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Administrators, welcome to Amplify Science!

Here you’ll find information about enrollment and licensing, technical requirements, professional learning resources, and more.

Onboarding: What to expect

Welcome to Amplify Science! There are six basic steps to onboarding. Use this visual as a reference, but also know that our dedicated implementation team will be there to support you during the entire process.

Technology requirements and guidelines

To ensure that your hardware and network meet the minimum technical requirements for performance and support of your curriculum products, please see Amplify’s customer requirements page.

You’ll also want to add the URLs on this page to the corresponding district- or school-level filters so that your teachers and students can access their Amplify Science materials.

Data sharing agreement

Partnering with Amplify through our data sharing program deepens learning outcomes and gives you the performance analysis you need to make impactful decisions within your district or school. By signing our data sharing agreement, your district will help us to better understand student performance as it relates to your state’s standards. It also allows us to compare results with the curriculum-embedded assessments and state-level assessments. These analyses will help you identify the areas where your teachers and students are excelling or may be experiencing challenges.

Stay tuned for additional updates.

Enrollment and licensing overview

During the enrollment and licensing call, your Amplify implementation partner will walk you through the enrollment process. We recommend exploring the enrollment web tool ahead of the call for suggestions on which enrollment method may be best for your district.

The following guides provide additional information about enrollment methods and the data sharing process.

Preparing for your materials

Each unit of Amplify Science comes with a hands-on materials kit.

Each hands-on materials kit arrives in 1–3 boxes and contains the following:

  • Consumable materials
  • Nonconsumable materials
  • Classroom wall materials
  • Premium print materials (cards, maps, etc.)
  • 18 copies of each Student Book (K–5)
  • A blackline master copy of the Student Investigation Notebook (K–5)

You can find complete materials lists for each unit in the following PDFs. This information is also available in the digital Teacher’s Guide within the program.

Once your district’s purchase order has been sent to Amplify and is processed, Amplify will provide tracking information on your materials kits and any additional print materials you’ve ordered.

Administrator Reports

Self-service Administrator Reports allow insight into teacher and student usage and student performance data for the current school year.

Access is limited to district and school administrators. Administrators can directly access these reports at my.amplify.com/admin-reports.

Get more information.

Announcements

Summer extension
With summer fast approaching, we recognize that some districts may be extending the school year and/or continuing the use of Amplify curriculum and programs for summer instruction. If your summer instruction will continue past June 30 and/or you need to make rostering or enrollment changes, follow our guidance on extending your rollover date.

Use stimulus funding to drive transformation
Learn about ESSER I, II, and III funding (or CARES, CRRSA, and ARP) and how to use these funds to help with learning recovery and acceleration. Districts have significant flexibility in how to use the ESSER money, with ESSER II and III specifying that some of the funds should be used to address unfinished learning. All Amplify programs and services meet the criteria for the funding. Get more information about funding and guidelines.

Next steps: How do I support my teachers?

Pre-launch checklist for teachers
Please share our Program Hub with your educators. It will provide helpful information as they prepare to implement Amplify in their classrooms, including a pre-launch checklist. Note that they’ll need to be logged into Amplify Science to access the Hub. If they don’t have a login yet, you can also download and share the  Amplify Science pre-launch checklist for teachers PDF.

Professional learning
We partner with every district to make sure the Amplify Science rollout meets their unique needs. Check out these sample agendas to get a better understanding of what our team has to offer.

Advice and answers
The Science help website is filled with step-by-step resources to address educators’ questions. Encourage your educators to read through these tutorials and search for topics they want to learn more about.

Contact us

Powerful (and free!) pedagogical support
Amplify provides a unique kind of support you won’t find from other publishers. We’ve developed an educational support team of former teachers and administrators who provide pedagogical support at no cost to educators using our programs. This free service includes:

  • Information on where to locate standards and other planning materials.
  • Recommendations and tips for day-to-day teaching with Amplify Science.
  • Support with administering and interpreting assessment data and more.

To reach our pedagogical team, click the orange icon while logged into the curriculum to get immediate help, call (866) 629-2446, or email edsupport@amplify.com.

Timely technical and program support
Our Customer Care and Support team is available Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. ET, and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET, through a variety of channels:

  • Live chat: Click the orange icon while logged into the curriculum to get immediate help in the middle of the school day.
  • Phone: Call our toll-free number: (800) 823-1969.
  • Email: Send an email to help@amplify.com.

Join our community
Our Amplify Science Facebook group is a community of Amplify Science educators from across the country. It’s a space to share best practices, ideas, and support on everything from implementation to instruction. Join today.

Winter Wrap-Up 02: Mathematizing Children’s Literature

Promotional graphic for Math Teacher Lounge podcast, episode 2, featuring Allison Hintz and Antony Smith, discussing how mathematizing children's literature can build math fluency.

While we’re hard at work producing the exciting fifth season of Math Teacher Lounge: The Podcast, we’re continuing to share some of our favorite conversations from our first four seasons. This time around, we’re revisiting our popular episode that connected literacy and math!

In this episode, we sit down with Allison Hintz and Antony Smith, authors of Mathematizing Children’s Literature, to talk about what would happen if we were to approach children’s literature, and life, through a math lens–and how we can apply those same techniques to classroom teaching!

Explore more from Math Teacher Lounge by visiting our main page. 

Download Transcript

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (00:02):

Hi, I’m Bethany Lockhart Johnson.

Dan Meyer (00:04):

Hi, I’m Dan Meyer.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (00:05):

And we are so excited for another episode of Math Teacher Lounge. And as you know, podcast format; you’re listening now. I think one beautiful thing about the podcast format is that it gives us a little bit more time to have these rich conversations. And I promise I won’t do it, but I could talk to our guests for hours, hours! Authors Allison Hintz and Tony Smith have just released Mathematizing Children’s Literature: Sparking Connections, Joy, and Wonder Through Read-Alouds and Discussion. And today we get to talk to the authors. Allison, Tony, welcome. Welcome to the lounge.

Allison Hintz (00:53):

Thank you. We’re so grateful to be here.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (00:55):

We’re so excited to have you here. And I wanna say that my very first—was it my first math conference? Maybe it was my first math conference—up in Seattle, the CGI conference, and I’m all like, you know, wide-eyed and just like, “Can this be a place for me, this math community?” Re-envisioning my relationship with math and thinking about myself as a math teacher, what? And I went to your session on mathematizing children’s literature, and I was just so fired up. I was so wowed by your ideas, your energy, and your passion for students’ thinking. And I feel like as I read this book, I felt like I was hanging out with you. Like you were just so encouraging all the way through. Of educators, of other folks working with young people, and really guiding us how to listen with joy and with an open curious mind.

Dan Meyer (02:03):

Yeah. I would love to hear a bit about the genesis of this book for you folks. Like, I’m coming at this from a secondary educator lens. I’ve got small kids, so that’s also part of my interest here. But I love any book, any idea that seeks to merge what seems like two disparate worlds. Like it’s often the case that we feel like, well, there’s approaches for ELA and approaches for math, and they’re kind of separate disciplines. And these poor elementary teachers have to learn all of them and be experts at all of them. And here you both come along and say, “Hey, what if they are the same kind of technique?” Can you just speak to how this came about?

Allison Hintz (02:38):

Definitely. Tony, do you wanna take a try? Do you want me to start us off?

Antony Smith (02:42):

I can start. We oftentimes present and talk together and so we kinda switch back and forth. So that’s just how we are. So probably about eight or nine years ago, Allison and I, our offices were next to each other on our small campus. We’re both professors and we just happened to have a few children’s books that we looked at together and we were just thumbing through the pages. We really liked children’s literature. And we noticed that I would stop at certain points wondering about character motive or plot or sequence of events or language use. And Allison would stop at very different points in the book and notice number and concepts or something about mathematics. And that’s when we started to wonder, what would it be like if we were sharing a children’s book with a group of children and we put our ideas together? Where would we stop? What would we talk about? What would we ask children about in terms of their thinking and what they notice?

Allison Hintz (03:42):

And so we started playing with these questions that we had and started approaching stories with multiple lenses to see what kinds of things would children notice and what kinds of things might they say. And we were also on our own journey in trying to understand how to plan for and facilitate lively discussions and classrooms that surface really complex mathematics. And it felt like stories were a place where that might be a fruitful context for hearing children’s thinking. We’ve worked with a lot of teachers and students in our region. We live in the Seattle area and we’ve applied for some funding over time that’s really helped us be in a lot of community-based organizations and educational contexts and libraries and pediatricians’ offices and classrooms, various classrooms, and see what’s interesting about this and what might teachers and children do with stories that would surface complex mathematics to think about together.

Antony Smith (04:41):

Over time, we came to the realization that if we wanted to hear children’s ideas, we had to stop bombarding them with questions. <laugh> Yeah. And at first it made it worse that we were asking them math and literacy questions at the same time. And so we realized that what we needed to do was to back off and to ask children what they noticed and wondered.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (05:01):

Can you say more about that and how that kind of evolved into mathematizing children’s literature?

Antony Smith (05:07):

We did work with a number of very thoughtful, talented classroom teachers and children’s librarians in public library systems who were just so masterful at asking open-ended prompts and questions, rather than kind of like the de facto reading quiz, that a read-aloud can become, which I’ve always disliked as a literacy educator. And we realized in our observing these read-alouds or interactive read-alouds or shared reading experiences that given the opportunity in the space and an adult who was actually listening, that children came up with all of the ideas we would have asked them about and more. So we didn’t have to be bombarding them with questions. They were already much more thoughtful than what would’ve been sufficient to answer our questions.

Allison Hintz (05:58):

And much like mathematics, it was really an iterative process. You know, we had some clunky read-aloud discussions where we were trying to accomplish so much and toggling multiple chart papers and different colored pens and all sorts of “how do we capture these ideas” and “do we separate ’em? do we keep ’em together?” And so it’s really been over time that with partners, we’ve learned these ways of having multiple reads of the same story that allow us to hear what children notice and wonder, and then to delve more deeply into their questions and their ideas through multiple reads where we might spotlight literary ideas that they notice; we might spotlight mathematical ideas that they notice. We might make purposeful integrations between those. But we found it to be most productive—and Kristin Gray really help us think about this—to have an open Notice and Wonder, get everything out much like an open-strategy share. We welcome here, record all the ideas, and it goes all over everywhere. You know, it can be a really not math-y noticing! And those are amazing! So there’s a lot of, um, yes, there is a ladybug on this page! The grandma is wearing green triangle earrings! Oh, your grandma wears green earrings! I mean, it all comes out.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (07:27):

Wait, have you been in my classroom? ‘Cause that’s exactly— <laugh>

Allison Hintz (07:29):

<laugh> And then, you know, we think of it a lot like if math teachers might use the 5 Practices for selecting and sequencing, or if you might move from an open-strategy share to a targeted share, how can we get out all the questions that children are asking and then step back from them, take some time to really think about what they’re telling us they’re curious about, and plan some purposeful, intentional subsequent discussions that can delve more deeply into their ideas.

Dan Meyer (08:02):

I’d love to go into that a little bit more if that’s all right. Um, I’m gonna speak from someone who doesn’t have an elementary background and I’m gonna voice some worries that I had, some anxiety. One anxiety I have like in a classroom or a curriculum is when there’s no room for student ideas. Right? When it’s like, oh, there’s just room for the curriculum author or the teacher here. That is a sadness. But I when I see an instructional environment like you’re describing here, where there is openness to all kinds of different student ideas, of different levels of formality, from different kinds of cultural fonts of knowledge or wherever, I also get a little bit nervous because that, like, increases the risk that a student might come to understand that “my ideas are not good enough,” whereas in the class with no room for their ideas from their home or their language or their hobbies, like, they’re not gonna internalize the message that, “that wasn’t good enough.” And so I’m really curious as you move from the open Notice and Wonder where kids share all of themselves with you, and then you move to a targeted focus on some sort of disciplinary objective, how do you navigate that tension and help students feel like their contributions are valuable, even though we aren’t taking them up per se?

Allison Hintz (09:18):

That’s such an important question. I mean, I think we’ve grappled with this broadly in math education. I think any time we’re thinking about which ideas we choose to take up to pursue to consider, we have a responsibility to think carefully about whose ideas are being taken up and heard and considered. And so one of the tensions I hear you naming, I think, Dan, is when we engage in lively discussion where children’s thinking’s at the center, how do we make sure to upend and interrupt kinda status norms that run the risk of being deepened? Um, and I think by paying attention to whose ideas are taken up as much as which ideas are taken up, and what’s the mathematics we wanna explore is one tension. Um, another tension I might hear you naming is, you know, the complications that teachers face with time and pressure and coverage, and which mathematics ends up getting worked on. And, um, you know, it’s something we’ve really had to struggle with in mathematics education, where we move to more discussion-oriented classrooms that are really centered in sense-making to know that it takes a lot of time to do this thoughtful, thoughtful work. Um, does that begin to get at some of the tensions you’re raising? Is there, is there more you’re thinking about?

Dan Meyer (10:53):

I think it’s really helpful that you kind of broadened the scope of the question beyond your book to “this is an issue that we are, you know, really challenged by and focused on broadly in math education.” And, um, I appreciate you bringing the element in of whose idea—not just which idea is taken up, but whose idea is taken up—is an opportunity where, let’s say, multiple people raise an idea that is towards an objective the teacher has, they have the opportunity to disrupt certain kinds of status, like ideas about status, in that moment. From your perspective, like, are there techniques to say, I don’t know, parking-lot certain kinds of questions and say like, “Hey, like these are awesome”? I don’t know. I just know that I see kids at like ninth grade. They are very reticent, often. They’ve internalized totally this sense of like, “I’m not gonna just, like, share about the pants the grandma’s wearing, you know; that will not be received well.” And so I’m just kinda wondering how that happens and like, what are the ways we can disrupt that? That process?

Antony Smith (11:54):

So thinking about that, Dan, from the teacher’s perspective, in those kinds of scenarios where you wanna honor each child’s contribution, a couple of things that come to mind: One is that by, you know, initially by modeling what I as a teacher, something that I notice or wonder about, helps kind of set the expectation for what kind of response would be encouraged. And it’s broad, but it gives an example. And then also we really try to record or to chart all of the ideas that are shared so that we can revisit and honor those together. And then either later or on another day, if we choose one or two of those to explore in some way within a more focused read, then another thing that we do is have the idea investigation afterward that continues that thought, but goes back to being as open-ended as possible, so that those students or children who maybe didn’t have their idea as the one that was focused on by the group could go back to that or explore some other idea of their own, so that the idea investigation isn’t a lockstep extension activity, which is why we don’t call it that. So they could again bring in their own perspective. But I have to say from the teacher’s point of view, there is that moment of potential panic <laugh> because there is that power transfer when you’re asking children to help steer where this is going. And if you really mean it, you have to let them steer a little bit. And that can be terrifying. And, um, I always think of one teacher, Ashley, we worked with who read an adorable book, Stack the Cats, by Susie Ghahremani. And in that book, there’s a point where there are eight cats and they’re kind of trying to be a tower of cats and they fall and they’re sort of in the air on that page. And she asked her first graders—she stopped, and she asked, “How, do you think, how will the cats land?” And for about a minute and a half, the entire <laugh> class, was silent. They had their little papers; they had chart paper; they had clipboards; they had everything they needed. But that unusual phenomenon of a group of six- and seven-year-olds actually just sitting and thinking and not being peppered with activities was really stressful, but amazing. And then, after about the 90 seconds, they started out into their exploration of how the eight cats might land. They just needed a minute to think. And it’s so rare that we’re able to let children have that.

