Abby Franco: 00:00:01.053
I think having those frequent check-ins where you’re having frequent communication that isn’t when they’re just frustrated. So when they’re frustrated and you’re waiting until the point that they’re frustrated to talk to you or they’re start crying, I’m sure we’ve seen that. If we wait till that point, it’s going to be even harder for them to communicate. It’s going to be even harder for them to rationalize and talk through what’s going on in their head. So rather, that’s why we want those frequent check-ins throughout the week. [music]

Gretchen Roe: 00:00:35.327
Welcome, everyone, to this episode of The Demme Learning Show. This is Gretchen Roe, and it is my very great pleasure to welcome Abby Franco with me today. We’re work colleagues. We’re friends, but we’re polar opposites as far as our love for math is concerned. Abby, will you introduce yourself?

Abby Franco: 00:00:54.985
Absolutely. I’m Abby Franco. I’m the training specialist here at Demme Learning. Prior to working at Demme Learning, I was a seventh and eighth grade math teacher. And before that, I was a high school math teacher. I have my teaching certificate from the University of Georgia in secondary math education. So I’m certified to teach 6th through 12th grade.

Gretchen Roe: 00:01:16.191
How about them dogs? Yeah.

Abby Franco: 00:01:17.411
That’s right. They’re dogs.

Gretchen Roe: 00:01:18.489
I had to stick that in here. We’re both Georgia alums. So that’s a little bit of fun aside. And what you can’t see is Abby has a superhero cape on her back because anybody who’s brave enough to teach seventh and eighth grade math is a superhero in my book. [laughter] So as we get started with this conversation, we’ve talked a little bit in advance for you all so that you can understand why changing your mindset about how you’re doing math with your students is vitally important. And this is not a magic wand. This doesn’t happen overnight. This is a process that you probably– Abby, when should a parent start putting in place some measures of independence with their student as far as their mathematical performance or engagement?

Abby Franco: 00:02:14.987
Yeah, great question. I was also working as an advisor for sixth graders and that’s kind of the age we would start to give them a little bit more responsibility in regards to their performance in school, helping them keep track of their grades, keep track of their assignments. Of course, they get a lot of help and support in elementary school. So once they hit that like middle school age, the double digits, pre-teens, the glorious time of life, we’d like to help introduce them to time management skills, organizational skills that will help them be more beneficial in their math and really, any subject as they approach high school. So I think fifth, sixth grade is that sweet spot to start introducing a little bit more responsibility. And of course, case by case with each student, depending on where they’re at. But that’s kind of what I would aim forwhen working with kids at that age, is fifth or sixth grade.

Gretchen Roe: 00:03:17.072
Tell us as a as a parent, educating a child individually, what does that modicum of independence look like? And just so that you’re not going, what are you looking for, Gretchen? And I know I told you about this in our planning session. I had a conversation with probably half a dozen different moms whose kids were somewhere between pre algebra and algebra 2. And this was at spring conferences and moms were thoroughly annoyed because their kids had not done math for weeks, in some cases, months on end. And those moms hadn’t put in place fail safes to check in with them. So can you give with me, maybe a rule of thumb as far as how often as a parent with that 6th grader should I be checking in to make sure what I think is happening [laughter] is actually happening?

