5 Steps to Creating a Classroom of Problem Solvers

In this S5E11 Schoolutions Teaching Strategies conversation, elementary educator and math coach Mona Iehl shares her transformative 5-step Word Problem Workshop method that's revolutionizing how students engage with mathematics. From "I'm not a math person" to confident problem solver—this conversation will change how you think about teaching math.

🎯 What You'll Learn: 

• The 5 steps to creating a classroom of problem solvers (Launch, Grapple, Share, Discuss, Reflect) 
• How to plan an entire week of word problems in ONE prep period 
• Why student-centered methods foster student engagement and student motivation better than traditional approaches 
• The forecasting guide that transforms lesson planning and instructional strategies 
• How to choose problems that challenge WITHOUT overwhelming 
• Building positive math identities through classroom belonging and student participation

This isn't just about math—it's about effective teaching that builds the whole child through culturally responsive teaching and equity in education.

Resources Mentioned: 

📚 Word Problem Workshop by Mona Iehl 

📚 Five Practices for Orchestrating Mathematical Discussions by Peg Smith 

📚 Adding It Up - Five Strands of Mathematical Proficiency

Chapters:
0:00 Introduction & Preview
2:00 Welcome & Guest Introduction
3:00 Book Reveal: Word Problem Workshop
4:00 Research Foundation: Peg Smith & Five Practices
5:47 Math Identities & Personal Journey
7:00 Project-Based Learning vs. Traditional Math
8:00 Traditional Word Problems vs. Word Problem Workshop
10:00 Student-Centered Learning & Building Confidence
11:00 Five Strands of Mathematical Proficiency
12:00 Conceptual Understanding in Practice
13:00 Strategic Competence & Adaptive Reasoning
15:00 Community-Based Learning Approach
16:00 Step 1: Launch - Packing the Backpack
16:37 Step 2: Grapple - Independent Problem Solving
17:00 The Joy of Figuring It Out
18:00 Step 3: Share - Making Thinking Visible
18:30 Step 4: Discuss - Facilitating Discourse
19:00 Step 5: Reflect - John Dewey's Wisdom
20:00 The Power of Reflection (Nuthall's 20% Research)
21:00 Teacher Roles in Word Problem Workshop
22:00 Getting Curious About Student Thinking
24:00 Teacher as Scribe During Sharing
25:00 Planning Magic: A Week in One Prep
26:00 Choosing Learning Goals & Problems
27:00 The Challenge Problem Philosophy
29:00 The Forecasting Guide Tool
30:00 Planning for All Learners
31:00 Collaborative Planning Time
33:00 Overcoming Fear: First Steps for Teachers
35:00 Administrator Support & Clear Focus
37:00 Supporting Math at Home: Caregiver Tips
38:00 Modeling Mathematical Thinking
39:00 Lightning Round: Math Misconceptions
40:00 Vision for Positive Math Identity Classrooms
42:00 Equitable Access & Confident Communities
43:00 Final Thoughts: Teachers as the Most Important
44:00 Closing & Call to Action

Connect with Mona: 

🎙️ Math Chat Podcast 

📧 Connect: schoolutionspodcast@gmail.com
🎵 Music: Benjamin Wahl

When coaches, teachers, administrators, and families work hand in hand, it fosters a school atmosphere where everyone is inspired and every student is fully engaged in their learning journey.

Transcript

Olivia: [00:00:00] Picture this. It's math time in your classroom papers rustling, pencil scratching, maybe your voice explaining the steps again, sound familiar? What if I told you there is a completely different way, one where kids are buzzing with excitement, sharing their thinking, and actually asking, are we doing Word Problem Workshop today?

Today's conversation with Mona Iehl is going to flip everything you thought you knew about teaching math on its head. Because here's the thing, we've been approaching word problems all wrong. We treat them like the vegetables kids have to eat after the real math lesson when actually they should be the main course.

Mona discovered something counterintuitive: when you give kids harder problems and stop telling them how to solve them, something magical happens. They [00:01:00] rise to the occasion. And during our conversation, Mona even explains how you can plan a week's worth of these transformative lessons and just one prep period.