Allison Hintz (14:40):

In that same moment, Ashley, who’s a learning partner to us, she turned to us kind of quietly, like, “Should I pose a different question?” And <laugh>, we’re like, “No, let’s stick with it. Let’s see what happens.” So I think it creates this space too, this thinking culture, right? And this culture of “what does that mean to really pose a rich task?That’s open-ended, where there’s multiple access points?” Those eight cats could land in so many different ways. And there was broad access, there was a wide range of all the cats landing, and one’s on their feet, ’cause cats always land on their feet <laugh>, and there was every combination. And so, um, I think what’s really interesting—and to me, this brings back to your wonder, Dan—is, you know, “What’s the risk in openness?” And there’s always risk in openness. Um, it’s scary as a teacher, right? If I’m not the authority of knowledge and I don’t have control over where we’re gonna go, it might get into places that I didn’t anticipate. Or I don’t really feel as solid in the math as I want to. Or I don’t know what it sounds like to stick with silence and wait time, to know if my students are really in productive struggle or if that question was a flop. And so, um, I think this is some practice space for young mathematicians and teachers of mathematics, and just teachers, to explore with that openness and kind of the risk of the openness required for complex thinking to emerge.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (16:12):

You know, it feels like the way you’re both describing this, it really is a culture shift, right? I kept feeling like I was given permission to be a beginner as I read this book. Like I was really…I loved how you said, I believe it was you, Allison, when you were in the class, you had a couple index card that you kept on your clipboard and that as you walked around, you were like, “Hey, if I don’t know what to ask, I ask one of these questions.” You know? And just this idea that, that, like Dan was saying, there is that loss of control, but that’s also a way to create this culture where students ideas are valued and we are allowing students to really generate the questions, which I thought was such an important idea to explore.

Allison Hintz (17:00):

We started this work long ago, super-excited about math-y books. And we saw a lot of potential in them and we still do. But the limitation we saw is that math-y books, they, they put forth a certain mathematics to be curious about. In some ways they tell you what mathematics to think about. So we started asking ourselves what would happen if we considered any story a chance to engage as mathematical sense-makers. And we started playing with non-math-y books and we got to a place where we could consider every story an opportunity to engage in mathematical thinking. And so we started noticing things over times, oh, these books tend to be really math-y. We call those text-dependent. We’d have to pay attention to the mathematics to understand the story. Whereas this pile of stories, these, they’re not overtly math-y. You could really enjoy the story and not pay attention to mathematics and have an amazing conversation. But what would happen if we thought of about this story as mathematical sense-makers and how might it deepen our understanding of the story? And then this other teetering pile of books, these are books where, you know, children didn’t tend to engage as overtly as mathematicians in it, but there’s opportunities in this story to go back to something—to a moment, to an illustration, to a comment—and think as mathematicians. And those were more about illustration exploring. And so, as we notice these different kinds of books, we really broaden what we thought about. And I think one of the things we really wanna think about in community through this book is what happens if we approach any story, every story, as mathematical sense-makers, because stories are alive in children’s lives, in homes and communities and in schools. And it’s a broad opportunity that we wanna take up. I was thinking, as I stay in this strait for just a moment about book selection, before we move into that process, um, Bethany in a previous MTL, you talked about representation.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (19:12):

Mm, yeah.

Allison Hintz (19:14):

And do you remember when you shared the image of hair braiding?

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (19:19):

Yes. Vividly, yes. <laugh>.

Allison Hintz (19:22):

Yeah. And can you say just what that meant to you? What that….

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (19:27):

Yeah. Well, it was from a conference; Sunil Singh had used it and was talking about the artistry in mathematics and beauty in hair braiding. And, um, particularly, he was showing this particular image of this Black woman with her hair braided in profile and looking at the angles and the symmetry. And I shared that, you know, I spent so many hours in the beauty shop with my aunties and my mom and my grandma and continue to, to this day, that it just, it struck me immediately as familiar. And it struck me immediately as seeing an image that was reflective of my lived reality, projected as valuable and worthwhile for consideration in the world of mathematics. Which is not what I felt as a student of mathematics as a young adult or child. So it was this beautiful moment of, for me, the power of when we see images and we allow opportunities for re-envisioning what may be a common practice for that student, or may be something that they see every day.

Allison Hintz (20:44):

And in that same way, that image that was put up, we wanna think really carefully about representation in the stories that we select. And when we think of stories as mirrors or windows, we really wanna be mindful in story selection of whose stories are told and whose stories are heard. And when you said that you would sit down to listen to a story and you felt at ease or that you saw an image and you saw yourself that can be and should be something we really think carefully about when we select the stories that we select.

Dan Meyer (21:21):

It’s a wider path for representation of different kinds of people in literature, because people’s stories seem so much more present and towards the surface of their lives, versus, say, the abstractions and numbers and shapes in mathematics. It feels like more of a struggle to find ways to show people, hey, like you’re here, this, this place belongs to you. So in all these reasons, I think it’s really great you folks are using literature, which has this history of humanities, literally humanities, as a vehicle for mathematics. That seems pretty special here.

Antony Smith (21:56):

We both go to libraries and bookstores and look through books as often as we can, but also our partner, a children’s librarian, Mie-Mie Wu, helped us go through—when we would meet, she would bring three or four hundred books at a time.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (22:13):

When you described her wheeling in the cart, oh, I wish I been in that room! <Laugh>

Antony Smith (22:18):

And the cart was, you know, probably three or four times bigger than she was sometimes. And we would go through hundreds of books and look at them and listen to her thoughts as a skilled librarian sharing with families, diverse families, and what catches the attention of a three-year-old sitting with her grandfather. And that was really a valuable, helpful experience. And it’s a partnership that continues. So in Last Stop on Market Street—and this is in the book; we talk about this, this children’s book quite a bit—in this story, CJ with his Nana, his grandmother, are riding the bus to the last stop on Market Street in San Francisco, to go, as we will find out, to help serve in a soup kitchen to help the community. And the teacher, Susan Hadreas, had the children record their ideas. She charted them in an open Notice and Wonder read. And one of the ideas that a young boy noticed was that CJ on the bus…a man with a guitar starts playing the guitar on the bus and CJ closes his eyes and it says CJ’s chest grew full. And he was lost in the sound and the sound gave him the feeling of magic. So this boy said, “I wonder, what does that feel like if you’re feeling the magic? What’s that?” And that was one of many ideas in the open Notice and Wonder, and Allison will talk about the math lens read, but first Susan went back and read with them. She had that idea, she circled it on the chart paper, and another day that week, she said, let’s go back and visit this story we really liked. And remember, we wondered what feeling the magic was like. Let’s go back through and let’s keep track of all the feelings and emotions that CJ had across the journey to the soup kitchen in this book. And so they did another read of the story; they were very familiar with it, of course, but they noticed new things and they also, every few pages, stopped and she helped chart all of the emotions that CJ experienced from envy to excitement to sadness. There’s a huge range in this book. And it was fascinating.

Allison Hintz (24:36):

I think one of the things that the children noticed was that CJ’s feelings were shaped by community. And that he shaped and shaped…he was shaped by and helped shape his community. And so the ways that he felt across the story were impacted by the other characters that he comes across. The guitar man on the bus. The bus driver who can pull a coin out from behind someone’s ear. The lady with the butterflies in the jar. Nana helping him to see the rainbow. And the students started, you know, being curious about that. How do we shape and how are we shaped by community? What communities are we a part of? This class is one community. I’m in many communities across my life. And they started to quantify the number of people in the story. So Mrs. Hedreas went back for a math lens read, and she said, let’s just keep track of and pay attention to how many people are in CJ’s life in this day. Because I can hear you starting to think about quantity. This class at the same time in other areas of the day had been working on counting collections, how to keep track, so they got out their tools. Some people pulled out ten frames, some people pulled out clipboards. They had a wide range of things they could use to help them keep track. They developed their own strategy, keep track however you want. She did a quicker read through it, flipping the pages, and then they get into these debates: <laugh> “We already counted that person!” “But they took their hat off and put it down to collect money!

Antony Smith (26:10):

“What about the dog?”

Allison Hintz (26:11):

“That’s the same person!” “Yeah, there’s a dog pound in his community!” <laugh> “Do animals count in our community?”

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (26:17):

I love it!

Allison Hintz (26:17):

“Yes, they count!” Uh, and so we went through and quantified and there was really this understanding as you saw these people throughout the story that communities can be of different sizes, but community has impact. And you have responsibility in your community to show up and to lean in and to know that bringing your full, authentic, vulnerable self, you shape people and they shape you. And what communities are people a part of. And it turned into this really interesting discussion about quantity and helped us think more about quantity and community. I think a really important moment for us and for that class was the transition from being people who almost did mathematics to a story, like counted things on a page, um, count acorns on a page in an autumn book, to being mathematicians who thought within the story.

Antony Smith (27:17):

And then two idea investigations that came from that —not at the same time, of course, but with the same group of children—one was they identified an emotion of their own and wrote and drew about that. And also, who helped them address or get out of or acknowledge that emotion. And then the other idea investigation was that all of the children drew or kind of mapped out a community that they were part of. Whether it was their neighborhood or their classroom or their soccer team or whatever it was. And so then those investigations strengthened the connections of those concepts to the lives of those children.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (28:05):

Well, I, actually wanted to ask you about idea investigations. Because I feel like that was such an important invitation in your book. And the way I understood the idea investigation is you’re really paying attention to what’s coming up in your other reads. Right? And then these are opportunities to extend the thinking, or like you said, to extend a particular aspect: What’s your community? Can we map your community? Or what’s a particular emotion? And it was in such contrast to what I think I have probably done in my classroom more than once, which was like, “Oh, we read this story about seals. So now my story problem is gonna be about seals, right? <laugh> Like in the story, you know, Jojo, the seal had five balls. <laugh> So if Jojo still had five balls and two of them bounced away…” You know, or whatever. Right? But that’s not what an idea investigation is. Right?

Allison Hintz (29:03):

Yeah. I think this is where we also had some stumbles and can totally relate to what you’re saying as previous classroom teachers as well. We have come to a place where we are pretty in favor of a super open-ended idea investigation that takes up the things that have surfaced in the multiple reads and making sure it’s a rich task with many, many ways children can engage with that. There’s many, many, many right answers or ways to engage. Less is more there. So we moved way away from, like, even a worksheet that might have an idea from it to blank paper and math tools and places to get into some productive struggle around some of the complex things that were raised.

Antony Smith (29:59):

A challenge with worksheets is that they put a frame around children’s ideas. So either there are only three lines to write on, or there’s only a small box to draw in. Whereas a blank page really opens up the possibility. Um, and so—is it Ann Jonas who wrote Splash!? sorry, I don’t have it in front of me—the book Splash!, about animals that end up in and out of the pond, including a cat that is not happy about ending up in the pond, an idea investigation after that for very young children was, with the list of the different creatures displayed at the front of the room: On blank paper, hey, draw your own pond and decide how many of which and each type of animal you want in your pond and then write about it. Just on blank paper. And so that allowed some children to draw, like, three giant goldfish. But other children drew 17 frogs and three cats. And, and just, it lets children follow—

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (31:02):

It was theirs, right? It was theirs.

Antony Smith (31:04):

Their idea. <laugh> And that comes partly from, I think, as Allison mentioned, we both were classroom teachers before moving into academia. And I remember giving children worksheets, particularly math worksheets, where they weren’t necessarily bad, but right at the bottom, it says like, explain your strategy. And it gives two lines.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (31:23):

Right! <laugh>

Antony Smith (31:25):

The only thing a seven-year-old can write there is “I thought.” Or “I solved it.” <laugh> And that’s not where we need to go.

Dan Meyer (31:34):

Yeah. If I could just ask the indulgence of the primary crowd here, like, I’m trying to make sense of all this. And I just wanna like, offer my perspective. My summary statement of what’s going on here. I’m trying to—I love how you both came here—

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (31:45):

<laughs> How ya doin’, Dan? How ya doin’?

Dan Meyer (31:47):

<laughs> I’m, ah, A, I’m loving this a lot. Um, B, I came in here loving how you folks are broadening the work of primary education to kind of find commonalities between these sometimes seemingly disparate kinds of teaching in ELA and math. Love that, I wanna say. But I think you folks are describing, with all these teachers you observed and your own work, is the work of attaching meaning to what students might not realize yet has meaning. Or they might think it only has one kind of meaning. But you, the teacher, with their knowledge, realizes that there are many more dimensions of meaning that can be attached to those thoughts. And I’m hearing that from you folks, when you describe A, what math is and the power of a teacher to name a thing as mathematical. Like, “Oh, you didn’t think math was that, but math is noticing; math is wondering; math is asking questions,” for one. But also this work you’re describing of how, like, first the task has to invite lots of student thoughts and then to say like, “Oh, I see that there’s a similarity to these two.” And to raise those up for a conversation or to ask a question like to extend one person’s, one student’s question a little bit more. But it’s always…I’m just hearing you folks attaching more meaning than the student might have originally thought. I appreciate the conversation. That’s really interesting.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (33:03):

Well, and now that the book is out, I think it’s gonna keep evolving, right? Now that it’s gonna be in the hands of teachers and librarians and educators and caregivers, it’s exciting to see kind of where it goes next. Which actually brings us to our MTL challenge. Dan Meyer, do you wanna share?

Dan Meyer (33:22):

Math Teacher Lounge, we have a challenge for the folks who listen and we’d love for them to hop into the Facebook group Math Teacher Lounge, or hit us up on Twitter at @MTLShow and just, like, kind of exercise beyond listening, exercise the ideas you folks are talking about, some kind of a challenge that can help us dive deeper into your ideas. So what would you folks suggest for our crowd, for our listeners?

Allison Hintz (33:42):

I would love to invite people to playfully experiment with a favorite story, with a story that’s new to you. I would love to invite listeners to sit with a story maybe on your own, and just ask yourself as a mathematician: What do you notice and wonder in this story? Don’t feel any pressure. Maybe sit with a child or some children and listen to what they notice and wonder. Like, really listen! Don’t ask questions! But hear their questions and place children at the center and consider multiple reads. Consider continuing to pursue their questions. And we have a planning template that might support people in kind of sketching out some ideas if you’re open to playing with that too.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (34:34):

And we will post—

Dan Meyer (34:36):

That’s awesome.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (34:36):

—a link for that planning template in our Facebook group and on Twitter as well. So thank you so much for that resource, because I think it’ll definitely help. It could help you, like you said, it could help you kind of organize your thoughts or help you think about this work in a new way. So thank you for that resource and thank you for the amazing resource that is Mathematizing Children’s Literature. I am so excited to continue to engage with you both and with listeners as they dive into this book. If folks want to engage with you more, where can they find you? How can they reach you?