Abby Franco: 00:04:15.013
Absolutely. So I would say at the beginning of the week, have a sit down with them. Kind of plan out the week overall about what are we expected to achieve? What are we hoping to get through maybe lesson wise or maybe if you’re in the practicing after mastery stage for a lesson, what that might look like. And so maybe that looks like with your kids starting off, maybe a two or three times a week checking in. It doesn’t have to be daily. We’re trying to introduce that kind of getting their feet wet with taking care of their own education. And so yeah, I would say beginning of the week, touch base, maybe help them make a schedule. That’s that time management piece to see, “What could I be working on each day? What do I feel like is a good goal,” helping them set attainable goals for each day, setting a timeframe for how long they want to work each day, and then checking in maybe halfway through the week. And then, maybe that’s all you need for your kid. Like I said, case by case basis, Gretchen knows she’s been sharing with me about her own children, so [laughter]– but yeah, and then maybe at the tail end of the week just to check in again with those goals you set. How did we do? Do we need to set maybe a little bit smaller timeframe to work each day? Do we feel like we lost our attention at some point during our math session, so kind of checking in with them, letting them advocate for themselves, giving them those questions to think about. And I know a lot of us parents– when we continue into those upper level math courses, we maybe feel like that’s not our strong suit. But this could be really just dependent on how they’re feeling, literally organizing their time, organizing their lesson, kind of stepping away from the math itself and just asking them about how they felt they did each day. And so that’s what that could– check-in could entail each each of those times.

Gretchen Roe: 00:06:10.124
I know for each one of my kids, that was wildly different. My eldest son was brilliant. He taught himself to read at the age of 4, but he couldn’t be left alone to do a single math problem until he was like 17. And part of that was he was sort of disengaged. He wasn’t interested in that. So I sort of dragged that attitude into kid number three. Eldest son was kid number two. Kid number one taught me that I needed to check in at least three times a week because a math curriculum that we were using, which was not Math-U-See at the time– she only got the problems wrong for which the answers were not in the back of the book. And it took me about nine weeks to figure that out, I have to admit. Apparently I’m a little slow to catch on, but– so she taught me that. So I sort of hatched my eldest son like an egg. And kid number three really didn’t want that. She is wildly independent and she– what she wanted was for me to body double her. She didn’t want my feedback. She just wanted me to be at the same table where she was doing math. I could be working with another one of her siblings. She just wanted another person in the room and that was sufficient to keep her accountable. And then, I finally got to my sixth kid who said in 4th grade, “How about you give me a list and I’ll let you know if I need you?” And so he was like my prize [laughter] for– put up with a wild variety of everybody else. And I know that if you have more than one child, you will find that as well. So it’s up to us to be the students of our kids to figure out how they learn best. Abby, can we talk a little bit about what’s going to help a 6th, 7th, 8th grader be mathematically successful? What are the foundational things they need to have in place so that when they step into this more complex math, they can be successful?

Abby Franco: 00:08:14.845
I’d say one of the biggest things I noticed with my upper-level kids, especially in high school, is if they had gaps with their basic math facts, they struggled greatly. That includes even things with fractions, decimals. Oftentimes we think they’re not super important. We can skip over them. But having those foundational skills with single-digit addition, subtraction, multiplication, those are going to help them tremendously as they enter into multi-step problems and then introducing the letters once they hit that high school age. So making sure they have those foundations in sixth, I would say really sixth grade, really take the time to– we have the whole placement process in place. You can use that with your students, just taking the time to evaluate where they’re at, where their gaps are, where they’re struggling, help them have parameters for communication and how to share when they’re struggling because we all struggle, and that’s totally fine. But finding it early and alleviating that problem before they get to 9th, 10th grade is going to help your students not only be more successful, but it could also help them perhaps like math more because we don’t always like things we’re not very good at. It’s just human nature. And so if we help them by giving them the tools to be successful in those upper levels, then we may see that they have more interest in math and more success in math overall.

Gretchen Roe: 00:09:49.952
I think I vividly remember I was sixth math curricula in before I found my way to Math-U-See. And I found my way here because literally I had a friend who brought it to my house, set it on my kitchen table, and said this, “This is what you have to use.” And I’m so grateful to her. Nobody networks as better as well as a homeschool mom. But I didn’t realize until that point that a lot of my adversarial relationship with math was based on my weakness with fractions. And so knowing that– tell me a little bit from a math teacher’s perspective why are fractions so vital to be able to do upper-level math?