If you've ever caught yourself saying, I'm not a math person, or worse, if you've watched that same fear creep into your students' eyes, this conversation is your lifeline. Mona's five step Word Problem Workshop doesn't just teach math. It creates a community of confident problem solvers who see mistakes as learning opportunities and who celebrate each other's thinking.

So whether you're an educator who dreads math time, a caregiver wondering how to support math learning at home, or an administrator trying to shift your school's math culture, lean in because what Mona shares today isn't just about improving test scores. It's about fundamentally changing how kids see themselves as mathematicians.

Let's dive in.[00:02:00] 

This is Schoolutions Teaching Strategies, the podcast that extends education beyond the classroom. A show that isn't just theory, but practical try-it-tomorrow approaches for educators and caregivers to ensure every student finds their spark and receives the support they need to thrive. I am Olivia Wahl, and I am so happy to be in conversation with Mona Iehl today.

Let me tell you a little bit about Mona. Mona is an elementary educator who transformed her approach to teaching math by embracing student-centered methods that foster curiosity and engagement. Mona now coaches educators nationwide to create inclusive math classrooms where students develop lasting problem solving skills.

Our conversation today, Mona, I am so excited. I'm excited to talk to you about this gorgeous book I have in my [00:03:00] hands. 

Mona: Yay. 

Olivia: And this is what we're gonna talk about today, Word Problem Workshop: Five Steps to Creating a Classroom of Problem Solvers. Here we go. Look at that art. It's just beautiful. Welcome, Mona.

Mona: Hi. Thank you so much for having me, and thanks for that introduction and the kind words about the book. I've been telling everyone, it's like looking at my newborn baby. 

Olivia: It's true. 

Mona: I can't believe all of that came outta my body onto those pages. 

Olivia: It's so true. Um, listeners should also know you are the Mona of Mona Math and the Math Chat podcast, which I also adore. So, um, I'm sure listeners already follow your work and this is just another layer that they can have access to all the goodness that you offer the world of math. So let's jump in if that's okay. 

Mona: Let's do it. 

Olivia: Alright. I like to start every episode with you offering a researcher or a piece of research that aligns with what we're talking about today.

Mona: Oh, [00:04:00] okay. Um, Peg Smith is the author or co-author of Five Practices for Orchestrating Mathematical Discussion. And that book, much like maybe a decade ago or longer, um, gave me kind of a spark to change my teaching. And so I just see Peg Smith and all of the work that she has done since, as you know, a kind of a guiding light, a mentor for me.

And so I interviewed her on my podcast and it was really one of those full circle moments. But I wanna say about her work, those five practices, like I attached to that. 'cause it felt really easy to like tap into. Um, so if you've not read Five Practices for Orchestrating Discussions, that's a big piece of her work. Um, but she did endorse the book, which just feels like [00:05:00] something that is just super special to me. So I don't know if that answers the question totally…but…

Olivia: Sure, yeah, it gives, it gives listeners something to dive into as well, alongside the book, and that's what I like to offer nuggets of research along the way in our conversation. Um, the other piece that struck me right out of the gate is. Talking about math identities. And I think often we hear adults saying, I'm not good at math. I'm not a math person. And I believe that really impacts how we teach children as mathematicians. Can you speak to that a little bit? 

Mona: Yeah. Um. I think I know that so deeply because I myself, you know, struggled with who am I as a mathematician, um, and spent most of my schooling as a child and even into college thinking that math was optional or just something that I could avoid because I was a good [00:06:00] student, right?

And so good students in classrooms, like I grew up in. Good students could get away with never thinking deeply or just having a discourse about math because it was really simply just about getting the answer as quickly as possible and getting it down on the paper. And so when I got into the classroom, I realized I was still carrying a lot of that.

Right? And so, I was very creative as an elementary teacher. In my first years I worked at this really interesting school that was project-based and we created these experiences for kids to be hands-on learners and go out into the field and experience. Like I was teaching first grade and, you know, community was a social studies, um, unit, and we went and walked around different communities in the city of Chicago and made maps of these communities and found like whatever.

