This episode of Room to Grow brings together our 2025 series on the Mathematics Teaching Practices from Principles to Actions, an NCTM publication. After discussing each of the eight practices in isolation over the last several months, this month tackles the ideas and challenges in actually making substantive change to classroom practice.

Our hosts share ideas for engaging with others in deeper professional learning, coaching, and peer observations, as well as ideas for individual teachers to work on making change in their classrooms. They acknowledge that change is complicated, and encourage listeners to engage in small, incremental steps that add up over time.

Additional referenced content includes:

· NCTM’s Principles to Actions

· NCTM’s Taking Action series for grades K-5, grades 6-8, and grades 9-12

· NCTM’s Principals to Actions Toolkit – Professional learning and other resources for a deeper dive into the eight Mathematics Teaching Practices

Did you enjoy this episode of Room to Grow? Please leave a review and share the episode with others. Share your feedback, comments, and suggestions for future episode topics by emailing roomtogrowmath@gmail.com . Be sure to connect with your hosts on X and Instagram: @JoanieFun and @cbmathguy.

This episode of Room to Grow wraps up Joanie and Curtis’ season 5 series on the Mathematics Teaching Practices from NCTM’s Principles to Actions. The final practice in the series is “Support productive struggle in learning mathematics.” This is defined as follows:

Effective teaching of mathematics consistently provides students, individually and collectively, with opportunities and supports to engage in productive struggle as they grapple with mathematical ideas and relationships.

Our hosts begin with discussing the connection to classroom culture, ensuring that students feel safe, emotionally and academically, in order to be willing to struggle. Additionally, the expectations set by the teacher when there is a belief that productive struggle is a valuable and important aspect of learning math. Then they linger on the word “grapple” and the connotation it creates, and how different it is than the connotation of the word “struggle.” And they emphasize that productive struggle isn’t about the math being hard, but rather thinking about the mathematics in new ways, and making connections that may not have been obvious. A key idea is the importance of educators’ asking questions to better understand student thinking, which is a necessary condition for helping them to grapple with new mathematical connections.

Additional referenced content includes:

· NCTM’s Principles to Actions

· NCTM’s Taking Action series for grades K-5, grades 6-8, and grades 9-12

· Favorite No protocol (5 minute Video)

· Previous Room to Grow episode Helping Students Struggle Productively

· Image of America flag made of baseballs

Did you enjoy this episode of Room to Grow? Please leave a review and share the episode with others. Share your feedback, comments, and suggestions for future episode topics by emailing roomtogrowmath@gmail.com . Be sure to connect with your hosts on X and Instagram: @JoanieFun and @cbmathguy.

In this episode of Room to Grow, Joanie and Curtis continue the season 5 series on the Mathematics Teaching Practices from NCTM’s Principles to Actions, celebrating it’s 10th anniversary. This month’s practice is “Build procedural fluency from conceptual understanding.” This is defined as follows:

Effective teaching of mathematics builds fluency with procedures on a foundation of conceptual understanding so that students, over time, become skillful in using procedures flexibly as they solve contextual and mathematical problems.

Using some discussion about multiplication, our hosts try to differentiate what is meant by conceptual understanding and by procedural fluency. They tease out the confusion that can arise by associating conceptual understanding with inquiry-based instruction and procedural fluency with direct instructional strategies. Although these types of instruction often go together, they are different, and separating them can help educators focus on how to best get to student learning.

Additional referenced content includes:

· NCTM’s Principles to Actions

· NCTM’s Taking Action series for grades K-5, grades 6-8, and grades 9-12

· NCTM’s position paper on Procedural Fluency (January 2023 – membership not necessary)

Did you enjoy this episode of Room to Grow? Please leave a review and share the episode with others. Share your feedback, comments, and suggestions for future episode topics by emailing roomtogrowmath@gmail.com . Be sure to connect with your hosts on X and Instagram: @JoanieFun and @cbmathguy.