Abby Franco: 00:10:38.579
Yeah, fractions, I think really help evaluate a student’s number sense. And if they don’t have– because fractions are one of the most abstract things for us to try to consider in our minds without a visual, which is why if you have not reached the epsilon level or gone through it with any of your kids, it is outstanding. It is amazing to have those fraction overlays to help visualize the fractions, visualize the operations with the fractions is going to help them because when you get into pre-algebra and algebra, you’re now multiplying fractions that are within polynomials. So if you didn’t know how to multiply fractions alone and now you’re throwing it in as a coefficient in a polynomial, you’re going to get a world of hurt with your kids and probably a little bit of fighting, maybe some tears. I don’t know if you guys have seen all those math memes of doing math with your dad and it’s just a pool of water. And that tends to happen when fractions are introduced. So, yeah, helping them understand how to not only perform operations with fractions but just understanding what a fraction is. And we talk about that in great detail in the epsilon level. Do not skip the epsilon level. It is necessary. And a lot of what they do will help them even in the zeta level that begins with decimals and so if they have that foundation of fractions, a decimal and fractions, those are both parts of something. They’re both portions of a whole or of something else, and so having that understanding of fractions will also help them with decimals, which are another tricky concept to approach in math. And then ultimately anything that will involve fractions when they have dimensions that are that are fractional parts, when they have anything related to geometry, anything related to algebra, there’s going to be tons of fractions in it, and so having that basic foundation of fractions, just like we would expect for them to have basic foundations of single integer facts, we would expect the same for fractions. Of course, they wouldn’t have the level of understanding a basic fact at the top of their head, but they would know what to do when approached with a fractional operational problem.

Gretchen Roe: 00:12:54.883
I’m reminded of my second son that when fractions were introduced with polynomials and here he is trying to figure out fractional computations with letters, he said, “Well, who thought adding letters here would be a good idea?” [laughter] I can still hear him saying that. So in your teaching experiences, how would you keep kids accountable to being able to tell– I think the hardest thing for a child is to say, “I don’t understand. I don’t need help,” and to separate that from, “I’m just frustrated.”

Abby Franco: 00:13:42.667
I think having those frequent check-ins where you’re having frequent communication that isn’t when they’re just frustrated. So when they’re frustrated and you’re waiting until the point that they’re frustrated to talk to you or they’re start crying, I’m sure we’ve seen that. If we wait till that point, it’s going to be even harder for them to communicate. It’s going to be even harder for them to rationalize and talk through what’s going on in their head. So rather, that’s why we want those frequent check-ins throughout the week and maybe come up with five questions, the ones Gretchen and I mentioned earlier, what goals do we want to set this week? Maybe at the tail end, the check-in, what’s something I struggled with this week? And then, of course, having the process of going through a lesson that we have of checking in for mastery, checking in for if they’re completing anything you assign, the worksheets, correctly, those are all part of those check-ins. So we don’t want to just expect– a kid could say, “Yeah, I finished it and I think I got it all right,” but checking it against the answer key is going to even help with finding those little errors. Even if we don’t have a math brain, we have the answer key there, and so we can at least check it for accuracy and then be like, “Oh, I noticed that here you missed a couple of these. Let’s just talk about it.” Let’s just have a conversation that will help them not only with communicating what their struggles are, but also just become better communicators overall, which is very important for young kids to develop as well. So that’s what I would– that’s what I would look for when I’m checking in with them.

Gretchen Roe: 00:15:22.088
I love that, to teach them how to communicate and when to communicate. What were some of the things that you found that were helpful with kids to be able to gauge their progress? I’ve had a couple of conversations with moms who have made their kids inadvertently wildly frustrated because they didn’t check soon enough. And you’ve given us good advice. Three times a week seems reasonable, but if it’s Monday, Thursday, Friday, there’s nothing more irritating than having done on multiple steps of practice in error. I want to say that correctly. I don’t want to say it wrong because it’s not wrong. It’s just needing to be corrected to be further understood. So in your classroom, how did you check to see that the kids were catching on to what you were instructing?