And so I was approaching everything even [00:07:00] from a first-grade lens of like getting our hands dirty. But then when it came to math, it was actually, and my colleagues and I would talk about this, like, okay, just get out the curriculum. Open up to page 65, it's a six and a five. Here we go. Let's go. And we would just get it over with…

Olivia: Uhhuh 

Mona: So we could move on to the good stuff. And then, you know, there's been a journey since that moment of everything that I loved about that first grade unit, the integration of picture books and how we learned to read so that we could read and write this really compelling map for our community. All of those things centered around that project except math. And really, there was so much math in that. 

Olivia: So much math. Yeah. 

Mona: And it was just a missed opportunity because I was still holding onto that identity that I had for so long of I'm not a math person. 

Olivia: The whole idea of workshop I also find fascinating because when I [00:08:00] think about traditional word problems, um, and you know, they seem sometimes dry, very fixed, lots of annotating happening. Um, but could you compare for listeners traditional word problems to the idea of word problem workshop? 

Mona: Yeah. I think the word workshop in and of itself is like unfinished, right? When we're thinking about writing workshop, it's, it's a process and so we can dip into our writing in different parts each day, throughout that process. And when I was naming kind of this routine that I was developing in my classroom, I wanted it to feel like that. I played around with a lot of different names throughout the time that I've been doing this. But I wanted kids to think about interacting with problem solving in the same way that we did with working on our writing, which is, it's not done. And even when it is done, it might not be done. And it's okay some days to kind of just be like. Okay, I'm gonna put it back in my folder and [00:09:00] I'll think about that tomorrow. Right? Like.. 

Olivia: Yeah. 

Mona: And so whereas traditional methods in math class might leave kids seated at their seats facing the board and the teacher at the front showing the class what to do, where I want Word Problem Workshop to be thought of as like, we're coming together in a circle around our, like around our own ideas in an oppor with an opportunity to like share our process, right? And so some space for kids to explore and go on this journey with themselves first. I really, I really think it's important for kids to have to like try things out on their own so that they know that they can do it on their own. I love group work. I love partner work. There is power in like showing kids that they can do stuff on their own that's hard. 

Olivia: Totally. 

Mona: And so that's where kind of this, um, student-centered approach where [00:10:00] we want you to do it on your own so we can mine your brain for all those little nuggets of gold and bring those so that your classmates can learn from you. And within that structure it actually communicates that like every single person in this room's ideas are valuable. And every single person in this room is a math person. 'cause we're all gonna do math. Nobody's gonna just sit and watch Miss Iehl do math. We're all gonna do it, and we're all gonna come together in our circle and share it. What was freeing about this was that I could have fidelity to my students, not to a specific program. I could say, I'm gonna start right where all these kids are. They're gonna get access to this. Then I'm gonna build on from where they are. And that to me was very exciting. 

Olivia: Mona, I wanna just jump into some research too. Um, I would love for you to illuminate, you do, you did all the heavy [00:11:00] lifting for us, and so you have the Five Strands of Mathematical Proficiency. You have the Standards of Mathematical Practice outlined so beautifully of how they connect. Can you speak to that for listeners and even caregivers of how they match up beautifully and weave into the Word Problem Workshop?

Mona: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So the Five, um, Strands of Mathematical Proficiency are conceptual understanding, which is this idea that kids understand the concept of the math, not just kind of memorizing what to do, but how it all works together. And that happens in Word Problem Workshop when we are letting kids kind of figure it out on their own. Because parents who are listening and teachers who are listening know little kids have an ability to solve problems without formal [00:12:00] schooling. Right? Like we can reason about the world and make sense of the mathy things going on around us before we've been taught the formal ways of representing it. And so that idea of conceptual understanding is that working from what it is you understand, um, instead of memorizing it and that leads, the more we do that, the more we pull out 13 blocks and remove 4, we start to see, oh, if I remove 3, that's 10 and one more, that's nine. And we start to build those procedures, and that's what is called procedural fluency, which is after we've had a lot, a lot of experiences with the concept, with understanding it, then it'll become more fluent for us.