Allison Hintz (35:12):

Well, we’re on Twitter.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (35:14):

Great.

Dan Meyer (35:15):

What’s your home address? <laugh>

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (35:24):

Wait, let me try that again. <laugh> ‘Cause it does sound like I’m like, <fake ominous voice> “Where can they find you?”

Allison Hintz (35:29):

4-2-5…. <laughs>

Antony Smith (35:32):

At the bookstore!

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (35:34):

Y’all, if folks want to continue this conversation or share these ideas or the math challenge, how can they tag you? How can they, they reach you on the World Wide Web, besides the Math Teacher Lounge Facebook group?

Antony Smith (35:50):

Yeah. Well, we are both on Twitter, and we’ve been trying to promote the hashtag #MathematizingChildrensLiterature. It’s very long, but once you type it once, your phone or computer…

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (36:01):

Easy. Yeah, those click, right? Is that what it is now?

Antony Smith (36:03):

<laugh> The other is that we do for our project, we have an Instagram account that is @MathematizeChildren’sLiterature.

Allison Hintz (36:11):

We care really deeply about hearing from people. You know, we think our ideas are constantly evolving and that there’s such exciting room to grow. And we just felt compelled to share what we were learning now so that together we could learn and build vibrant experiences for young children and teachers and families through stories. So we want to hear from people! We wanna learn about stories that are important in your lives and what children say, and grow these ideas together.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (36:42):

And credit to Dan, you told me you went and ordered a bunch of the books they have on the suggested read list.

Dan Meyer (36:48):

Oh my gosh.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (36:49):

You read ’em to your son.

Dan Meyer (36:50):

I got such a side-eye from my significant others around here for what I dropped on Amazon in one night! <laugh> Uh, all these books I didn’t have. Some of them I did. We are not fully illiterate around here! We do love the written word at the Meyer household! But there were a bunch that that I grabbed. I’m morseling them out day by day.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (37:09):

Wait, at bedtime I read my one-year-old One Is a Snail, Ten Is a Crab. <laugh> And let me tell you, he had vigorous pointing and “Da? Da da da da?”

Allison Hintz (37:22):

<laugh> Aww, da da!

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (37:22):

So hey, we’re on the road. <laugh> <music> Deeply grateful, not only for your work and your beautiful book and your work, but also for the invitation to dive into the world of children’s literature in a way that many of us have not before. And it’s fun! Thank you, Tony. And thank you, Allison. And thanks for hanging out in the lounge.

Allison Hintz (37:48):

Thanks for having the lounge!

Antony Smith (37:49):

It’s been fun!

Allison Hintz (37:52):

Thank you both.

Stay connected!

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What Allison Hintz says about math

“We started asking ourselves, “what would happen if we considered any story a chance to engage as mathematical sensemakers”.”

– Allison Hintz

Author and Associate Professor, University of Washington Bothell

Meet the guest

Allison B. Hintz: Dr. Hintz’s research and teaching are in the area of mathematics education. Her focus on mathematics came about during her years as a fifth grade teacher – it was alongside her students that she developed her own positive identity as a mathematician! Today she studies teaching and learning, specifically facilitating engaging discussion. Her research and teaching happen in partnership with educators and children in formal and informal settings and focuses on beliefs and practices that support all children in lively mathematics learning. She is a co-author, with Elham Kazemi, of Intentional Talk: How to Structure and Lead Productive Mathematical Discussions.

Twitter: @allisonhintz124

Antony T. Smith: Antony T. Smith is an associate professor of literacy education at the University of Washington, Bothell. He works alongside teachers to create engaging literacy-mathematics learning experiences through exploring and discussing children’s literature. He is committed to the concepts of motivation, engagement, challenge, and creativity in literacy teaching and learning.

 Twitter: @smithant  Instagram: mathematizechildrensliterature

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About Math Teacher Lounge: The podcast

Math Teacher Lounge is a biweekly podcast created specifically for K–12 math educators. In each episode co-hosts Bethany Lockhart Johnson (@lockhartedu) and Dan Meyer (@ddmeyer) chat with guests, taking a deep dive into the math and educational topics you care about.

Join the Math Teacher Lounge Facebook group to continue the conversation, view exclusive content, interact with fellow educators, participate in giveaways, and more!

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Planning to assess remotely? No problem. Our guides will help you feel comfortable and confident assessing remotely with all of our mCLASS literacy and math assessments, while mCLASS’s free online measures, at-home learning packets, and family resources ensure you have effective, easy-to-use tools to support students during remote learning.

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The remote assessment guides provide recommendations and best practices for assessing one-on-one remotely with mCLASS. They cover when to assess, how to assess using a video meeting or call, how to interpret scores this back-to-school season, and how to take the next instructional steps.

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S4 – 01. Joyful math teaching with Kanchan Kant

Podcast cover for "Math Teacher Lounge," Season 4, Episode 1, titled "Joyful math teaching," featuring Kanchan Kant, described as a math educator and transformative leader.

This season on the Math Teacher Lounge podcast, we follow the theme “joyful math” and uncover its meaning.

In this episode, Kanchan Kant joins Bethany Lockhart Johnson and Dan Meyer to discuss the key, early investment she makes at the start of the school year to ensure her math teaching will be joyful for herself and for her students for the rest of the year.

Explore more from Math Teacher Lounge by visiting our main page.

Download Transcript

Dan Meyer (00:00):
Okay, we are recording. Hey folks. Welcome back to Math Teacher Lounge. (laugh)

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (00:06):
Hardly off to a rocking start.

Dan Meyer (00:06):
Yeah. Yeah. <laugh> Did you like my energy there? Hey folks. Welcome back to Math Teacher Lounge. It’s a new season with your host Dan Meyer. And…

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (00:15):
I’m Bethany, Lockhart Johnson. How’s your summer Dan?

Dan Meyer (00:22):
Summer for me feels really hectic as we prepare, here at Amplify, for the new school year, and everyone’s starting these new math programs. So I’ve been feeling quite amped up, like usual in the summer. But also, my kids started big kid school. So I’ve been seeing the educational system from the role of a parent and all the anxieties and I worry, will I be my kids’ teacher’s most annoying parent <laugh> … So what kind of math curriculum you using? Oh, have you heard of core counting? Can I lead a math center? What’s this worksheet about? I’m really worried my kids are just overall gonna hate my vibe when I come around their classes. Uh, <laugh> so lots going on with me.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (01:06):
It’s already happening for me and I have a toddler.

Dan Meyer (01:10):
<laugh> There we go. Anyway, that’s what I’m up to. That’s how I’m feeling. I’m curious how you’re doing. We haven’t chatted in a while. We’re excited about the podcast, but it’s been a bit, you know? Bethany got a break from me and my antics over the summer. So, how are we finding you here, as we ramp up to the new season?

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (01:24):
Uhhhh. Well, let me just tell you, I have a toddler. That’s kind of all I need to say. Except that’s not all I will say. Of course, I’ll say more. I am exploring, I’m dipping my toe into the extracurricular toddler activities; the music classes of the toddler world, the creative movement of the toddler world. And yeah, I have lots of opinions and lots of things to say about the teachers. And I’m like, Ugh, I can’t wait to be room mom. And just like…<laugh>

Dan Meyer (01:55):
Just let it rip, you know?

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (01:57):
I have opinions on everything and just hope I don’t get kicked out of the class.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (02:05):
It’s been an eventfully recharging summer and we are ready for this new season. And in fact, we’re so ready that we decided that we were gonna mix up this season. Just a, just a tiny bit. Shall I explain Dan?

Dan Meyer (02:21):
Yeah. Let’s do it.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (02:22):
So we have loved all the different topics that we have explored in the Math Teacher Lounge world, but we kind of feel like we need to do some more deep dives. So for this season and the foreseeable seasons …

Dan Meyer (02:38):
We’ll see how it goes.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (02:38):
Let’s stick with this season. For this season. We’re going to be exploring a singular theme.

Dan Meyer (02:46):
We’re not bouncing around. Yep. We’re not bouncing around from a guest to guest going on whatever shiny thing in the river bed catches our eye. We’re gonna take one theme and see where it goes. What we working with here this season?

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (02:57):
This season, we are going to be exploring the idea of joyful math, joyful math. And Dan, the question I have for you is, is the term joyful math one that you use on the regular?

Dan Meyer (03:10):
No, it definitely is not. I think that joy and math are very rarely, you know, connected in the popular mind. Number one, and number two, you know, I’m kind of an ornery fellow, so that’s not my natural kind of description of math. But we decided that it feels like an important one at the moment, because a lot of math teaching–a lot of teaching in general, math teaching in particular–math teaching is often not a joyful discipline for students, where, you know, I’ve done some research where you look at what people type into Google. And I looked at like, what they…why am I bad at X? And I looked at that for where X is math, where it’s science, where it’s reading, where it’s history. And it was just wild to see how many more hits there are out there on the Internet for “why am I bad at math?” People don’t really associate math with joy, but also we’re looking at joyful math in terms of joyful math teaching. Math teaching, teaching in general, is a tough field at the moment with a lot of teachers leaving teaching. And those who remain are having a lot of soul searching and thinking about, why am I here and how do I sustain this work? And in an environment that seems hostile to my interests or my talents, or work-life balance. And so that’ll be the theme that we’re gonna kind of uncover over the course of our season, talking to various interesting guests, including one today about, yeah, joyful math teaching and joyful math.

Dan Meyer (04:43):
And to help us think about what joyful math teaching looks like, we figured we’d first look at what UN-joyful math teaching looks like. It happens to be the case that we’ve been in a pandemic as you might be aware, and teaching has been challenging. And the NEA, our National Education Association, surveyed its member teachers and asked them the following question … Gave a list of issues that school employees have experienced and asked, for each one indicate how serious of a problem this is for you. This is a survey where more than half of members said they are more likely to leave or retire sooner than planned because of the pandemic. And this is almost double the numbers from July, 2020. It’s really hard to keep track of teacher departures and unfilled vacancies across states. So I don’t wanna like blow this up out of proportion, but it does indicate some real challenges in teaching. So Bethany, I was curious, what do you think like at the top of the list, like what kinds of factors, issues facing educators would you imagine there are?

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (05:48):
So if I’m to understand you correctly, these are reasons someone is not actively experiencing joy in the profession of teaching. Like why would they leave?

Dan Meyer (05:58):
Exactly.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (05:59):
Well, the number one thing that came to mind for me, well, okay. Wait, wait, one other caveat I need to ask about, you said specifically pandemic-related or just in general, because if it’s pandemic-related, then I think, well, there’s health issues, right? That people are concerned about, but in general, the thing that came to mind was a lack of support from administration districts, lack of funding, and overcrowding in classrooms. Like, you know, I saw somebody had 40 students in their classroom. So those are the two things that I can imagine like top on someone’s list that would make them experience less than a joyful day.

Dan Meyer (06:44):
Yeah. There’s a bunch of you’re kind of identifying here. So number seven on the list is lack of respect from parents and the public, which is like 76% of teachers call that out as serious for them. Others that you kind of circled around in terms of resources go like, not enough planning or unstructured time in the job kind of ties into resources. Yeah. But there’s others that are on the list that I’m curious, you wanna take on the swing at it, given what I’ve said here,

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (07:15):
I feel like too much being asked of them, like being asked to wear too many hats, like they’re being asked to not only teach their class, but also cover all the vacancies and supervise recess and, you know, make a delicious, nutritious lunch. That’s what came to mind. Am am I close?

Dan Meyer (07:33):
Yeah. Number four on the list, unfilled job openings leading to more work for remaining staff. People covering, you know, not just the kind of external to teaching work like you’re describing, but also just taking on like losing your prep period, to take on a class that has been unfilled for all kinds of reasons. Yeah.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (07:54):
Yeah. I’ve only gotten the fourth. Give me one clue, one clue about …

Dan Meyer (07:59):
So, I mean like, so number one is general stress from the coronavirus pandemic, you know, which I feel like …

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (08:06):
I mentioned that.

Dan Meyer (08:07):
I’ll give you that one. Yep, yep, sure. And then number two, close behind, is feeling burned out, which I think ties into what you’re describing as well. I’m giving Bethany credit on that one. The third one is very different from the ones you’ve been describing. I think I cannot in good faith give you even partial credit for this one. I’ll just say it. Student…

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (08:28):
Wait! Dan, this is not how you give clues.

Dan Meyer (08:31):
Here’s a clue. It’s student absences due to COVID19. It’s really hard to deal student absences. That’s your clue.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (08:40):
That wasn’t a clue that you told me.

Dan Meyer (08:43):
Yeah, let’s see. I think that’s largely it. There’s also pay is too low, is on the list; student behavioral issues, on the list. And I think that about covers it. So all of that, that basket of items has led to more than half of teachers in this survey, saying that they’re more likely to leave or retire from education sooner than planned. And I don’t know. I think we all know teachers who have bailed.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (09:08):
I’ve never played a board game with you, Dan, but if we ever play a board game, we’re gonna work on your clue giving, ’cause I want to keep guessing. And you just told me.

Dan Meyer (09:22):
Yeah. Yeah.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (09:22):
In all seriousness, the <laugh>. In all seriousness, I think yes, the stress of the pandemic and students being absent, what some folks are calling unfinished learning, all of those pieces do play into it. But a lot of those things that you’re mentioning on the list are things that are not unique to the pandemic, right? Like those are things that I feel like there is some modicum of control that we could have over shifting the way the culture of the teaching profession is going so that we could create a more joyful experience for educators, administrators, and students.

Dan Meyer (10:03):
Yeah. Good call out. That’s exactly right. We could tax the people who are not in the classrooms more and increase the pay to classroom teachers. You know, there we go.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (10:11):
Oh. Bingo. Why didn’t we ask you sooner Dan, for your wisdom.

Dan Meyer (10:15):
Yeah. I’m … solved by Dan. Yeah, good point though. So I read that and yeah, I think that there’s been some … people have critiqued the NEA for being very alarmist about teacher departures as the year has ramped up. It has not been quite the flood of departing teachers as was predicted and thank heavens for that, but we should still be very bummed if teachers are unhappy and wanting to leave and feel like they can’t leave. That is definitely not good. So we were really excited to bring to the table, someone who is just a very joyful teacher and one in a very intentional way. Someone who has a lot of discipline in how she approaches the job and the students in it and tries to create a joyful environment for herself, Kanchan Kant. Kanchan is a math and computer science teacher at Newton North High School in Newton, Massachusetts. She’s been sharing her love for math with her students for the past four years, while also being instrumental in setting the culture and ethos of the math department at her school in her role as the assistant department head. We welcome you on the show Kanchan to help us understand joy and math teaching. Thanks for being here.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (11:29):
Welcome!