Abby Franco: 00:16:28.610
Yeah. So each day I would end with some sort of closer. Oftentimes it was a tick called a ticket out the door, which we could you could do this in your home as well. And basically, I’d just have a single problem that either showed me if they understood the concept. Or if we were working on something more computational, it would just be a computational problem. And then I had actually this sign on my wall that categorized their feeling into four categories. The top one was– I feel like I completely understand it and I could explain it to somebody else. And then the second one was– I’m forgetting them off the top of my head, but basically it ranged from that all the way down to, “I do not understand this, I have questions.” And they could just stick their sticky note as they walked out. If they felt that they were at that lower end, they would just wait and hang out at the end. So we didn’t have to run into any feeling awkward or embarrassed situations. So that way I would be able to gauge like, “Okay, they have questions.” Maybe I’ll pull a small group of these five that said they still had questions about this first thing tomorrow morning while they’re working on their their warm up. I’ll pull those five and we’ll just touch base. And so that’s something what that might look like at home is even if you’re not checking in one-on-one with them, maybe you’re still checking in, you have a notebook where it’s like, here’s the day you teach them to date the page they’re working on. Maybe it’s a binder and you hole punch the worksheets, those organizational skills will help them. And even every night or every evening, you check.

Abby Franco: 00:18:08.713
Even if it’s not a one-on-one face-to-face conversation, you’re at least glancing at their work. Okay, they did something today. Overall, I checked it against the answer key. They did well. I’m not going to approach them about it tomorrow because it’s not our check-in day. I’ll wait till the check-in day to discuss with them. But if you do see some errors and they know this isn’t going to be a surprise to them, you’ll just be like, “Hey, I’m going to check in on your work. I’m your teacher from home. Yes, I’m your mom, but I’m your teacher. So having the expectation that you’re going to be checking in, that they’ve done their work for the day. And then if you need to have a conversation with them, you can, or you can save it for when you’ve scheduled your check in with them. But that’s what I would do if I was doing it from home. You can take those tickets out the doors and even still do that ticket to the friend’s house. Whatever they’re planning to do for fun that day, maybe you use that incentive to help get them through. If they don’t enjoy math, get them through the math session. And then that’s their ticket to go do what they want to do.

Gretchen Roe: 00:19:13.386
That’s your ticket to your PlayStation.

Abby Franco: 00:19:15.202
Exactly right.

Gretchen Roe: 00:19:17.174
So sixth grade is also the age at which particularly boys are like, “I can hold all of this in my head and I don’t have to write any of it down.” Stephen Hawking couldn’t hold it all in his head. So how did you help moms understand how to brook that conversation with their kids of you can’t do that anymore. Once you get beyond three digit by three-digit multiplication, somebody’s got to put something, a pen, a pencil, something on paper.

Abby Franco: 00:19:51.988
That was the daily fight of the middle school classroom. So I just would tell them I can’t read your mind. So while your mind may understand it and your mind knows what you’re doing, I don’t. So I need to see it. And so some of them that would work. And they’d be like, true, you can’t read, you can’t see what I know in my head. But for some of them, that was not enough. And so I would just be like, you don’t get credit if I can’t see it. So that was kind of our incentive was if I can’t see what you did, I can’t know that you did it. I can’t know that you know what it is. And really implementing this even goes back further than sixth grade, implementing that build right say process. That’s one of the foundations of Matthew C. They build it, they write it, write it, write it, write it. Because once they hit that high school level, they think they can do these multistep polynomial things in their head. And they can’t. Maybe they can, but there’s a lot of errors or room for error, I should say. So yeah, starting with that build right say, hopefully implementing that, even when they get to sixth grade and think they’re too cool for a pencil, you can’t read their mind. And that’s what I would always tell them.

