The Moment Students Stop Thinking in Math Class

[00:00:00] Hey everybody. It is Cheri Dotterer here at Tier One Interventions podcast. It's great to have you here with us while we talk about the core of the math classroom. Today we're gonna be talking more about. Pizzas, rectangles, lockers. Oh my.

Cedric:  Back on March 10th, 2026, we started a 10 segment series Here is segment 5 from our October Workshop. If you are enjoying what you are learning, please subscribe and leave a comment.

I think that was the right order. Over to Jonily.

They're not achieving. We're telling them everything. They're mimicking, they're memorizing. We're not achieving. I'm not sure how much more data and evidence we need to tell us what's not working and what we need to do to get it to work. Jonily, your strategies are good and everything, but I have all [00:01:00] my content to teach.

Jonily, I understand that the body needs movement, but I have too much to get through. Jonily, I understand that kids need to get up and work in groups, but they struggle with that. So we're gonna skip it. Jonily, what research do you have that your methods actually work? I just shared it with you, just told you, in every single school in this country, when we steal their struggle, they don't achieve.

When we tell too much, they don't achieve. When we have them worksheet mathematics, they don't achieve. So everything that we are doing is screaming. It's not working. But yet we still want to argue with Jay-Z.

Thoughts, comments, questions.[00:02:00]

So number two for today. Number two.

Okay. And let me just put number three because this is the ultimate, because this moves us to this extended version of reference tasks. Number three is understanding that lockers, rectangles, and pizzas are the solution to all of this. That's the point. But how do we jump from the story that I told in making changes to lockers, rectangles, and pizzas with the general population of educators?

That's a big jump. That's a big jump. And that is the feedback [00:03:00] that I am getting is from where we are to achievement formula, reference tasks, tier one interventions, math, teacher math, from where we are to where Jonily presents is too big of a jump.

So the middle ground is, there's a lot of things, but the one that I'm gonna teach on today. So part two of today's adventure is the number one factor that will improve and increase and scale, scale, fluency, math, achievement, and student independence.[00:04:00]

So I'm hoping from the story drew out, it drew out a lot, but at least struggles with fluency, struggles with math achievement, and struggles with student independence. And that was a few of my goals from the story. There is one factor that will improve all three of these things. Mathematical fluency, mathematical achievement, and mathematical student independence and perseverance.

Does anyone wanna guess the one thing, and you're gonna be wrong, but does anybody wanna guess the one thing? The one instructional tool, the one concept, the one thing that is going to improve all of this, if we just focused on [00:05:00] this one thing, type it in the comment, type it in school, type it in the chat, unmute and talk to us.

Let's swim in this for a minute. Before I do the big reveal,

we have counting, counting, rectangles, stimulus, quick dots, number sense.

Amy Garrison, you get the prize for today. I don't know what the prize is. What prize would you like? Another crystal light water flavor. Is that all it takes for you? How about you coming to my room and doing it? Challenge accept.[00:06:00]

You teach math in the afternoon, right? Yeah. I can come. They get, we get back from specials at 12. No, I'm lying. One 40. That's so perfect. We do math from 1 45 till the end of the day. 1 45 to 2 45, 1 45 to 2 45. I'm coming in November. Love it. I'm coming. I'm coming in November and we're gonna, oh, I've gotta figure out a way to get there in November so we can vote till up.

Okay. Alright. I wanna win the next prize. Oh, what would your, I want a prize too. Alright, so Natalie, what would your prize be? Kirk? What would your prize be like? What's your I love come to my classroom. Say what? You I'm come to the classroom. Come next prize. Oh, come to, okay. All right. You'll have to keep working to win the next prize.[00:07:00]

I'm a little closer than Kirk is. I know. So

the number one thing that should be priority one among anything else in our math classrooms is counting. And here's the reason I'm presenting on this today, at today's session. It is because I've been doing a lot of thinking about what is the number one bottom line.

It's counting everything. Keeps coming back to counting. So I've actually started a spreadsheet on the progressions of counting and what counting looks like at each grade level and [00:08:00] what rote counting looks like at each grade level. Like where what rote counting exercises. 'cause if you're thinking numeracy cycle, remember there's four components to the numeracy cycle.