Kanchan Kant (11:30):
Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (11:33):
One of my friends, her son was asked as his first math homework assignment to write out his math bio. And I loved that idea because we got to hear a little bit about your bio from like a broader perspective. But if we were to ask about your math bio, I will speak for myself to say like, automatically certain images flash into my mind, right? To think about my relationship, my evolving relationship with math. But I’m so curious if I was to ask you, what’s your math bio? How did you become the person, mathematically speaking, that you are today? Would you mind sharing a bit about that?

Kanchan Kant (12:10):
Of course I would love to. So I was born and raised in India and I belong to a family which considers mathematics to be extremely important to succeed in life. My father used to have me add and subtract license plates since I was four years old, when we were out and about. I loved math in school, it just made like complete sense to me. It was logical and you know, it was my favorite subject. I loved it all through high school. I had a confidence speed breaker in undergrad. When in my second semester I almost failed the engineering math course that I took. That was the first time math felt like too much and not like my best friend, which it was supposed to be. So it was a while before I could summon the courage to take on another math course in college.

Kanchan Kant (12:56):
But once I did that, it was like old times. I realized I had to persevere through the challenging bits. And once I did that, it started to make sense again. And through my journey, as an educator speaking to people from various backgrounds and like coming to the United States, I realized that math is challenging for everyone at one time or another. For some people that is elementary school. And for some others, it is college or even later. Either way does not mean that you are not a math person. When I was in college, I felt I was not a math person. Whereas my sister, my very own sister said the same thing about math in middle school. Both of us use math every day. And we are definitely, definitely math people. So for me to be a math person is to persevere, to approach problem-solving in a logical manner, and to find the joy in the process ,as well as the answer.

Dan Meyer (13:47):
That’s wonderful. Yeah. A lot of people, have a moment where they feel like almost betrayed by what they thought was a close friend of theirs, with math, where it’s like, wait, I thought we were tight. You know, I thought we were cool. You and me. And there’s that moment. And I wonder if that’s been a useful moment for you to, you know, bring back now and then as a teacher with students who might feel that even, you know, in high school or in a secondary school as a kid.

Kanchan Kant (14:15):
Absolutely. Like when I talk to students and tell them, yes, I had difficulty in math too. It has not always been easy for men and there are still things I struggle with sometimes, then it’s like more modeling for them that you have to persevere, you should persevere. And once you do that, it makes sense and you can feel successful. So, almost every year I end up sharing the story with my students.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (14:38):
There’s so much value in that, right? That you are sharing that vulnerability with students. And to say your relationship with mathematics has not been, you know, smooth sailing the whole way through. There were times when you had to work harder than others.

Dan Meyer (14:55):
Yeah. Really fun to hear about you and your father as well. I tried to ask my five-year-old to do some skip counting the other day, like, okay, cool, you’re hot stuff. You can count, you know, up by ones, but what about by twos? And the moment really fell flat. And I watched myself becoming the kind of parent who is whose enthusiasm for math is one day resented by his children. I feel a lot of, yeah, I felt your anxiety Kanchan, with math itself. And now I feel anxiety as like someone who loves math and loves to teach math and may one day alienate the people closest to him. <laugh>

Kanchan Kant (15:31):
I don’t like that future. I have a three-month-old. I do not like this future of mine. If I have to go through what you’re going through. Uh, oh, <laugh>

Dan Meyer (15:38):
You got this. So Kanchan, you’re going back to the classroom coming up here at the time of this recording. It’s a few weeks out. And we’re thinking about like the kind of ways that math teachers sustain a disposition that is joyful. How are you feeling right now, as far as going back to class after this summer? Are you feeling excited, anxious, some combo, tell us about it.

Kanchan Kant (16:01):
I would say combo, but more excited than anxious. I was on maternity leave, as I mentioned, before the school year ended, and I missed the students dearly. Like, my students are what gives me hope in the darkest times. They are thoughtful. They’re empathetic. They’re so eager to learn. And very soon into my teaching career, I realized that if I take the time to get to know my students and make them feel safe and seen in my class, teaching them math would be so much easier and so much more fun. So I’m a little worried about this being like fourth year into the pandemic, but let’s see. Last year I felt the students were finding it difficult to interact with and work with their classmates because they had not been doing it for so long. So I’m hoping this year would go a little better and I’m really looking forward to working with them and building community and see how it goes.

Dan Meyer (16:53):
So if I’m understanding you correctly, you are feeling very well recharged here. You had basically an extended summer with this maternity leave, basically just like a lot of rest and relaxation over the last, like several months. Um, if I get you here. So anyway, I’m glad for that for you. And, yeah. I also hear you on the difficulties of teaching post pandemic or mid pandemic. Anyway, thanks for sharing that.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (17:19):
What I love is I hear you being so intentional, like thinking about those relationships and thinking about that community that you want to build, you know? How do you hope that you’re gonna cultivate joy in your teaching this year? I mean like, are there certain routines or disciplines that you specifically call forth or that you think other teachers should think about?

Kanchan Kant (17:41):
So at the start of every school year, I dedicate like about three to four weeks to set up the classroom culture, both social and academic. I call my classroom a learning community. We start with community circles, we do icebreaker activities, group building and all those kinds of things. But most importantly, we do a lot of collective problem solving. So I try to present students with problems, which can be solved using multiple strategies and have multiple entry points, basically they are low floor, high ceiling problems. These could be stretch problems that they have seen before, like concepts that they already know or logical puzzles, or just wrapping their heads around different problems. Then I have students share their strategies. The more strategies they have on the board, the more successful I think the problem was. Every year, inevitably, students come up with strategies that I’ve never ever seen before for the same problems that I do.

Kanchan Kant (18:35):
And so I have students come up to the board, they would share their strategies. If they’re not ready for that, they would walk me through their strategies. And I would write their name on the board with different colored markers and everything. Basically to give them choice and agency. It also shows them that the process of doing the problem is so much more important than just getting the right answer and that it is okay to make mistakes in our learning community. I use a lot of vertical whiteboards, some concepts and problems align so well with the vertical surfaces, especially when students can explore together, learn from each other. So I do a lot of that. As for routines, I would say consistency is the key. I consistently reinforce that I want to hear multiple strategies, that it is okay to make mistakes. I am willing to learn from you as much as you’re willing to learn from me. So all like that consistency in culture more than the routines, is I feel important to bring that joy.

Dan Meyer (19:29):
That’s super interesting. Thanks for that. So I’ve heard, I hear two common objections or two common concerns to using rich tasks or doing problem solving. And I think I heard like answers to those two common reservations within what you described there, but I wonder if we can kind of bring it to the surface. And so one of the reservations is around the time that those problems take and another is that teachers often feel like, well, I might be surprised, you know, I might not know what to do with what a student does. And I thought I was hearing like some very interesting answers to both of those kinds of reservations from you, but would you just surface those up if you have some.

Kanchan Kant (20:09):
So in terms of time, I feel if I spend the time at the beginning of the year, setting up that community and doing those problems, it makes learning the math and learning the concepts much more faster throughout the rest of the year. And even when I am trying, like, even throughout the year, if we are doing a warm up problem, as I call it, which has multiple strategies, that’s gonna clarify so many more concepts when we talk about those five, 10 strategies of doing the same problem, then going through multiple problems to clarify those concepts. So for me, it actually saves time instead of taking more time.

Dan Meyer (20:43):
Hmm. That’s super interesting. It’s an investment I’m hearing from you that, yeah, you might not be hitting the curriculum quite as hard early on, but that all of a sudden you’re in the spring and it’s like, oh wow, we’ve been moving so much faster through territory that has been more challenging. What would you say to you know, comfort concerned educators or to address the concern that I don’t know what I’ll do with these five, 10 different strategies. You say, I always see strategies that I’ve never anticipated. Like, it’s a good thing, you know, like you’re happy about that. I think that’s a very intimidating thing for lots of educators. What would you say to that?

Kanchan Kant (21:19):
I think like, for me, it’s a good kind of discomfort. That means like a student is teaching me something, which is actually doing two things. One modeling for them that I’m willing to learn and that I don’t know everything. And two, also telling them that they’re mathematicians. They know what they’re doing. They’re not just receivers of math, they’re actually creating it. So for me, that is very, very important.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (21:43):
I love that so much. When you think about your students and you’re about to start this new school year, how do you hope your students will experience math in your classroom?

Kanchan Kant (21:53):
So I hope my students can see the beauty and joy of math. They can see that math is a way to see the world and not as something we have to do to get through school. So my hope for my classroom is that we can learn to problem-solve and persevere through problems and learn from each other and not just get through the curriculum. Because like, I think math is a wonderful way to learn these skills, which are so important when you get out of high school. Most importantly, I just wanna make sure that my students see themselves as mathematicians. And like one of the things that like I have to share with you that, because one of my highlights for the year has to be the Desmos art project. I do it every year for the past three years, I think since I’ve started teaching sophomores. And I do it as a unit assessment for functions and my students design something that is meaningful to them, using all the different kinds of functions and colors and shading and everything that you can think of in Desmos.

Kanchan Kant (22:49):
Thank you so much for that though. It is such a cool way for me to see them do that. Like I have seen such amazing creations. One of my students once made a scaled working model of a solar system wherein the planets were rotating at relative speed. The Saturn had rings and they were like asteroids and everything. And then it was beautifully done. Then there was another one who did a very, very detailed whale scenery, her reasoning. I wanna be a Marine biologist and I wanna study whales. So this is what is meaningful to me. So like that one project is just a culmination of everything that I want students to see in math and in my classroom. And like I do more of those kinds of things, but that is one thing that it’s one of the highlights of my year.

Dan Meyer (23:32):
That’s awesome. I love hearing that. Yeah. Shout out to the team at Desmos Studio for building and continuing to develop a tool list that so good for art and animation, even, in addition to some mathematics with a more computational kind. Yeah, that’s really exciting. What’s interesting to me is that you teach high school, and I think that like students at that age have a very well-defined sense of what math is and who they are as mathematicians. And then along you come, you know, and like offer this really interesting disruption, you know, in their sophomore year of high school that like, oh, this can be totally different, this relationship who I am. And that’s just really exciting. I imagine it’s a very surprising year. I would imagine that first month, I would imagine is a very surprising month for a lot of your sophomores.

Kanchan Kant (24:20):
Yeah, it is. I mean, that’s why I take that time to build that community because then that sets the tone and the relationship that we’re gonna have for the rest of the year. Students get to know how to work with each other. They get to know each other, that whole piece is like super important because of that.

Dan Meyer (24:35):
Yeah. That’s awesome. So here’s the thing, like we’re exploring these ideas about joyful math teaching and what it will take to cultivate restore, reclaim joy in math, teaching this next year. And you’ve offered us these really interesting ideas some, some very, you know, philosophical and some technical about how you spend time in ways that lead to joy in the spring for you and your students. Love that. We don’t want to as hosts, as researchers, investigators of this joyful math teaching idea, we don’t wanna say it’s all up to teachers to change their mindset, to do different technical practices, and that will lead to joy. We also wanna be really attentive to the environment that surrounds you, the people who are around to support you, the policy makers, the social structures that influence your joy in very significant ways. So what we would love to know from you is, how are you supported by the greater educational community in keeping your joy in your work? I’m thinking, especially about administrators, you know, front office, staff, parents, even, can you name a few ways for those sorts of people who listen to this podcast, how they can cultivate a math teacher’s joy this coming year?

Kanchan Kant (25:54):
I would say trust. I think more than anything, educators want administrators, parents, the greater educational community, to trust them to be professionals and experts in what they do. That does not mean that we don’t want to learn, that we don’t want feedback, that we don’t wanna get better. It just means that we keep the wellbeing of our students as our top priority. And we would like to be trusted to do just that. Also just keeping in mind that whether we like it or not, we are still adjusting to the new normal while recovering from the worst of the pandemic times. A lot of us are recovering from trauma, a lot of our students are recovering from trauma, and we need time and space for our social and emotional wellbeing.

Dan Meyer (26:35):
Yeah. I’m really curious, Kanchan, you’ve done a lot of work in your area with your grading team and in thinking about equitable and biased resistant instruction. I’m curious how you see those efforts lining up with creating joyful math learning conditions for all students, not just students from a dominant culture of math doing, let’s say.

Kanchan Kant (26:55):
For me, creating an equitable environment in a classroom is most important because once you have that, that’s when you have the relationships, that’s when you have the culture, that’s when all students actually thrive. So to that end, our school and our department has been doing a lot of work around grading practices. We actually assess how we grade students, where the bias is, what we can do to make them more bias resistant. Should we move to mastery based grading? Like that’s something I’ve been experimenting with for the past two years. Through the pandemic, I started doing mastery based grading so that my students can get more opportunities to show that they have learned the content. And so like just little things which help bridge the opportunity gap. I would say another project that our school undertakes is called the calculus project wherein we have students in Black, Latinx, and low income families sign up for that and are recommended for that. And then we do summer classes and yearlong support to preview the material for next year, not as a remedial class, but to actually set students up for success in AP classes for the coming year. So we have the community buildup. We have the courses we have like math support. It’s a very beautiful thing actually. And I’ve been working with that program for four years now. So yeah, so those are my ways of creating more equity in our school.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (28:19):
That’s so beautiful and I deeply, deeply wish you had been my high school math teacher. And I have to say that the theme that I kind of keep hearing is this intentionality. How you are so intentional about your work, not just with what your students are learning, but how they’re learning it, how they are engaging with this subject and how they are building their own relationship. You talked a little bit about your relationship over the years with mathematics, but how are your students building that relationship? And so I’m just very appreciative of you sharing that with us and with our listeners. And we are so excited to have learned a little bit about, like, I feel like I got a little mini peek into your classroom.

Kanchan Kant (29:03):
Thank you.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (29:04):
And can I say that if you are listening to this prior to October at NCTM Los Angeles, you will get to hear Kanchan Kant speak at Shadow Con. Can I give that away, Dan? Is that, is that …

Dan Meyer (29:23):
You can drop that. Yeah, It’s pretty top secret.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (29:26):
Can I drop it?

Dan Meyer (29:27):
Yeah. Do it. Yeah.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (29:28):
Dan and I will be in the audience cheering you on. It’s been a joy to learn with and from you, and we are so excited to just, you know, kind of keep marinating on some of these ideas about how we can continue to be intentional about creating joyful math spaces for our students. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Kanchan Kant (29:49):
Thank you so much. It was a real pleasure.