Sometimes what happens is we go to perf - we go to fluency, we go to. Here's the procedure, let's learn it and be quick about it. But we first have to [00:13:00] do that work of letting kids get their hands in there. And the third strand, which is strategic competence, which is how do I - what strategies do I have to employ in this problem? And let me be competent, strategic, competent, and choose which strategies make sense right here. 

Now the part, the part that really aligns to Word Problem Workshop in this is when we come for the share in the discussion, other kids are sharing their strategies and what we find is we all approached it a little bit differently so we can learn strategic competence from each other. 

Olivia: That's brilliant. 

Mona: Oh, you did it that way. Hmm. Thought about doing it that way. But then also the fourth strand is adaptive reasoning. Now again, I believe reasoning is innate. I have a baby, a 5-year-old and a 7-year-old, and I'm just kind of like starting over with this baby who's 1 and watching him go through all the [00:14:00] things and all those milestones that I've seen like the other kids go through. And first of all, as a parent, you forget so quickly like how much they know and like how it all changes. 

Olivia: So true. 

Mona: But like he is just reasoning and figuring out all these little things, and he's one years old, right? He's 14 months. But then I listen to the reasoning of my 7-year-old if I provide space. Otherwise, he'll just tell me the answer or just tell me the thing and he won't elaborate. But if I provide space, and I'm like, but why? Then he will elaborate. He'll share his reasoning, right? That's what we do in Word Problem Workshop. We don't just say, solve the problem and show your work. We say solve the problem, show your work.

Now a couple friends are gonna share their work like I have here on the chart behind me, and then we're gonna talk about it and I wanna talk about the why, not just the what we did or [00:15:00] how we did it. And that's what builds the that argument. Or I can back up my thoughts with. Some reasoning.

Olivia:That, that's so helpful for me because I'm just thinking the idea of community, it you, you just very clearly and crisply said traditional word problem is like, read this, solve it, show your work. 

Mona: Mm-hmm. 

Olivia:And we hear that over and over and over. This is so communal and it really honoring of. Everyone's thinking. There's the, the just coming together and I, I love that. I, what I'd actually love is, I'd love for you to break down then the steps of Word Problem Workshop. This is a perfect segue. 

Mona: Yeah. So the first step is launch in the image is a backpack because we are packing our kids' backpacks with all the tools that they need to go on their problem solving journey.[00:16:00] Because I truly believe, like I've said a few times already, that um, kids can make sense of the math if they are prepared to do it and they're motivated to do it. So a lot of the launch is building that motivation to get into the word problem. And then we move into step two, which is grapple, which is where kids work on making sense of that problem independently.

Um, and they are gonna face twists and turns and roadblocks and bumps. But they're also going to experience like the joy of figuring it out on their own. And if you have done anything recently, like learned anything like sourdough or how to put the chain back on your backpack or put the chain back on your bicycle. You know that feeling, that satisfied feeling of like, oh yeah, I figured out how to do that. And that bread tastes better, right, because you did it. 

Olivia: Sure does. 

Mona: So that's what we're going for. And. We're going for that, to build that confidence as a [00:17:00] mathematician, but also to give kids a really grounded experience in the math so that they have something to talk about when we move. Now, I'm also an an elementary educator, so I know that we have to move our bodies. We can't be somewhere for 25 minutes, right? 

Olivia: Mm-hmm. 

Mona: So where the launch and grapple might, might be at a place where we can work at a flat surface. Now we're gonna physically move our bodies. To the carpet or in a circle or some we're gonna move so that we can all come together and, um, the teacher is going to select two or three kids to share their work and make it visual.

And that is our anchoring text. In reading, we refer back to the text. We're always asking kids to provide that evidence right to ground their reasoning in. And the same is true in math. And so we're gonna practice every day teaching kids how to refer back to the math as part of their argument. [00:18:00] And then once we have those two kids sharing their work, um, that's when we have the discussion.