Rote counting, quantifying, comparing, operating. So through that numeracy cycle, the number one way to improve operation, add, subtract, multiply, divide, square root exponent is starting with going back to counting. And then after we do just rote counting with no meaning. Then quantify is understanding value, magnitude and quantity of a number.

So we're gonna, we're gonna count with understanding and meaning, and then we're gonna use counting to compare numbers and then we're gonna use counting to operate numbers. That's been the numeracy cycle for years and I don't feel like I've given enough emphasis to the numeracy cycle and I think the numeracy cycle.

And one of the reasons I say this is I was presenting a couple of let's see, last year, one time, I was gonna say a couple months ago, but it's been a year ago now. I was [00:09:00] presenting about a year ago, and I was, there were some teachers there that hadn't seen me present in about 10 years, and they're like, Jonily, the num the one thing that I always remember you saying and that I implement when I'm doing intervention with my kids is the numeracy cycle.

Go back to rote counting. And I'm like, okay, that's pretty profound. I don't give enough emphasis in my teachings on the numeracy cycle. And what that made me think about is I don't give enough emphasis on counting and all of the connections to counting. Then I started analyzing my reference tasks. The Dirty Dozen, the top 12.

Every one of those reference tasks is a result of counting. The goal of every one of those tasks is to improve counting. I've never said those words out loud and I never had that awareness before. This is brand new information today. Now you may be like, that is not brand new information because that's how I've thought about your reference tasks for years.

Thanks for telling me. Okay. [00:10:00] But there's been a lot of analyzation going on this year as I've been in the classroom. There has been so much productivity and so much deliberate and intentional awareness that I have never had in my journey, and it's very exciting. It's very profound. And I am more confident and more focused than I've ever been in my entire life on this mission.

It's very exciting and I wanted to bring this to you today in this way to unearth my journey, so to speak, to make all of our journeys better and make your leadership better when you go back and try to help others.

And you can use my story, but the number one factor in improving [00:11:00] fluency, achievement, and independence. So all of those non-academic and academic things that we wish for in a math classroom and the executive functioning piece, which is that student independence and per perseverance, all of it comes down to doing counting.

Now, our journey then is what in the world does she mean by counting? And what does that look like for our group? For tier one interventions? Level two, it looks like lockers, rectangles, and pizzas. Oh my. Thoughts, comments, questions now before I go back to our notes on lockers, rectangles, and pizzas, and give you another up level.

And we're gonna pick up where we left off last time with the whole diamond problem idea. Yeah. [00:12:00] So I have orchestrated this to the best of my ability today. There has been so much pre-planning and planning coming in today, like I'm just really proud of myself, so you're welcome. It may feel like a lot of me telling which it is, but that was purposeful.

So I had to do that to get us to be highly focused and flowing with these tasks today. So before I share my screen and jump into those notes, what thoughts, what comments, what ahas, what questions, what even takeaways do we have so far, if we end this chunk of it and then jump into the content, thoughts, comments, questions, takeaways, ahas, talk to us.

I'm just gonna drop in here for. Anybody who's like listening early on you're starting on this. I think that [00:13:00] the more I'm hearing the same thing over and over again, the more it just triggers so much in my brain as I'm having conversations and seeing students work. So you saying over and over again how important counting is, like now I'm seeing it where I am in different classrooms.

So whether that's I had put in the chat like GCF and LCM with sixth grade students slope with high school students this upcoming week. I'll be working with a special ed teacher who's working with like a subtraction for a functional student and combining algebraic terms for a high school student and just I just encourage anyone, like just keep listening and keep absorbing.

Because then down the road it just it just makes, helps you to make connections like everywhere. Sarah, that's a great point because extending that point, Sarah made the point as us as adults need to see [00:14:00] and hear and iterate, we call that interactions over time. That's the phrase I use. And as adults, if we want to become an expert with something, we need to practice those interactions over time.