Gretchen Roe: 00:21:07.228
Kathleen Calabrese, one of our coworkers, the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen her do is before her kids ever began a school day, everything they would need for that school day, whether it was a protractor, a pencil, a calculator if they were in upper level math, all of that was set out in front of them. So nobody could say, well, I don’t have a fill in the blank. And so I think that makes a huge difference.

Abby Franco: 00:21:36.746
Yeah. And that’s, I would even say one of the things at the beginning of your week check-in, what materials am I going to need for each day? Because you know as soon as math, as soon as anything comes up that they don’t want to do, they are suddenly know how to move like a swath. And so it takes up half [laughter] the math time, finding a pencil, finding a calculator, whatever it is that they need for that day, they suddenly have never seen what those are before. So I think that’s a great, useful tool.

Gretchen Roe: 00:22:04.034
I might have lost years of my life in that particular enterprise. But if Kathleen had come into my life sooner, it would have been wonderful to have known. And you said something here that’s really important that I want to touch on again because that’s the other thing, particularly that boys have a difficult time with right about sixth grade, and that is say. They don’t want to talk out loud anymore. So how did you encourage kids to talk their way through the process?

Abby Franco: 00:22:35.803
They didn’t like, they like to talk to their friends. So I would let them pair up with a friend and I would monitor the conversation. So in a classroom, of course, I had 30 kids at some time. So the kids that I knew were a little bit more chatty or I knew didn’t like to talk about math. I would keep them close to my desk or close to where I would be standing that day. And so they would group up and I would listen to their conversation. And if they needed to, I would ask them guiding questions. And so we have that same process. Maybe when you begin it down in primer, they’re going to need guiding questions to know what to talk about. So when they’re in primer and they’re so young, so little, they need maybe the entire say part of the build right say process is you asking them questions. And then as they get into that sixth grade range, you’re maybe asking them still some questions because they’ve grown out of wanting to talk to you and pushing them into. So if they don’t have, maybe they don’t have a friend to talk to at home during the school day, they could record a video and you watch it at the end of the day to see that kids love if they have a phone, kids love their phones, they love doing things on their phones. So maybe you could say record a video on your phone of you teaching this to a friend. And then that might be able to be an opportunity for you to hear what they’re thinking about.

Gretchen Roe: 00:24:00.391
That’s a great idea. I hadn’t really thought about that. And one of the things that we have done here at Demme that I think is really brilliant is with the advent of our new standard-based algebra one. We’ve created the opportunity to take notes mathematically. And I have to tell you, I sort of tangentially knew that you could take notes, at least in geometry, but it never occurred to me to be intentional about note taking. So can you talk a little bit about how that helps us order our thinking?

Abby Franco: 00:24:37.493
Yes. I forget the phrase, but even the faintest pencil is stronger than the weakest– or the weakest pencil is stronger than the strongest mind. Whatever it is. But when you write things down, you’re going to have something to reference. And so that might look like in the lower levels with the Greek series, of course, we don’t have those beautiful fill-in notes that we do in Algebra 1 PSM. But maybe that means you create a little something with important vocabulary words they can write down. Maybe you have them write them down from the instruction. So whatever that might look like, having them write things down will one, help them differentiate between information; what’s going to be important and what maybe I don’t need to write down for now. It’s just maybe a story or an anecdote from Steve. Something like that that doesn’t necessarily need to be written down, but I can have the information I do need that I’m going to look back at. Do I need to know what a mixed number is? Am I going to use that down the line? Yes, let’s write that down. So helping them, that’s something again that early on you can help them pick out. That’s something you can teach. How can we pick out information? Especially with word problems. Being able to identify what’s important in a word problem will come from being able to identify what’s needed in notes. So teaching that when instructing will help them when they’re problem solving too, to know what’s important and what’s extraneous information.