And so the, the class will talk about what they notice, what they wonder, they'll compare the strategies all well facilitated by the teacher and really moving us toward a deeper understanding. And then we wrap with a reflection. And that reflection could be on a mathematical behavior that, or participation or engagement, but it also is an opportunity to mobilize the learning that just occurred from the experience into another problem. So John Dewey's research, um, a lot of times he would talk about, or a lot of times he's quoted in saying, um “we do not learn from experience. We learn from the reflection of the experience.”

Olivia: Yeah. It's one of my favorite quotes. 

Mona: Yeah. It's one of my favorite quotes because it's so true and that we have to provide that [00:19:00] space for kids to say you just had this really fun, exciting conversation with your classmates and you solve this problem, but what did you take away from it? And an opportunity for kids to internalize what they alone took away from it. As the teachers, we have a goal for everybody and we hope that they're moving along on that progression, but learning's personal and so each kid is taking something different away. And the reflect step honors that. 

Olivia: Mona, I have to tell you when I got to that pause of the reflect step. I thought about my conversation with John Hattie and something he said to me, I have not stopped thinking about - the fact because I am all for reflection. I find myself, I hope I'm a reflective person. And he said, well, reflection, you know, I have to, I don't know. I don't know what I think about that because he quoted Nuthall’s research that [00:20:00] we only see often 20% of what's happening in our classrooms as teachers. And then I got to the reflection step of the workshop that you provide, and here's why it is so brilliantly timed.

I thought back to the 20%, the 80% we may not see - you are giving kids 80% by listening in the workshop to what others did, what others tried, and so by having them reflect after, mobilize that learning and transfer, you're giving them all of that knowledge they may have missed if we just had them sit in solidarity and do the work themselves. 

Mona: That's right. 

Olivia: So I had this epiphany when I was reading your book. I'm like, oh my gosh, you did that for kids in your workshop. And it's like, hats off. That was just so exciting. 

Mona: Yeah. That I hadn't thought about it like that. So now I'm thinking, now, I'm [00:21:00] gonna be doing some research after this. 

Olivia: Yeah. I just, and as a coach, I've been saying to teachers, you know, if you're only seeing 20% of what's happening in your own community, I can serve as 80% of more eyes and ears for you. 

Mona: Mm-hmm. 

Olivia: Um, in service of like seeing the happenings of your class. I also, I think a lot about the way you designed teacher role versus student role throughout the workshop. And so I you've spoken to the teacher as the facilitator, the teacher, as the mobilizer of knowledge. How else, like when the kids are sharing are, is the teacher capturing that knowledge or bigger ah-has? Like what are, uh, a couple of other roles that the teacher could play? 

Mona: Like I made this sticker a few, a few years ago when I started coaching teachers independently and I was handing it out like crazy. And it says, it just says, get curious because that's the biggest role I think we need to like shift into when we're [00:22:00] moving from maybe a teacher centered to a student-centered classroom is what are they thinking? Because even if we're telling them what to do or what to think or how to think, that doesn't mean they are, right?

And so what are they thinking? And here's what happens when we shift from like, yeah, you're on the right track, honey. Or, oh, try this sweetheart, whatever. You don't have to say sweetheart, but like, you know what I mean? Like, oh, like, oh yeah, I don't know. Look at that again. Right? When we shift from doing those things to: Tell me about that, what are you up to?

All of a sudden now the kid's like, wait, first of all, you're acting funny. Can we just go back to the way it was when you told me what to do? 'cause it's a lot harder for kids, right? To explain themselves to the teacher. But over time, once they get over the fact that like, you're not gonna tell them if they're right or wrong or, and you're gonna kind of remain more neutral, they [00:23:00] realize, oh my goodness, I have the ear of the teacher. And if you're honest with yourself, the students in your class don't get that very often - you're undivided attention to listen to what they think. 

Olivia: Yeah. 

Mona: And that was really important to me, and I believe it's really important to make this work because if we don't know what they are thinking and doing, we can make some assumptions As we're walking around and seeing what they put on their paper, we can make some assumptions. And so getting curious. And then the other thing is during the share, it's student voice, they get the floor. 