We need to hear it multiple times. We need to try it multiple times. We need to readjust and then come back and hear it. Try it, readjust, hear it, try it, readjust and not hear a different thing, but hear the same thing with a different twist. Now if we find that so powerful and meaningful as adults, that's exactly what I'm preaching for us to model in our math classrooms.

Kids cannot learn in a silo of discrete content in unit one, unit two, unit three, unit four. They must learn in seasons so that they're exposed to all of the essentials in multiple interactions over time throughout the year, which is what we're preaching and what is working for you as adults. Great point.

Other [00:15:00] takeaways, other thoughts, comments, ahas? I will just reiterate on the interactions over time, like this is my seventh school year in Jonily's universe in orbit, and. Gave myself a lot of criticism I should know this by now. I've been doing this for seven years. Why do I, why is it so still a struggle?

And I'm like no, you're still learning and growing. And I'm within the last couple years, even seeing just so many more deep connections in my content as a first year couple, first year teacher. Like even having that background with you. I still had this all or nothing. If I wasn't doing everything, I wasn't doing enough.

And that is so so then I wasn't doing enough. I just I can't do it all. How am I supposed to do this? And if you're just taking steps, and I love what you just said about try it. Revise, try again, try it. Revise, try again, try it, revise, try again. You gotta keep going. But just living in what we did yesterday, I have a whole list of like reflections and [00:16:00] it's I didn't see anything that I didn't know already.

But seeing it and hearing it again and experiencing it again, like our students aren't that different from, I saw from second grade to juniors yesterday and I'm, and I teach sixth. I'm like, they're, they just get bigger. They're not that different. It really wasn't like a whole like, oh, by the time they get here now that Carter is a sixth grader.

That's. Six feet tall. They don't change. They're not, but they're not that different. But I also saw from what I'm doing right now in my classroom with rectangles and area and exponents and factors, exactly how that goes to their algebra class. I'm like, so we have to know our standards inside, outside, front and back, upside down and a vertical articulation.

It's not just enough to know what we have, but that connection to what came before and where we're going. I got super spicy on Thursday with rectangles in my class and they were doing exponents and it was just like, just solve this when X equals four, but I think it was x plus three and parentheses to the [00:17:00] second power.

And like we went through the area model and filled it in and they can tell me that an X squared is a square that dimensions X by X. And they could, so we didn't go fully into the algebra, but they were like, I was nerding out on rectangles and I had them going. It was a lot of fun. But knowing those connections, I can see now like really where we're going.

So we have to know our standards, we have to know our vertical articulation. We just have to keep doing it. We have to keep, try, revise and do it again. And it's okay to do a little and try something and keep growing. So can I add the neuroscience? Go ahead. When we learn something the first time when we read it, it doesn't matter what it is, let's just go to the Bible.

When you read one verse in the Bible, the first time you read it, you absorb someone, you came back to that verse 10th, the 10th time, you're gonna capture something different. It doesn't matter what the topic is. By rereading, redoing, [00:18:00] iterating, you are going to do what Thomas Edison said, and it said he tried to create the in incandescent light bulb 10,000 times before he got it right, but he didn't stop.

One of the things that is frustrating with these kids and achieving is as soon as they make a mistake, we basically are teaching them to stop. And what Jonily is doing is teaching them to persevere through the mistake, figure out what they did wrong and do it again, and not teach them failure.

Jonily, I wanna close out Tier One Interventions podcast, and that is, if you are listening to this podcast and you are thinking, how do I get involved, [00:19:00] you wanna head over to your show notes and click on the link. We are offering you to come to a session like this where you get all two and a half hours at one shot for $47.

You can then join another session for another $47. Or you can buy the whole year for $497 plus you have to buy the. When if you're going to go buy the whole year, you're gonna have to buy level one as well. But the coaching and these conversations that we're having are $497. That sounds to me like a really good deal for to, to really think the way you're thinking about not just mathematics, but occupational therapist delivery, speech therapy, delivery, special ed delivery, and how we're helping these kids rethink, reregulate, [00:20:00] relearn and think about life as whole.