Gretchen Roe: 00:26:15.068
It’s funny as you’re talking about that, I’m reminded that my youngest son was the kid who could hold it all in his giant head. Even though he had gone through Build Bright [say?], and he was adept at Build Right [say?], and I set him up. We don’t take notes in the Greek series. We haven’t taught that skill. But there was a video, and I don’t remember which level it was in; Delta or maybe Epsilon that Steve actually says, “You know, you need to write this out because you’re not going to be able to recall it accurately if you try and keep it all in your head.” So I set that kid up to go watch the video, and write down what Steve said. And then I really think that I drove him a little bit nuts because I would send him back to go read what Steve said. What does Mr. Demme say about writing information down? And it came back to bless me when he was in calculus because he walked into my office one day. There’s no way I could have helped him with a calculus problem. He had this fistful of papers, and he plunked them down in front of me and started explaining what he was doing. And we went through the first page and I’m like, I’m just interjecting, encouraging thoughts and prayers because I had no idea what’s happening. And he flips the page over and he goes, “Oh, I forgot the negatives. Never mind.” Off he went, and because he learned that process. In the closing minutes here, what would be your best three pieces of advice to parents if they have kids who are stepping into high school math, how can they be the best advocates for their kids?

Abby Franco: 00:28:07.099
I would say best advocates is teaching them those skills early on. So giving them the skills to be functioning adults in the world and adults in high school, giving them those skills of time management– maybe this is more than one here, but giving them those skills of time management, of setting goals, teaching them we can’t– expectations should be taught. If you have a certain expectation for your child, teach it so that you can then not be upset when they don’t do it down the line because they didn’t know they should do that. So that would be one. Another one is stay positive because your student can feed off of how you feel. So if you don’t like math, which is totally understandable, and you are negative towards math, they could possibly feed off that attitude. And as best as possible, remain calm. It is very easy to get frustrated when a student isn’t understanding or isn’t communicating, but be patient. I know I said this in a webinar before, but being patient is going to be very beneficial to you and your student. It might save a lot of tears, a lot of frustration. And just remember you can do it. You guys have got this. Be confident in yourself that you’ll find a way to best help your student be successful. I hope this was a help and not a discouragement for anybody, but being confident–

Gretchen Roe: 00:29:41.983
No, I think it was terrific. And there is one thing that before we go, I want to visit again. Because you said this, which is having those intentional conversations with your students before they get to high school about what they might want to do after high school to be able to set them up for success. So can you revisit what you said, if you can remember, because I think what you said was really valuable.

Abby Franco: 00:30:09.039
Yes. I would say as they’re entering middle school, maybe that 7th grade age range, have the conversation with them about what interests them and where they see themselves in the future. It’s okay if it changes. Have them write it down. Maybe you keep a notebook that you write in from year to year and then you can write down what changes. But having that in mind will help you know your learner better and help you make decisions about, like we were talking about, doing problems on a piece of paper versus a window, doing an upper level challenging course versus the same credits for this other math course. So all of those, by knowing your child in the way of their education, will help you determine what to do for their path when they’re under your care. So yeah, I would have that conversation early.

Gretchen Roe: 00:31:01.286
Now you all see why I wanted to have this conversation so much with Abby because she has so much good information and she explains it so thoroughly. I knew that you all would enjoy hearing this conversation. We have other resources on the Demme Learning site. Let me refer you to our blog if you want to get some information about upper level math. In fact, I will include in the show notes the most frequently requested blog that we have, which talks about five reasons why we should learn algebra. And then you might have some tools to push back when your algebra student says, “When would I ever need to learn this?” Abby, I want to thank you so much for joining me today. It has been terrific. This is Gretchen Roe for The Demme Learning Show. Thanks for joining us. You can access the show notes or recording at demmelearning.com/show or on our YouTube channel. Be sure to rate, review, like, or subscribe wherever you may be hearing this, especially if you really enjoyed it. And we’ll look forward to coming into your living room again soon. Take care, everyone. [music]

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