Olivia: Okay. Mm-hmm. 

Mona: And so we're, you know, some teachers do it differently. Sometimes teachers have the kids like face the student that's sharing, and then there's an easel or a smart board. And the teacher's role then is just to scribe down what the kid says. And people are like, why don't, why don't [00:24:00] you have the kid write it up? Well, because we've all had kids write on our boards. Right? They don't really, they're still, it's hard developing their spatial awareness. 

Olivia: Yeah.

Mona: Right? I want these charts or these images to be models of what we want students to put on their paper. So it's almost like a backhanded way of you doing the I do. Right? Like kids are telling you what to put, but you are making sure that that fraction bar is split equally in half, whereas on their paper it might be a little wonky, and you can point that out, right. And it's just quicker. It's just faster for you to write it and us to focus on listening and thinking about what we hear. Um, so yeah, I think those are the roles that are coming to mind. 

Olivia: Yeah, that's super helpful. Um, I, I also, I got to the spot where you say you somehow figured [00:25:00] out how to fit a week's worth of planning into one prep. 

Mona: Mm-hmm. 

Olivia: One. And I thought, holy cow, Mona, I'm gonna have to have you speak to that. So share your magical planning skills with us.

Mona: Okay. 

Olivia: Um, I need to know, and then if you could also tuck in how you choose word problems to this segment, that would be helpful for me to know. 

Mona: Okay. I think that the, the shift in our mind has to be this, not what are they doing, but how are they doing it. A lot of times we plan, what are they gonna do? Oh, they're gonna do this card sort, and then they're gonna do that, and then they're gonna do this. Okay, fine. Right? But a lot of times our curriculum already lines up what we're gonna do, right? I want teachers to think about how kids are gonna think about math, how they're gonna engage in the math. So the most important thing to plan is how kids are gonna solve. And so that's what we [00:26:00] plan in a prep.

And so here's how it goes. We first choose a learning goal, and that might be from looking at our curriculum, like this week we're gonna do multiplication problem types, and we're looking at our standard and we're thinking about, okay, what is the big picture here? What's the standard asking us to do? What's the learning goal? And then what problems are going to help students achieve that? Now there's no shortage of problems. They're in the back of every lesson at every in your curriculum. They're on Chat GPT, right? Like there's a lot of ways to acquire problems. 

Olivia: Mm-hmm. 

Mona: Um, the key is to choose problems that help your students achieve the learning goal. So if we're doing multiplication, we should choose problems that are going to help students reason about multiplication. Now, if it's a fourth grader, that's gonna be a different problem than a third grader who's just starting out. But let me [00:27:00] say this real quick actually, about problems. It can't be a problem that kids can solve before you finish the launch. Because what tends to happen is we went into teaching to help kids and like that is our identity. It's like we are a helper and to intentionally give kids a problem, you know, they will struggle with, almost goes against our identity. 

Olivia: Right. 

Mona: Right? 

Olivia: Yeah. 

Mona: And so that's actually what I'm asking you to do, 100% asking you to do. 

Olivia: Okay. 

Mona: Because we can waste 20, 25 minutes of our valuable instruction time talking about grappling with sharing, reflecting on a problem that didn't challenge anyone. So we are gonna write a challenge problem for the kids that are achieving the most or have the most sophisticated [00:28:00] strategies, which is going to make everyone feel uncomfortable because you're like, but what about these babies? And then that's where like strategic support comes in during grapple time and things like that.

But I just wanna make that distinction that like this isn't, we're gonna do three baskets with five in each, in third grade. That is what our curriculum does for the first task for multiplication. But we're gonna do a challenge problem because we want kids to go on a problem-solving journey. We're choosing a learning goal, and then we're choosing some problems that are gonna push our students into a space where they can reason and grapple and make sense of the math. And once we have the problems, here's what we do. I'm looking for the page in the book so I can show you. We write it down on a forecasting guide. 

Olivia: Yeah. I love the forecasting guide. 

Mona: And the forecasting guide is six strategies and I didn't put them [00:29:00] in order because of like any certain order, necessarily, because anybody can do it anyway. I don't know. Can we see this? 