Dan Meyer (29:57):
So Bethany, I loved hearing Kanchan talk about both her, just her joyful personality, but how she cultivates joy through craft and technique through, you know, through the various ways she interacts with students in intentional ways, that those make the job more joyful for her. And I thought it was really interesting to hear her talk about how autonomy is the thing that she needs most in her job environment to feel like she can be joyful in her work. In that context, I saw … something on Twitter popped up for me in my, you know, my many Twitter wanderings. This is a segment we might call, Dan finds something on Twitter and shares it with Bethany. Which we’ll tighten that up a little bit, but I’m sending this over to you right now, and I’d love to know as you check this out, what you’re seeing and what you’re thinking and we’ll chat about how it relates to our interview here in a moment.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (30:47):
All right. I’m ready, send it over. It’s opening. So this appears to be a document by the way, outlining, maybe it’s a district, maybe it’s administration, they’re outlining expectation type and expectation guidelines. Hmm. Okay. And these are lesson plan expectations. Expectation type. Timeliness. Plans are due no later than 6 p.m.. Friday prior to the week of instruction. Comprehensive, all activities for the week for all subjects taught should be included and complete by due date and time. Plans should have at minimum, the following, see template for detail. Okay. So then it goes through the things that the plans need to have, the topic title, target, the objective, the activities, the sequence, the display agendas to be displayed backward design. Okay. So basically <laugh>, we were just talking about, overwhelm. And when I see this document, listeners, have you ever received something from your administrator or anyone, let’s take it more broadly, that is requesting something of you that would take so much time to complete and be so out of touch with your lived reality that it really genuinely sucks the joy out of the experience.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (32:25):
So the first thing that I see that this document, and again, the goal of whichever district’s plan this is, is that these expectations will lead–now, mind you, I am a fan of like, you know, looking ahead, I’m not a like, oh, hey, what am I gonna teach in five minutes? No, but the idea that then it lays out all of the things in such detail that you’re gonna be teaching feels like one of those pacing guides where, oh, move on to the next page, whether or not your students have any sort of sense making whatsoever. So my first thought is, oh, sad. I have to stay here. I’ll be there past 6 p.m. But I’m gonna be there trying to make the plans for the next week based on what I think my students have learned. Hmm it’s sounds like a little bit of a bummer. Dan, what did you think when you saw this and did I do a fair description of what it is?

Dan Meyer (33:25):
No, it’s, it’s a tough one to describe, ’cause it’s basically a wall of text and commands from an administrator who like, I just have to imagine has just like acres and acres of teachers trying to beat down their door to teach at this school, if this is how you’re gonna treat your teachers. I mean just, yeah. The idea of having a week… I’m with you, you don’t wanna just like, just jump in by the seat of your pants, but the idea of having a full week of lessons for every section you teach, every prep you teach, planned and submitted with every minute, basically morseled out to different goals. It says down here, you gotta like, for all of these, download a CSV of grades and whatnot and attach those. It’s the sort of thing, like you said, there are some edicts that you get from administration where you just have to laugh or just like, you have definitely missed like what I am willing to do here. It’s so far beyond. Yeah. I can’t imagine it. And it just felt like, yeah, it was a great way to get teachers like Kanchan to feel like a real lack of autonomy. Like it’s this would not work. I don’t think.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (34:33):
And it’s not even like willing to do. Like, let’s say you’re even willing to produce it. Let’s say that me, the rule follower is like, okay. I’m gonna attempt to meet these demands. One, most teachers were just, you know, they probably would put baloney down there anyway. Not saying that I would, but I’m saying like, it’s clearly just a hoop that they’re having to jump through and two…

Dan Meyer (35:04):
Yeah. Compliance, right?

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (35:05):
Yeah. Compliance, compliance. There you go. And two, yeah, it feels like it’s about control and not trusting the teacher. And I love that. Kanchan said that trust is what she needs. Right? You’re hiring me. Yes. I still have lots to learn, but you’re trusting me and you’re creating an environment where I can continue to learn from and with my students. And if I was being asked to submit this tome every Friday before six, that is predicting, what does it say, anticipating the steps necessary for student mastery? You know, I kind of feel like maybe it’s like that one or two teachers where maybe they feel like, oh, I don’t trust that teacher or that teacher isn’t doing a good job, whatever. We better do this for all of the teachers, but then it’s not gonna change the practices of that one teacher and all the other teachers are gonna be resentful.

Dan Meyer (36:00):
Like if there was like feedback that came back to you on, you know, on lesson plans or there was some like something that was very constructive or productive, like maybe that would be different, but it really just feels like these are gonna go into a digital drawer somewhere and not be looked at, at all.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (36:15):
Yes. The digital drawer. Like I’m gonna send you this report and then nothing is going to happen with it. Except that four hours of my time. Well, you wouldn’t do it, but <laugh>…

Dan Meyer (36:29):
You’ve worn me down. You’ve worn me down. I’m now putty in your hands and more compliant for the next thing. And I also just wanna shout out the administrator today, who I emailed asking about like a teacher participating in a project and this administrator said, I have a standing policy not to email teachers over summer break, which you know, as administrators out there doing just the good work, you know, trusting teachers, watching out for them, trying to be a force multiplier for teachers, making the road wider, the way easier for teachers. So shout out to y’all doing the out there. Really appreciate that.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (37:04):
Okay. Wait, wait. About that email thing, quick question. Did you ever check your email over the summer?

Dan Meyer (37:11):
Uh, yeah. That’s one way in which I was the, you know, I just love email, you know? Oh. Someone wanted to reach out. Oh, oh, Banana Republic wants to tell me about new clothes that are on offer. <laugh> I mean like, it’s just, I love those personal emails. So yeah, I did check my email over the summer.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (37:26):
Somebody emailed me recently and they emailed me at like two in the morning. And because I currently have a toddler, I received the email at four in the morning because you know, the best thing to help myself fall back asleep is to hop on my phone, right? Like I’m already up trying to get my toddler back to sleep. I might as well start scrolling. Anyway, so the person had this little thing at the bottom of their email and it said, I have, something to the effect of, I have really like wonky work hours. I may be sending this outside of the like more standard nine to five. But please don’t feel pressure in any way to respond outside of your time. Would you appreciate that, seeing that or does it make you feel like you should respond? ‘Cause I almost responded at four in the morning, and maybe that says something about …

Dan Meyer (38:15):
They’re telling you not to respond.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (38:16):
I know it was helpful.

Dan Meyer (38:18):
It says don’t, but you’re like, what if they’re saying that because they really expect me to respond and this is one of many ways that you and I are different. I’m always happy to see that.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (38:29):
Do you respond? I’ve texted you in the evening because you know I have some wonky hours. Do you respond to things, like where’s your boundary there? Or when you were in the classroom, where was your boundary there? Did parents have your phone number?

Dan Meyer (38:43):
No. I gave kids my cell phone number for a couple years and it was a wobbly experiment. But parents will email, you know, back and forth with you. And I think the best thing to like … I love just like adding some friction, some latency into the kind of the chain, you know, like I hate going like back and forth, like da, da, da, da, and then like respond and then da, da da respond. And it just like goes back and forth. So just like just sitting back for an hour or two hours, you know, not responding, just let someone cool down, calm down. Email just gets you more email. That’s like if you send an email, you are just making it more likely to get more email. It’s a, you know, it’s a problem.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (39:20):
Are you one of the zero people?

Dan Meyer (39:23):
My inbox is at zero. Most days before work.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (39:26):
You’re joking!

Dan Meyer (39:28):
I end work every day with inbox, at zero.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (39:31):
You’re joking!

Dan Meyer (39:32):
That’s just, you know.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (39:33):
Who are you?

Dan Meyer (39:34):
You know, you should take my life coaching, Bethany. I’ll give you a discount since we’re math teacher, lunch pals. But, um yeah. I can help.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (39:44):
Thank you for qualifying where our pal-dom lives. I wouldn’t even tell you how many are in my inbox. Point is, if you are actively starting the school year, we celebrate you and we are here and over the next few months, we’re gonna be diving into joyful math and that definition’s gonna keep evolving. But I wanna say something that is making me feel a little joyful, Dan. You ready?

Dan Meyer (40:15):
Tell me.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (40:16):
You and I, in person, at NCTM, the National Council for Teachers and Mathematics. It’s coming up and we are going to be recording Math Teacher Lounge, live. Live, in person! And I hear there’s gonna be like a t-shirt cannon and there’s gonna be, you know, like musicians marching through the aisles or something.

Dan Meyer (40:46):
A marching band?

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (40:46):
A marching band!

Dan Meyer (40:46):
Trained animals. Yeah.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (40:48):
But the point is, I’m so excited, Dan. And you know, when I see you, I might just, it’s been so long since I’ve seen you, Dan. I’d love to give you a big old embrace.

Dan Meyer (41:04):
You might just, you might just cry. Yeah. Yeah. It’ll be great. Yeah. It’s gonna be awesome for you folks to see me and Bethany have a real awkward first hug since the pandemic. And, uh, but it’s gonna be a blast to hang with us in person. We’ll have some special guests, probably, some interesting segments. You folks should stop on by at NCTM, if you’re gonna be there. Highly recommended.

Bethany Lockhart Johnson (41:29):
Now, we will be broadcasting that episode. You’re gonna get to hear … we’re gonna record it live. It’s gonna happen. In the meantime, you can find us at MTLshow on Twitter, or you can find us in our Facebook group, Math Teacher Lounge. We can’t wait to hear from you. And we’d love to hear what makes math joyful for you? Where can we add a little bit more joy to you this, this season? So thrilled to be back. Thanks for listening.

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What Kanchan Kant says about math

“Creating an equitable environment in the classroom is most important because once you have that, that’s when you have the relationships, and that’s when all students actually thrive.”

– Kanchan Kant

Meet the guest

As a math and computer science teacher at Newton North High School, Newton, MA, Kanchan has been sharing her love for math with her students for the past four years. Kanchan is instrumental in setting the culture and ethos of the mathematics department at her school in her role as the Assistant Department Head. Kanchan also leads the Math Department Grading Team and has been instrumental in making grading policies which are more equitable and bias resistant. In her new role as a Transformative Leaders of Massachusetts Fellow in collaboration with Springpoint and Barr Foundation, Kanchan looks forward to making equity and joy of learning the foundation of many more classrooms.

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About Math Teacher Lounge: The podcast

Math Teacher Lounge is a biweekly podcast created specifically for K–12 math educators. In each episode co-hosts Bethany Lockhart Johnson (@lockhartedu) and Dan Meyer (@ddmeyer) chat with guests, taking a deep dive into the math and educational topics you care about.

Join the Math Teacher Lounge Facebook group to continue the conversation, view exclusive content, interact with fellow educators, participate in giveaways, and more!

You might also like:

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Math games and manipulatives for online and remote learning.

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Administrators, welcome to Amplify Reading!

Here you’ll find information about enrollment and licensing, technical requirements, professional learning resources, and more.

Onboarding: What to expect

Welcome to Amplify Reading! There are six basic steps to onboarding. Use this visual as a reference, but also know that our dedicated implementation team will be there to support you during the entire process.

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Technology requirements and guidelines

To ensure that your hardware and network meet the minimum technical requirements for performance and support of your curriculum products, please see Amplify’s customer requirements page.

You’ll also want to add the URLs on this page to the corresponding district- or school-level filters so that your teachers and students can access their Amplify Reading materials.

Data sharing agreement

Partnering with Amplify through our data sharing program deepens learning outcomes and gives you the performance analysis you need to make impactful decisions within your district or school. By signing our data sharing agreement, your district will help us to better understand student performance as it relates to your state’s standards. It also allows us to compare results with the curriculum-embedded assessments and state-level assessments. These analyses will help you identify the areas where your teachers and students are excelling or may be experiencing challenges.

Stay tuned for additional updates.

Enrollment and licensing overview

During the enrollment and licensing call, your Amplify implementation partner will walk you through the enrollment process. We recommend exploring the enrollment web tool ahead of the call for suggestions on which enrollment method may be best for your district.

The following guides provide additional information about enrollment methods and the data sharing process.

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Administrator Reports

Self-service Administrator Reports allow insight into activation, usage, growth, progress, and instruction overviews illustrating how students are performing within the adaptive program.

Access will be limited to district and school administrators. Administrators can directly access these reports at my.amplify.com/admin-reports.

Get more information.

Announcements

Summer extension
With summer fast approaching, we recognize that some districts may be extending the school year and/or continuing the use of Amplify curriculum and programs for summer instruction. If your summer instruction will continue past June 30 and/or you need to make rostering or enrollment changes, follow our guidance on extending your rollover date.

Use stimulus funding to drive transformation
Learn about ESSER I, II, and III funding (or CARES, CRRSA, and ARP) and how to use these funds to help with learning recovery and acceleration. Districts have significant flexibility in how to use the ESSER money, with ESSER II and III specifying that some of the funds should be used to address unfinished learning. All Amplify programs and services meet the criteria for the funding. Get more information about funding and timelines.

Next steps: How do I support my teachers?

Professional development
We partner with every district to make sure the Amplify Reading rollout meets their unique needs. Check out our professional development site to get a better understanding of what our team has to offer.

Advice and answers
We have an array of online resources available to address educators’ questions. As they get started with the curriculum, we encourage educators to visit the Amplify Reading help site to read through tutorials and search for topics they want to learn more about.

Contact us

Powerful (and free!) pedagogical support
Amplify provides a unique kind of support you won’t find from other publishers. We have developed an educational support team of former teachers and administrators who provide pedagogical support at no cost to educators using our programs. This free service includes:

  • Guidance for developing lesson plans and intervention plans.
  • Information on where to locate standards and other planning materials.
  • Recommendations and tips for day-to-day teaching with Amplify Reading.
  • Support with administering and interpreting assessment data and more.

To reach our pedagogical team, click the orange icon while logged into the curriculum to get immediate help, call (866) 629-2446, or email edsupport@amplify.com.

Timely technical and program support
Our Customer Care and Support team is available Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. ET, and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. ET, through a variety of channels:

  • Live chat: Click the orange icon while logged into the curriculum to get immediate help in the middle of the school day.
  • Phone: Call our toll-free number: (800) 823-1969.
  • Email: Send an email to help@amplify.com.

Join our community
Our Amplify Reading Facebook group is a community of Amplify Reading educators from across the country. It’s a space to share best practices, ideas, and support on everything from implementation to instruction. Join today.

Welcome, Tennessee educators!

Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) is the Tennessee program built on the Science of Reading research. Using a fundamentally different approach to language arts, CKLA sequences deep content knowledge with research-based foundational skills.

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High quality instructional materials

Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) has been approved by the state of Tennessee.

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All-green on EdReports

EdReports, an independent curriculum review nonprofit, rates curriculum on three gateways: Text Quality, Building Knowledge, and Usability. Amplify CKLA earned a green rating in all three.

Read the review on EdReports.

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Science of Reading

Tennessee has an initiative to get 75 percent of the state’s third graders proficient by 2025. This Science of Reading toolkit will provide some insight into the research behind the Science of Reading and tools to help you support your students as they become proficient readers.

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Science of Reading

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Science of Reading

Case study

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Read Impact Brochure

Program overview

Amplify CKLA inspires curiosity and drives results, empowering all students with rich background knowledge. See what schools are saying about our knowledge-based curriculum.

