Launching a Schoolwide Problem of the Month

Anna Yates School launched their schoolwide conversations about mathematics teaching and learning using the Problems of the Month. In this video collection, you’ll see how classrooms of different grade levels worked separately and together on different levels of the Problem of the Month “Party Time,” which requires logic, deductive reasoning, counting principles/strategies, and a variety of mathematical representations (depending on the grade level) such as tree diagrams, Venn diagrams, tables, charts, and matrices. Teachers and principals describe how they collaborated together on the problem-solving theme at their school, and in the culminating gallery walk students explain their thinking and share what they like about the Problems of the Month.

At the time of this video recording, Yates School was a K–7 school of ~420 students in Emeryville, California. About 50% of their students are African American, 25% Hispanic, 11% Asian, 7% White, and the remaining 1% Pacific Islander, Filipino, and American Indian. 61% of Yates students live in poverty and 12% are English language learners.