“We rarely get the chance to work with teachers from other grade levels.” The Mills Teacher Scholars’ team hears this repeatedly from our teacher scholars, many of whom are now working in vertical teams through MTS, exploring questions of practice with colleagues from various grade levels.

At Roosevelt Elementary in San Leandro this year, where Mills Teacher Scholars is in its second year of work, third grade teacher Wendy Papciak, fourth grade teacher Julie Thomas, and fifth grade teacher Kenny Moy are pursuing questions around their students’ math learning. At each Mills Teacher Scholars meeting Kenny, Wendy, and Julie come together across their three grade levels and study students’ work, talking together about what the work reveals about student understanding.

Wendy is studying how to help her students solve math word problems by using a strategy of paraphrasing and making a conceptual drawing before attempting a calculation of the answer. Julie has identified two focal students who are struggling in math, and has found that while for one student, a lack of confidence is at the root of her difficulties, for the other, it is a lack of conceptual understanding. Kenny has been working with his focal students to get a more precise understanding of how they are thinking about fractions. He uses this on-going knowledge construction in his afterschool interventions. At our last meeting Kenny reported that while the progress feels slow from his perspective, his focal students are, in fact, improving their understanding of fractions.