Background Knowledge drives results for Tennessee students

Our approach to building background knowledge is based on three pillars often overlooked in other curricula. It is:

  • Content-specific.
    Clearly-outlined content objectives are specific and support the development of knowledge in history, science, literature, culture, and the arts.
  • Cumulative.
    Topics and vocabulary connect within and across grades, allowing students to extend knowledge and revisit topics in increasing depth in later grades.
  • Coherent.
    When curriculum is fragmentary and disconnected, students face repetitions as well as gaps that can hinder learning. An intentional
    design ensures the curriculum fits together as a whole.

Foundational skills instruction that makes a difference

Amplify CKLA’s second design principle is a research-based approach to foundational skills that gets real results.

  • Explicit.
    Learning isn’t left to chance. All 44 sounds and their 150 spellings in the English language are taught, practiced, and mastered, with ample opportunity to encounter each sound-spelling in diverse settings.
  • Sequential.
    By moving in a sequence from easier to more complex in phonics and foundational reading skills, students master concepts before moving forward and gradually become more independent
  • Rewarding.
    Learning to read should be fun. Decodabe chapter-books that feature dynamic plots and characters make kids want to read more. Engaging stories include children who discover fossils and a grandmother who flies hang gliders.
Illustration of two strands: one for language comprehension with components like knowledge and vocabulary, and another for word recognition with elements like sounds and letters, intertwining.

Materials

The program provides engaging print and multimedia materials designed to provide a robust literacy-rich foundation in every classroom.

Teacher Materials

Research-based lessons integrate foundational literacy skills and cross-curricular content knowledge.

  • Teacher Guides
  • Projectable lesson components
  • Quests for the Core for Grades 3–5 (immersive, problem-based learning)
Grade 6 Unit 4 Eureka! Teacher Guide
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Student materials

Engaging student resources include dynamic decodable chapter books and content-rich, cross-curricular Readers.

  • Student Readers
  • Activity Books
  • Formative Assessments
  • Poet’s Journal and Writer’s Journal (write-in Readers for Grades 4–5)

Multimedia resources

Access the program’s online resources anywhere, anytime, from any device.

  • Teacher and student materials
  • Knowledge Builder animated videos
  • Sound Library songs and videos
  • Differentiation and enrichment guides
  • Real-time program support via email, live chat, and phone
  • Professional learning videos, webinars, and self-driven modules
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Hands-on phonics materials

Multisensory phonics and foundational skills resources give students the opportunity to practice key skills using diverse, fun approaches that build independence.

  • Big Books
  • Large and Small Letter Cards
  • Spelling Cards
  • Vowel and Consonant Code Flip Books
  • Chaining Folders
“This has been the single most powerful curriculum implementation I have seen in my 16 years of education. ”

Deanna Zarichansky

Assistant Principal, Trousdale County Elementary School, Hartsville, TN

Amplify CKLA In Action

Take a peek inside a classroom, spotlight experiences on knowledge and foundational skills and hear fellow educators and students discuss the power of Amplify CKLA

See Amplify in Action

Resources

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CKLA Tennessee Curriculum Maps

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CKLA Tennessee Correlations

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ELA Correlations

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Impact Brochure

Contacts

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Chasity O’Quinn
Account Executive for East Tennessee
coquinn@amplify.com
(865) 599-5101

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Ann Patterson
Account Executive for West Tennessee
apatterson@amplify.com
(704) 813-7757

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Welcome, Florida K–5 educators!

Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) Florida is the program built on the latest Science of Reading research. Using a fundamentally different approach to language arts, Amplify CKLA Florida sequences deep content knowledge with research-based foundational skills.

Amplify CKLA Florida Program Guide

Built on the science of reading

The cornerstones of reading comprehension in Florida assert that foundational instruction matters; knowledge matters; and curriculum matters. Amplify CKLA Florida is built on the Science of Reading. To support you before your review, we put together a Science of Reading Toolkit that will provide some insight into the research behind the Science of Reading. It will also show why we designed Amplify CKLA for Florida educators to mirror this critical research.

Listen to the podcast
Promotional graphic for "science of reading: the podcast" featuring text alongside colorful, diagonal lines with education-related words.
Illustration depicting two overlapping learning curves labeled "knowledge" and "skills," with stages like "vocabulary," "connections," and "words" leading to integration in an online language arts curriculum.

Foundational instruction matters

Amplify CKLA Florida’s first design principle is a research-based, explicit, and systematic approach to foundational skills that gets real results.

  • Explicit.
  • Learning isn’t left to chance. All 44 sounds and their 150 spellings in the English language are taught, practiced, and mastered, with ample opportunity for students to encounter each sound-spelling in diverse settings.
  • Sequential.
  • By moving in a sequence from easier to more complex in phonics and foundational reading skills, students master concepts before moving forward and gradually become more independent.
  • Rewarding
  • Learning to read should be fun. Decodable chapter books that feature dynamic plots and characters make kids want to read more. The engaging stories feature children who discover fossils, a grandmother who flies hang gliders, and more.

Knowledge matters

Amplify CKLA Florida’s second design principle is that reading comprehension depends more on relevant background knowledge than on mastery of reading strategies. Knowledge builds on knowledge.

Our approach to building background knowledge is based on three pillars often overlooked in other programs. It is:

  • Content-specific.
    Clearly outlined content objectives are specific and support the development of knowledge in history, science, literature, culture, and the arts.
  • Cumulative.
    Topics and vocabulary connect within and across grades, allowing students to extend knowledge and revisit topics in increasing depth in later grades.
  • Coherent.
    When curriculum is fragmentary and disconnected, students face repetitions as well as gaps that can hinder learning. An intentional design ensures the curriculum fits together as a whole.
  • Amplify and ReadWorks have partnered to provide Amplify CKLA Florida classrooms a way to expand knowledge in connected yet varied ways.
    • ReadWorks
      • Login Credentials for ReadWorks
        Username:  t.floridackla@tryamplify.net
        Password: FLReviewer
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Curriculum matters

Amplify CKLA was built on the science of reading research to meet the all standards in a vertically and horizontally aligned, coherent, and cumulative knowledge-based curriculum. To encourage a broader view of literacy, our intentional design embraces history, art, science, music and other disciplines to ensure that all West Virginia students have a level playing field. 

What’s included

Amplify CKLA provides engaging print and multimedia materials—accessible from anywhere—that are designed to provide a robust, literacy-rich foundation in every classroom.

Proven high-quality teacher materials

Teacher supports include research-based lessons that integrate foundational literacy skills and cross-curricular content knowledge.

A collection of colorful educational books, including a shakespeare activity book and various teacher's guides, displayed with subjects like language arts and skills.
A laptop displaying a cartoon of a character running along a path, next to images of a historical architectural drawing and a person practicing calligraphy.

Student materials

Engaging student resources include dynamic decodable chapter books and content-rich, cross-curricular Readers.

Digital resources

Access the program’s online resources anywhere, anytime, from any device.

  • Digital Hub
  • Knowledge Builder animated videos (example from Grade 2)
  • Sound Library songs and videos (examples from Kindergarten)
  • eReader
  • Vocabulary App
  • Recorded Read-Alouds
  • Professional development website
  • Real-time program support via email, live chat, and phone
Screen capture of the amplify ckla portal home page displaying vibrant icons for theater, sounds, and library, with a welcoming message "hello student!" for a 2nd grader.
Close-up of a woman's lower face speaking, with a speech bubble saying "let's say it together!" and abstract shapes in the background.

Hands-on phonics materials

Multisensory phonics and foundational skills resources give students the opportunity to practice key skills using diverse, fun approaches that build independence.

  • Large and Small Letter Cards
  • Spelling Cards
  • Chaining Folders
  • Digital Big Books

Florida Resources

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Professional learning

Amplify employs a national cohort of more than 50 ELA facilitators, all of whom have experience as former classroom teachers and many of whom are former school and/or district leaders. Our professional learning team has decades of experience working with large districts across the nation. Amplify has experience supporting district launches over multiple years and has partnered with districts of all sizes nationwide. We partner deeply with districts and tailor professional learning to their unique needs.

Amplify CKLA Florida Implementation Guide

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WV CKLA

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Inspiring East Baton Rouge’s next generation of scientists, engineers, and curious citizens

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NJ CKLA

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S1-08: The importance of risk-taking in the science classroom, a conversation with Valeria Rodriguez

AS_Podcast-S1E08-Valeria-Rodriguez_Cover

In this episode, our host Eric Cross sits down with Miami-based educator Valeria Rodriguez. Valeria shares her journey of serving in the Peace Corps, working a corporate job, and eventually finding her passion as a middle-school science teacher. Listen in as Valeria explains how sketchnoting, a form of note-taking that utilizes illustrations, encourages student choice and creativity in her classroom. Eric and Valeria also discuss the importance of risk-taking within the science classroom, and how their own mistakes can be crucial in modeling resilience for students. Lastly, Valeria shares experiences she had with several teachers who inspired her throughout her career. Explore more from Science Connections by visiting our main page.

Download Transcript

Valeria Rodriguez (00:00):

There’s so many things that drawing to me makes an essential connection to. It tells me no matter what, I can continue placing lines on my paper and creating the image I want. Some people will say they messed up the drawing. You know what? They gave it character.

Eric Cross (00:19):

Welcome to Science Connections. I’m your host, Eric Cross. My guest today is Valeria Rodriguez. Valeria is a science educator, instructional technologist, and illustrator, who is currently part of a steam team where she teaches third through fifth graders in Miami, Florida. Valeria has presented and led workshops at education conferences like NSTA, ISTI, and SXSWEdu. In this episode, we discuss how she uses real-world projects to make lessons more meaningful, and why teaching students how to sketchnote increases their conceptual understanding in science. I hope you enjoy this pun-filled conversation with Valeria Rodriguez.

New Speaker (00:58):

Now you’re in Miami and you have a biology background. We’re like kindred spirits. Like we do the same thing. I teach biology here in San Diego at a middle school called Albert Einstein Academy. So I’m in a seventh grade classroom teaching life science.

Valeria Rodriguez (01:11):

That’s so cool. That’s how I started.

Eric Cross (01:13):

Is it?

Valeria Rodriguez (01:13):

Mm-Hmm <affirmative> I started teaching middle school science for seven years, doing life science in my biology background.

Eric Cross (01:20):

How’d you get started? Like where did you kind of begin?

Valeria Rodriguez (01:22):

Well, I went to UF for undergrad as a runner, and I thought I was gonna go to the Olympics, but you know, running in college is hard. And you quickly like realize a path as a full-time athlete is really hard. And one of the days that I was having one of those, like “come Jesus moments” of what am I gonna do with my life, I walked by a sign that said life is calling. And I’m like, okay, <laugh>

Eric Cross (01:52):

You literally had a sign.

Valeria Rodriguez (01:53):

There was a sign. So I was like, I’m reading the sign. I’m following the arrows. And it was for the Peace Corps. And so I went to this meeting and everything that I’ve ever done student government, athletics school education, my backgroundmy family’s from Columbia–everything in that meeting came together and they’re like, we need all these skills. And I’m like, I have those. Those are my skills. And they’re like every Peace Corps volunteer teaches. And so I went in as an agriculture volunteer to Panama because of my major and my background in biology. And while I was in the Peace Corps doing the work, I was teaching at the local school. And I realized that the most sustainable way to create any change is through education. When I came back, I was like, well, what do you do if your first job in the world is in the Peace Corps? Like my background was, you know, managing a machete in a field and teaching second through eighth grade in one classroom, on a chalkboard, you know, in English and in Spanish, while teaching the teacher and the students. So I found that going into teaching allowed me to put some of those skills, that wide array of skills that I had collected until that moment, into practice. And it allowed me to do the arts, do the running, do the science, do the connecting with the community in one place here in the states.

Eric Cross (03:34):

I don’t know if I’m just romanticizing, but you were in Panama and you were doing this amazing teaching. I don’t know. Do you compare it to teaching now in the classroom? Is there anything that ever like makes you wish that you were kind of in that environment again? Or are you kind of, do you like the more kind of technology side of things?

Valeria Rodriguez (03:48):

I tell my students all the time that I miss it, because when I was in Panama, I was in Licencia. They looked at me like this, all knowing being. If they couldn’t come to class because the kids literally had to work, they would bring me their assignment, like run it to me and then run back to their parents. Like, “I had to turn it in, but I have to go to work.” And I’m like, oh my gosh. And like here, sometimes I feel like, you know, I have to negotiate and convince my students to want to give me their work. And maybe it’s because we take a lot of things for granted. I mean, I didn’t have running water in my community. Here, you know, we have everything. I miss how we appreciated — like, my parents would send suitcases of materials for me to hand out to my students, like color and stuff, notebooks, things like that — and the kids would like, hold that notebook, like pristine and here sometimes my students aren’t as careful with materials. And I’m like, why are you breaking the crayon box? <Laugh>

Eric Cross (04:54):

I’m thinking about that. Just even just bringing pens and crayons and how that’s valued. And then a culture that’s built around esteeming teachers, and you’re this essential member of the community — and you feel that. It’s palpable.

Valeria Rodriguez (05:08):

Yeah. And here, sometimes I ask students like, what do you wanna be when you grow up? And you get all sorts of answers, but in my community, it’s gonna sound funny, but they were like, we wanna be a teacher. Like, that means that we would know a lot of stuff and they would put their hair up in a bun, ‘cause I always have it in a bun, and they would write stuff when they were playing and they would act me out <laugh> and I’m like, do I, do I do that? <Laugh> I genuinely got a very rich experience in the time that I was there. And what I learned the most was how to try to not do as much, it’s like a lesson that I’m still trying to learn because like I’m here with the U.S. Mentality of go, go, go.

Valeria Rodriguez (05:58):

And they’re like, but we already did, you know, two things like now we stop. And I’m like, but, but why? And they’re like, you can do that tomorrow. And I’m like, but no, like we’re gonna run out of time. For me. It was a lot of struggle of like slow down. And as a teacher, I feel like I’m always like on the treadmill at a thousand speed. And sometimes I have to tell myself like slow down, be in this moment, like a parent texted me today that her daughter was walking with her dad and said, daddy, let’s talk about the layers of the soil. And I was like, I need to stop right now and acknowledge that this happened. She’s in third grade and she’s asking her dad, you know, she could ask him about anything, and she’s asking him about soil. That’s essential for everything. And we don’t even think about soil here. Like my community had tons of erosion and every year there were less and less crops being able to be produced. We’re not talking about that here. And yet, my student asked her dad here in Miami, <laugh> about soil. And that conversation happened because of our class.

Eric Cross (07:03):

And you allowed yourself to be present and experience and feel that that communication came to you.

