confident in their abilities. And then the last benefit that I see is it’s helping them self reflect. So they’re being able to see a problem, do their rough draft thinking, edit, and then self reflect Oh, hey, I knew that really well or my intuition was correct. And I love as a teacher build hang off students intuition, because that intuition is based on prior experience and prior knowledge. Maybe subconsciously, and maybe not. But building off of that and giving it a label of a math term or a place to put it really helps students be able to continue using that intuition. For more problems, just like we talked about with helping them feel comfortable trying a new problem later on in class. And then on the flip side, maybe the student was completely off, when it came to that rough draft thinking time, they were able to then see an example or do a piece of a project, and then come back and edit their work. They’re reflecting on like, Okay, I wasn’t right the first time, that’s okay, now I know what to do. And so it’s building that confidence through that self reflection of the editing time. So those are the four benefits that I see a rough draft thinking prioritizes, trying over perfection, allowing for learning by fixing mistakes, helping students feel more comfortable and having self reflection. Now, if this is something that you want to try in your classroom, this is how I did it when I did it with my students. So when I had this activity, or this problem, this is how I prefaced it. I said, this is your rough draft thinking time, how many of you know what a rough draft is. And we talked about what that means in language arts class. And then I took it and applied it for math. So I said something along the lines of math is not about getting it perfect to the first time. Math is not always in the or perfect in its process, it can definitely be messy. And that’s okay. There’s always more than one way to do a problem. So put down all of your ideas or choose one of your ideas to go with your intuition sometimes knows best. And then with that, you can only succeed by trying, no one got anywhere by not doing anything. I always tell my kids, you learn math by doing math. So that piece of trying is going to be key. So you can modify that however you want. But get the idea across connected to their language arts class of rough draft papers, their rough draft pieces in that class, and then bring it into the math classroom, you’re gonna have time to edit it. We’re working through this together, etc.

Johanna Kuiper 12:27
So I encourage you to try this out in your classroom, test it out. Give yourself some rough draft thinking space to try rough draft thinking in your classroom. I am giving you the space and the permission to try it. Who knows what crazy and amazing things will come out of it. I hope you enjoyed today’s episode. This is something that I am passionate about putting in my classroom, the idea of giving students space to try because like I said before it is changing the atmosphere in my classroom. And I hope it can do the same for you. And I would love the ability to teach other teachers about this concept as well. So please leave a review whatever app you’re listening on, take some time to leave a review. And that is going to help me boost this podcast episode in the podcast in general in the podcast app algorithm, so that other teachers are able to find and learn some more amazing tips on engaging students academically to help them deeply understand and love math. And with that I’ll calc-u-later.

Johanna Kuiper 13:38
Thank you so much for tuning into today’s episode. To find all the links and resources to things talked about in this episode, head on over to Miss Kuiper’s classroom.com and click on podcast

Transcribed by https://otter.ai