Valeria Rodriguez (07:09):

Yeah. We put so much stuff out there and we don’t know where it lands. If it lands on dirt or soil, <laugh>

Eric Cross (07:16):

There you go. I like it. Yeah. Bringing it back. But you’re, I think you’re what you’re saying. Resonates with a lot of educators that’ll be listening to this is that there’s so much that you do. And there’s even times when we do get the feedback, there might be a letter or a card or something, but like, to your point, like we look to the next thing instead of stopping, being present and allowing yourself to absorb it. I think I need to put that up on my, like on my wall, like this, just be present. Now you came back and then you went into the classroom here and you started off teaching science.

Valeria Rodriguez (07:46):

I didn’t go straight into the classroom. I knew that I wanted to continue teaching. But I wasn’t back here in Miami. When I moved back, I moved to Austin. And I ended up getting married and there, I started teaching Spanish as a second language like corporate classes. And I was kind of like tiptoeing around, like, do you dive into education? ‘Cause The idea of a teacher here is very different than the teacher idea that I had while in the peace Corps. So he, a lot of people were like, you can do so many things. Why would you teach? And I was like insulted <laugh>. I was like, wait, what do you mean? Like even to this day, I’ve started a blog post, maybe 20 times with that statement because people all the time are like, you’re so talented. Why do you teach? And it drives me crazy because it makes me feel like they’re looking down on my choice <laugh> but I came to terms with it that it’s just like a societal thing. Cause of that quote, like those who can’t do teach. And I was like, let me let this go.

Eric Cross (09:01):

I find though that educators who come in as a second career, come in with a, a, a variety of skill sets that I, I think you can only get when you’re outside of academia. I mean, you can, you can develop them, you know, going kind of K12 education college and then into the classroom. But those soft skills, the business skills, a lot of those things you really develop. And it’s funny ‘cause your, your story almost sounds like some of the people that I know that work in big tech firms, they have this eclectic story and then now they’re, you know, working for Google or Facebook or something, but that actually was a as set to them because they are able to see the world through multiple perspectives. And I’m hearing kind of a distinguish between art of teaching and the science of teaching. Like you had the, maybe the art connecting ideas, these things, and then the science, like the quote unquote like formal teaching. Okay. That had to get built on later. Like am I hearing that right?

Valeria Rodriguez (09:55):

Yeah. The that’s what rocks I’m teaching the rock cycle right now. So I’m, I’m under a lot of heat and pressure <laugh>

Eric Cross (10:02):

We got the funds, we got the funds rolling. All right. All right. So bringing in the, so the, the art side or the science side we have, and then we just have this amazing illustrator. Now you mentioned your website and we’re gonna post it somewhere, but just so we have it here to, and you say, what is your website where all your majors and sketch notes can be found,

Valeria Rodriguez (10:21):

Www dot Valia, sketches.com.

Eric Cross (10:23):

Okay. So folks that are listening, if you wanna check out the art, there’s some awesome stuff on there, as well as Twitter and Instagram. And we’ll make sure we have it handles in the, the bio of the podcast and the notes. Your art’s amazing. I looked, I checked it. I saw inauguration. I saw astronauts. I saw all kinds of different things. How do you use that in the classroom

Valeria Rodriguez (10:45):

To draw connections? The ones? So what I do is I airplay my iPad onto the board. And sometimes as I’m talking, I’ll draw things, draw things I’m saying, or assignments I’ll sketch out different ideas, or maybe like the schedule I’ll have an icon of some sort that represents things. I use it for everything and anything, because just the way that I tell my students that science is everywhere. I, we don’t realize how programmed we are to use images to for, for information they’re in the street. Bathroom signs, we see the zoom little link, like the image, the icon of zoom. And we know that it’s a call the apps. You know, our phone doesn’t have the words for everything that we’re opening. We just have a list of images that represent information. So we’re programs for this. And all I’m doing is showing my students how we’re programmed for it because we’re so used to seeing images, to represent things that we’re taking it for granted again.

Valeria Rodriguez (12:03):

And sometimes my students will like, I’ll write something and I ask them, make your own visual vocabulary. So I give them the word of the definition for every unit, the younger ones, I give them the definition they have to plug in the word and an image, the older ones, I give them the word they have to plug in the definition and an image. But I don’t tell them what to draw because they need to create an image that will help them to remember the definition. Not me. I tell them, I wrote the list. I know the words, you’re the one that needs to think of something that’s going to help you to remember this. You need to draw a connection to this information. Like I use it and I mess up all the time. And I, I scratch things out because I feel that my students or the student that I’ve had in general are risk averse.

Valeria Rodriguez (12:57):

They don’t want to make mistakes. And drawing is one of those things that it taught me that it’s okay to make mistakes. Like people won’t buy commit to buying houses or they won’t commit to things because they’re gonna make a, I’m like, you can sell the house. You can move again. I mean, I’ve lived in a lot of cities. I’ve been married, divorce, gone out with people. It’s worked out it hasn’t you know, there’s, there’s so many things that drawing to me makes an essential connection to <affirmative> that it tells me no matter what I can continue placing lines on my paper and creating the image I want. And if a line doesn’t necessarily go in the direction, I want it to, I can continue shaping it so that the overall image is in the direction I want. And I can look past those line here and there that some people will say they messed up the drawing. You know what? They gave it character. I, I cycle and I have scars everywhere. They give me character and I keep writing. The overall image in my head is I’m a cyclist, not I’m banged up. <Laugh>

Eric Cross (14:14):

I feel like there’s so much to mind in what you just said. This was like a mini-Ted talk. And I couldn’t write fast enough because there were so many gems of the things that you said, but let me say something worse. And this is I’m gonna be surface with this because, and it’s your fault because you got me thinking in puns and you said, take it for granted. And I said, take it for granted because you’re talking about the rock cycle. So that’s what I heard way back. Anyways, you have your students creating what, but it’s low tech, which is really cool because a lot of times we think of creating content and it’s kind of high tech, but they’re creating something. And this is for us, like as biology folks, like you’re using kind of like this neuroscience that exists about students, creating an art to help them learn.

Eric Cross (14:55):

And this is something that I, I feel gets missed a lot in. When we talk about the quote unquote, the formal teacher training is the element of how creating an art can actually lead to improved learning in the classroom. It’s something you have to go to like a conference to kind of go and see or something, but it’s not as, it’s not as pervasive everywhere. And that thing about risk averse. I feel like I, you spoke to my own life. What I see ‘cause with my own seventh graders, I see the same fear or anxiety when I ask them to draw. As I do, when I ask them to give me a hypothesis about a phenomenon that I’m gonna teach and I say, it’s okay to be wrong, but I see them drift to the Chromebook and want to Google it. You know what you just said about just try it and you can always change and giving character, I feel like is just a great message for everybody to hear

Valeria Rodriguez (15:48):

Today. Students made fossil, right? ‘Cause They’re learning about rocks and we made using plaster, but then I put the green screen up and not only did they make it and they excavated them, but then we put it on the green screen. And they’re like all of a sudden at a dig site,

Eric Cross (16:04):

What I’m seeing right now for those of you who are listening is, is students who are on, is this on IMO?

Valeria Rodriguez (16:10):

This is on we video

Eric Cross (16:12):

Video and they’re holding up fossils that they made. But in the background, because there was a green screen, there’s an overlay of like a, a rock dig site. So the students legitimately look like they’re paleontologists or something somewhere.

Valeria Rodriguez (16:24):

Exactly. And so it’s, it’s not just creating lines, right? The sketching transfers to so much be because even the want, not wanting to make a mistake with their fossil. One of the kids today, when he took off the, the Plato, ‘cause we put the Plato at the base. Then we put in either a shell or some sort of artifact that they were going to fossilize. And then we put in the plaster when he took off the Plato, a piece broke off and everybody’s like, I can’t believe you broke your fossil. And I’m like, not the first. Okay. Do you know how many of these guys and girls have been out there? And all of a sudden they find a dinosaur bone and they’re walking and they fall. And this fossil that took billions of years is all of a sudden broken. I’m like this selfie, the original selfies, these animals died in commitment to their selfies.

Valeria Rodriguez (17:19):

And here you are dropping the bone. So they were all laughing, but it was to go away from the fact that, oh my God, you broke it. You made a mistake. You drew the wrong line. You asked the wrong question. Like no big deal. Keep digging, shout out to the teachers that try doing the projects that they have. They don’t feel completely comfortable with or you know, that they take risks doing. Because even though in theory, it’s like suggested and schools want that or communities want that when it comes down to it, people also expect us to do things at work. But part of our job is also taking risks. Like we did a tethered weather balloon launch the other day because we couldn’t get approval to release the weather balloon in the atmosphere since we’re near an airport. And it was too short of a time.

Valeria Rodriguez (18:14):

And I remember a parent said, oh, you’re not releasing the balloon. And I was like, well, this is a lot of work too. <Laugh> we, you know, we’re, we’re doing the tethered launch. This is a hard project. So the other day when I heard that comment, like I went back to my class and I was like, you know what? I took a risk to do this project. I could have played it safe with a handout of a weather balloon <laugh> or you know, a YouTube video. It’s it’s the, the fact that we’re continuing to push. And so I wanna like really thank the teachers that keep trying to do the hard things that aren’t like tried and tested because it’s scary. Yeah.

Eric Cross (18:57):

Yeah. There aren’t a lot of opportunities for them to have adults that they see in positions of authority or that they respect or admire model failure. And I don’t mean failure in the, like the negative pejorative sense, but like things just not working out and then seeing how you respond to it, ‘cause you’re modeling, taking a risk. But like with real stakes, it’s authentic. I had students swab the campus and we put it in auger dishes and Petri sealed it up and then let it grow room temperature, but we kept it you know, cool enough at 75 degrees. So it wouldn’t be able to survive any, anything pathogenic. And then students, you know, I took pictures of them and then showed them the results. So the students never interacted with it and some things grew and some things didn’t, it was mostly, you know, fungi and some bacteria, but I showed them like, how come mine didn’t grow? And I was like, well, you know, it could have been how we swabbed. It could have been some things don’t grow the temperature, we kept it at, but some of the experiments didn’t yield the cool results. And that was okay. But I front loaded the expectation so that if everything did go great, sweet, but managing expectation, I found really helps to mitigate the pressure.

Valeria Rodriguez (20:01):

Yeah. Well another project that we’ve participated in is growing beyond earth where we’re planting seeds that contribute to like a huge set of data for cultivars that are being considered for growth on the international space station. And my students are like, well, you know, we just have six little pots, like what is this? And I’m like, yeah, we have two little seeds in each of these pots. And we are one data set in like hundreds of data sets that they’re collecting. But we are contributing two research on the international space station. You don’t have to be the next bill gates or the next, you know, Steve jobs. Like everyone thinks they’re gonna be the next big thing. Like you can also be a seed. That’s part of a really big project and that is okay. Like everyone can’t be the next big thing

Eric Cross (20:48):

And the other. And the other thing, I think what Gladwell talks about this in outliers and there’s another book called bounce, but a lot of the people that we see is successful or famous, we don’t realize that their background and their exposure to things was one of the things that led them there, both jobs and gates had access, you know, gates had access at, at the university of Washington to like one of the first computers and then jobs at, at Hewlett Packard. The story go goes on and on, but we don’t see the lineage of some of these people and where they come from. We just see the end result. You just see LeBron James winning a championship or something. We just want the, the end result the, the glory, but not the sweat that it takes to get there. They don’t, we don’t really see that as much, which leads me to like the next thing I wanted to ask you is how do you, and I kind of saw it just now, but how do you engage your kids in the classroom?

Valeria Rodriguez (21:36):

Well, I think I’m funny. Some of them don’t do

Eric Cross (21:38):

They like the puns

Valeria Rodriguez (21:39):

<Laugh> some of them do. And some of them don’t get them. They get them later. And I see when they get it, I like to engage them by bringing in real people, real examples of things, real research when possible. Right. I can’t put them in a real dig site. So the green screen helps me do that. But one of my students yesterday, other day before was like, you have such cool friends because I’ll say, oh, one of my friends does blah, blah, blah. Or, or, oh, when we go to Kennedy space center, we’re gonna, you know, talk to one of my friends. Who’s doing research on, you know, chilies in space and they’re like, wow, your friends are so cool. And I took that moment to tell them, be mindful of the people that you collect as friends in your life, like make good choices, surround yourself with awesome people, people so that you can share ideas. Like you connect with friends who you inspire you to do more. I try to engage them by giving them examples of things that people around me are doing that connect to what we’re doing. Do

Eric Cross (22:43):

You, do you explicitly or intentionally teach soft skills or is it just something that you just kind of organically do natural or are you mindful about making sure that you’re doing that

Valeria Rodriguez (22:52):

A hundred percent? You have to be explicit about it with amplify? Actually, we, we did a poster for incorporating social, emotional skills and other soft skills into the classroom because sometimes we just like other things like writing and, and reading, you know, we silo all these things in education and the school counselor, can’t be the one to deal with everything. You know, you have to deal with things as they surface. And sometimes my kids ha are frustrated because I ask them to think I don’t have yes or no answers. I have, you know, we are gonna launch a high altitude weather balloon. We don’t know how high it’s gonna go. We don’t know what’s gonna happen. We don’t, we don’t know if we’re gonna find it when the <laugh>, when the balloon bursts and it lands in the ocean, are we gonna find it? Is the GPS tracker gonna work?

Valeria Rodriguez (23:47):

Are we gonna lose all that money? I don’t know, but we have to do all the steps and find out. But with kids, they don’t have the skills yet. And I can’t wait for the counselor to come in and talk about handle the frustration that they’re feeling over. Not knowing the correct question to ask, because by the time they go meet with her, the moments pass, I have to stop and say, Hey, like check in with, with what you’re doing. It’s okay to be frustrated. You can’t take it out on a classmate. You can’t take it out on me.

Eric Cross (24:14):

So you were, you, you were intentional about teaching these skills to your students and you had the relationship. So it makes sense that you were the one to bring it across ‘cause you see them more than anybody does. You know, we’ve, we’ve, we’ve imagined. Teaching is for a long time. It’s been okay, you’re the science content expert. You’re the English expert, but so much as teaching evolves, there are these skills or like EQ emotional intelligence that you kind of have to have kind of coming in. Because like those moments, like no having the presence of mind to stop and why a young person through identifying how they feel, why, where it came from. Those aren’t always covered in those aren’t really covered in your methods classes when you’re in college, getting your, your degree or something. Now when you’re you’re sketch noting and for teachers who are, or one, could you just maybe give like a brief explanation of sketch, noting for somebody who may not be familiar with it, like how I was sketch any different than just drawing a picture randomly or something.

Valeria Rodriguez (25:10):

Okay. So you’re creating visual summaries. You’re using text and images combined in different ways to take notes. And before you know how we had like these shorthand things that the squiggly meant an indent and something else meant something else. And we had these lists of things when they would edit our papers, that represented things. It’s kind of like that for your brain. So you’re making a list of maybe icons or small sketches that represent things for you. So as you’re taking notes, you hear things. And when people talk now and they, they say, you know, I’m on the fence about this. Like I literally see a fence. And when they’re talking, I write the note, it’s almost like a T toe with pointy tops and I put a stick figure on top of it. And so later when I look at it, I think, oh, that’s right. My friend is on the fence about that decision

Eric Cross (26:08):

For a new teacher or even a, a, a experienced teacher. That’s interested in sketch noting, where, where would you recommend? They start like the structurize? Like, do you give creative freedom? Are they doing this paper and pencil vocabulary words? Are they up? Like, what are some just kind of maybe three basic things to kind of get started for someone who was just curious about it.

Valeria Rodriguez (26:29):

So it has to be simple because if it requires a lot of energy to go in, then you’re gonna be more hesitant to do it. For example, I wouldn’t start summarizing a video because it’s moving really fast or a live presentation is really hard. So with students, I would start with here’s a paragraph, make a visual summary of it, or here’s a vocabulary list, make an image to represent each word. Then you would move into, well, you know, here’s a unit summarize the three main topics in unit. Then you can move onto like a little YouTube video. That’s like 10 minutes a Ted talk, make a visual summary of the Ted talk because they can pause it.

Eric Cross (27:11):

Mm. Okay.

Valeria Rodriguez (27:13):

The hardest thing is live presentations, ‘cause in conversations you can say, oh, can you say that again? Sketch, noting. You start seeing how people organize or don’t their thoughts when they speak. Because when you start writing things down and all the information is about one thing and then like two blue ORPS about something else. You’re like, wow, that was really unbalanced. So then when you start teaching, you tell them what you’re gonna tell them, you tell them and then you tell them what you told them. So they can check that they put the notes in the right places and you tell them what you’re gonna tell. So they can prep the pathway that they’re gonna set up their notes and I have to be explicit. And I have to say like, I’m gonna talk about the rock cycle. So if I were you, I would put, you know, these four boxes. Oh, but there’s three types of rocks. See? I’m like, yeah, but magma. So let’s put it in the cycle, you know? And, and then I’m like, if I were you, I would put an arrow from here to here because this is how, you know, after erosion and then, you know, heat and pressure. But then it connects like this. So the arrows are gonna help me to remember the directions

Eric Cross (28:13):

As we wind down. There’s there’s one question I wanna ask you there, you are bringing together this science, the, the art, the social, emotional learning, the relationships with your students outside content, like there’s so many different things that you bring in the classroom that is clearly gonna make you a memorable educator for your kids. It just, it’s just, I’m just listening to your learning environment. And it’s so rich who is one teacher that really expired you. So

Valeria Rodriguez (28:38):

There’s a few people that stand out overall. I had very encouraging teachers. I had that one teacher that didn’t like my drawing <laugh> she also stands out <laugh>

Eric Cross (28:49):

We have those too.

Valeria Rodriguez (28:49):

Yeah. So I have colleagues that stand out to me that inspire me every day to like keep trying. And then I had a teacher in high school who I actually work with her daughter now at the school that I work at. And I didn’t even know her mom would make us write almost the whole class. And it was world history. And I remember hearing her say when she was talking about the Roman empire that it fell because it reached more than it can grab. So it kept extending too far out. And I heard that, like I think about, yes, I can keep reaching for things in education and reaching for things in my classroom. But I have to come back to like, what can I hold? I don’t wanna reach further than what I can hold. And yes, I have to believe in myself. And I tell my students to believe in themselves,

Eric Cross (29:38):

I’m in this, I’m in this sketch noting mindset. Because when you said what Ms. Brown shared with you, I thought of a hand reaching out, but then things kind of slipping through it. And I another hand with like a fist right next to it. So even in our conversation here last hour, I I’m thinking in pictures now. And so I’m like, if I can do it, they can do it. Like if you know, ‘cause I am just not the person who spends a lot of time committing to draw. Because a lot of times when I was that student who tried to draw and we get frustrated and look around and now I feel like this is, I wanna try this again. I wanna share this with my students and encourage them. This is gonna be a lot of fun. I look forward to continuing to see the sketch notes that you do. And maybe I’ll, I’ll show you one of mine. Like eventually I don’t know if you can see that there that’s my stick figures. Those of you who are listening right now, I drew, I was drawing stick figures and taking notes while Blair was dropping all of this, these like gems and wisdom in here. So

Valeria Rodriguez (30:31):

Maybe we can do a challenge that once people hear this podcast, they can tag us somehow in the sketch note that they create I’m in. So we see what they a take from it. Because that’s the other thing about sketch noting, you think you’re emphasizing something and all of a sudden people are walking away with something else that resonated to them. And you’re like, wow. And here I was thinking that this was what we were talking about. And this is what really jumped out at them.

Eric Cross (30:57):

Your kids are lucky that you’re in front of them, not just because of how you teach, but how you access all of these different parts of their creativity and their thinking and apply, integrate all of these soft skills and social, emotional skills and just life skills and your experience connecting them to the outside world. They, and like you said, and how we started, you know, where you started in Panama, the students realized what you represent and what you meant to them. And I feel like your students, when they get older, they may not realize it in the time, but as they get older and reflect back, they’ll be telling stories about you. So yeah. Thanks for making time and thanks for being here.

Valeria Rodriguez (31:34):

Well thank you too, ‘cause I know you’re in the classroom and making time to do other things outside the classroom. Isn’t always easy, but it’s what keeps us going in different ways.

Eric Cross (31:49):

Thanks so much for joining me in Valer today. We wanna hear more about you. If you have any great lessons or ways to keep student engagement high, please email us@stemamplifycom.wpengine.com. That’s TM five.com. Make sure to click, subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts and join our brand new Facebook group science connections, the community for some extra content.

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What Valeria Rodriguez says about science

“I use [sketchnoting] and I mess up all the time…because I feel that my students don’t want to make mistakes, and drawing is one of those things that taught me that it’s okay to make mistakes.”

– Valeria Rodriguez

Educator, Instructional technologist, and Graphic facilitator

Meet the guest

Valeria is an educator, instructional technologist, graphic facilitator, and dreamer. She currently works as a Science teacher as part of a STEAM Team in Miami, Florida teaching third through fifth graders as a free-lance graphic facilitator. She loves to connect with passionate educators she meets around the country. Valeria has presented and led workshops at educational conferences like SXSWEdu, ISTE, NSTA, NSTA STEM Forum, SHIFTinEDU, FAST, FCIS, and SEEC. When she is not teaching or sketching, Valeria can be found adventuring with her family around the world, training for triathlons, and creating opportunities to empower kids in all kinds of communities. 

You can check Valeria’s work on her website and follow her on Twitter & Instagram.

Valeria-Rodriguez_Headshot-LP

About Science Connections

Welcome to Science Connections! Science is changing before our eyes, now more than ever. So…how do we help kids figure that out? We will bring on educators, scientists, and more to discuss the importance of high-quality science instruction. In this episode, hear from our host Eric Cross about his work engaging students as a K-8 science teacher. Listen here!

You might also like:

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Find Valeria!

Learn more about Valeria’s work and illustrations.

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Free poster!

Download a free poster to help students piece together their inner scientist.

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Free download!

Help support metacogntive skills for your students!

Welcome, Tennessee educators!

Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) is the Tennessee program built on the Science of Reading research. Using a fundamentally different approach to language arts, CKLA sequences deep content knowledge with research-based foundational skills.

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High quality instructional materials

Amplify Core Knowledge Language Arts (CKLA) has been approved by the state of Tennessee.

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All-green on EdReports

EdReports, an independent curriculum review nonprofit, rates curriculum on three gateways: Text Quality, Building Knowledge, and Usability. Amplify CKLA earned a green rating in all three.

Read the review on EdReports.

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Science of Reading

Tennessee has an initiative to get 75 percent of the state’s third graders proficient by 2025. This Science of Reading toolkit will provide some insight into the research behind the Science of Reading and tools to help you support your students as they become proficient readers.

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Science of Reading

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Science of Reading

Case study

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Read Impact Brochure

Program overview

Amplify CKLA inspires curiosity and drives results, empowering all students with rich background knowledge. See what schools are saying about our knowledge-based curriculum.

Background Knowledge drives results for Tennessee students

Our approach to building background knowledge is based on three pillars often overlooked in other curricula. It is:

  • Content-specific.
    Clearly-outlined content objectives are specific and support the development of knowledge in history, science, literature, culture, and the arts.
  • Cumulative.
    Topics and vocabulary connect within and across grades, allowing students to extend knowledge and revisit topics in increasing depth in later grades.
  • Coherent.
    When curriculum is fragmentary and disconnected, students face repetitions as well as gaps that can hinder learning. An intentional
    design ensures the curriculum fits together as a whole.

Foundational skills instruction that makes a difference

Amplify CKLA’s second design principle is a research-based approach to foundational skills that gets real results.

  • Explicit.
    Learning isn’t left to chance. All 44 sounds and their 150 spellings in the English language are taught, practiced, and mastered, with ample opportunity to encounter each sound-spelling in diverse settings.
  • Sequential.
    By moving in a sequence from easier to more complex in phonics and foundational reading skills, students master concepts before moving forward and gradually become more independent
  • Rewarding.
    Learning to read should be fun. Decodabe chapter-books that feature dynamic plots and characters make kids want to read more. Engaging stories include children who discover fossils and a grandmother who flies hang gliders.
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Materials

The program provides engaging print and multimedia materials designed to provide a robust literacy-rich foundation in every classroom.

Teacher Materials

Research-based lessons integrate foundational literacy skills and cross-curricular content knowledge.

  • Teacher Guides
  • Projectable lesson components
  • Quests for the Core for Grades 3–5 (immersive, problem-based learning)
Grade 6 Unit 4 Eureka! Teacher Guide
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Student materials

Engaging student resources include dynamic decodable chapter books and content-rich, cross-curricular Readers.

  • Student Readers
  • Activity Books
  • Formative Assessments
  • Poet’s Journal and Writer’s Journal (write-in Readers for Grades 4–5)

Multimedia resources

Access the program’s online resources anywhere, anytime, from any device.

  • Teacher and student materials
  • Knowledge Builder animated videos
  • Sound Library songs and videos
  • Differentiation and enrichment guides
  • Real-time program support via email, live chat, and phone
  • Professional learning videos, webinars, and self-driven modules
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Hands-on phonics materials

Multisensory phonics and foundational skills resources give students the opportunity to practice key skills using diverse, fun approaches that build independence.

  • Big Books
  • Large and Small Letter Cards
  • Spelling Cards
  • Vowel and Consonant Code Flip Books
  • Chaining Folders
“This has been the single most powerful curriculum implementation I have seen in my 16 years of education. ”

Deanna Zarichansky

Assistant Principal, Trousdale County Elementary School, Hartsville, TN

Amplify CKLA In Action

Take a peek inside a classroom, spotlight experiences on knowledge and foundational skills and hear fellow educators and students discuss the power of Amplify CKLA

See Amplify in Action

Resources

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CKLA Tennessee Curriculum Maps

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CKLA Tennessee Correlations

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ELA Correlations

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Impact Brochure

Contacts

A smiling woman with shoulder-length blonde hair, wearing an orange blouse and gold earrings, against a light background.

Chasity O’Quinn
Account Executive for East Tennessee
coquinn@amplify.com
(865) 599-5101

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Ann Patterson
Account Executive for West Tennessee
apatterson@amplify.com
(704) 813-7757

Crack the code with literacy skills instruction that works.

The Amplify CKLA Skills program is grounded in Science of Reading research and helps establish strong reading foundations in your K–2 classrooms. Students practice reading and communicating every day. Their literacy skills grow alongside their confidence.

Request a sample

Perfect for any literacy block.

Use the powerful foundational literacy skills in Amplify CKLA Skills to supplement your core English Language Arts (ELA) program with focused lessons that fit any literacy block.

Interested in the full curriculum, including knowledge building? Explore the comprehensive Amplify CKLA program.

“Amplify CKLA Skills helped us have systematic phonics so that we could make sure we were doing the direct teaching that our students needed. We’re seeing that, over time, we don’t have to fill in those gaps because they’re not actually created in the first place.”

Heidi, Academic Director, Exceed Charter School

Our approach

Starting with sounds, students practice their phonemic awareness, handwriting skills, vocabulary, spelling, and grammar. They become aware of the connection between reading and writing, building confidence along the way.

Explicit, systematic instruction that works for students and teachers

Amplify CKLA Skills’ research-based scope and sequence progresses from simple to more complex skill development, starting with phonological and phonemic awareness. Instruction guides you in explicitly teaching the 150 spellings for the 44 sounds of English, with an intentional progression and review of skills to set your students up for success.

Daily 60-minute lessons cover all skills standards.

Instruction includes print and phonological awareness, sound-letter patterns, decoding and encoding, writing mechanics, and writing structure and processes. Ready-made presentation slides help you effectively deliver each lesson.

Decodable readers help students crack the code.

Amplify CKLA readers are 100 percent decodable, which means they include only words with letter-sound correspondences that have been explicitly taught. The readers are colorful fiction and nonfiction chapter books that kids love! In Grades K–1, visual supports such as underlined and bolded text scaffold students, while Big Book versions may be used for teacher modeling. Readers are also available as audio-enhanced e-books.

Learn more about the decodable readers here.

What’s included

Amplify CKLA Skills includes a wide range of resources to support teaching and learning.

High-quality teacher materials

Amplify CKLA Skills teachers effectively deliver instruction with print and digital resources, including:

  • Take-Home Pages to extend learning beyond the classroom.
  • Teacher Guides with embedded differentiation.
  • Formal and informal assessments.
  • Ready-made and customizable Teacher Presentation Screens for every lesson.
  • Teacher resources and on-demand professional development.

Immersive student resources

Amplify CKLA Skills students stay engaged with a variety of print and digital resources, including:

  • A digital Sound Library with recordings, animated videos, and fun karaoke-style songs.
  • Original decodables and read-aloud Big Books, also available as audio-enhanced e-books.
  • Student Activity Books with embedded assessments.

Hands-on phonics materials

Multisensory phonics and foundational skills resources help students practice key skills using fun, varied approaches that build independence.

  • Sound Library (K–2, digital)
  • Chaining Folder and Small Letter Cards (K)
  • Large Letter Cards (K–1)
  • Sound Posters and Cards (K)
  • Blending Picture Cards (K, digital only)
  • Code Posters and Spelling Cards (1–2)

Robust digital experience

Engage your students and save time with a comprehensive platform.

  • Assignable Practice Games
  • Real-time insights into your students’ progress
  • LMS integration
  • Professional development website
  • Support via email, live chat, and phone
  • eReaders
  • Sound Library

Grades 3–5 Skills supplement

Reinforce and build on K–2 instruction with the Grades 3–5 Skills supplement. This flexible resource comes included with the purchase of a core Amplify CKLA Complete Classroom Kit in Grades 3–5, and can be used to support core lessons or serve as an intervention, depending on your students’ needs. Instruction follows a familiar sequence and offers flexibility: It can be taught in two 15-minute sessions or one 30-minute session.

Explore more programs based on the Science of Reading.

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