Olivia: We can. 

Mona: So the problem is up here, the learning goal and then possible sticky points. Or like mistakes or misconceptions that kids might have or you know, okay, maybe they won't think about, or maybe they'll be overwhelmed if we did like 9 groups of 14, right? 9 times 14, okay. They're gonna be overwhelmed. That's a lot of numbers. Okay, that's a sticky point. And then this is a subtraction forecasting guide. We have six different boxes with six different strategies, and the idea here is that. I have my preferred strategy and you have your preferred strategy, and it's easy for us to think about that that one makes the most sense. 

Olivia: Yeah. 

Mona: But everybody's brain is different, and so in order for us to reach all of the different kinda learners in our classroom [00:30:00] and support them in grapple time and throughout, we have to think about the student who is going to draw every single one. Because even though in, not in third grade we're doing nine times 14. And even though there's a student that maybe isn't ready for multiplication in our mind, they can still draw nine circles and 13 hash marks in each circle. 

Olivia: Yeah. 

Mona: And when we plan, we're gonna think about that kid, and then we're gonna think about the kid who maybe groups it and is thinking about, well, nine groups with 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90.

And then I'm gonna go back and put the fours in. So on, and all the different strategies, and there might be strategies that are not on the forecasting guide that your students come up with. 

Olivia: Yeah, 

Mona: Right? You're gonna have to flip it over and jot it down when you're walking around during grapple time and you're like, oh my goodness, look at that strategy. I've never thought to do that. [00:31:00] Wonderful. But what this does during our plan period, and I suggest you do it with your colleague, that's your grade level partner. 

Olivia: Definitely. 

Mona: Sit in community together and do the math, which is what we're asking kids to do. Sit together, do the problems, chit chat, talk about the problems, talk about your lunch, I don't know, whatever. And then skip the ones that you're like, I don't know how to compensate for multiplication. I don't know if the increment, whatever. And then work together on those pieces. So if it's like you and me and maybe one other person, we each take one and then there's two extra. So whoever finishes first has to do the next one, you know, later.

Olivia: Yeah. 

Mona: Or maybe if it's just you and I, we both take two and then, you know, we figure out the fifth one. Here's what I notice, and I did this for years as a third and a fifth and sixth grade teacher. I learned so much math by doing the math. 

Olivia: Yeah, 

Mona: And forcing [00:32:00] myself to use these different strategies and looking for the connections among the strategies. So after you solve the problems and you think about all of those sticky points, what questions might I ask? What connections do I see? It's simply then just preparing the materials, right? What do I need to make copies of and that stuff. Um, you can get it done in a prep period. 'cause I got it done in a prep period.

Olivia: Yes. That's - knowing it's doable, I think makes me want to try it more. 

Mona: Mm-hmm. 

Olivia: And, and the strategies you just offered, I would say the most important thing is what I'm hearing from you. Do the math, do your work. It's just like you. Anything as a teacher, anything as an educator, try it yourself. Because that gives you the forecasting.

You create a forecasting guide. I mean, come on Mona. It's so helpful. Like you've given us so many tools in this book. And as I [00:33:00] was reading, I always have like the little people on my shoulder audience listeners of I thought, you know, you know your stuff. And so what would you say to a teacher who's like, oh, this sounds really good, but I'm still afraid to try it. Like, what would a good first step be for them? 

Mona: I think like if you're afraid to try the routine or you're afraid to try the planning, I think, honestly, this is actually, this is a story in the book, but it, it worked for me and it made sense to me when I saw a coach try it and she did it, and my students were given this really challenging problem and I thought, uh-oh, we're gonna have like six hands of kids that have to go to the bathroom. There's gonna be somebody who's crying, there's gonna be somebody who starts yelling or crumpling a paper before the end of this, right. 

But what happened was they realized that like their ideas were being valued and that she cared about what they were doing because she was listening to them. And [00:34:00] so then they, they didn't, they didn't freak out. They like rose to the occasion. And so I get it. And I think the barrier maybe is that like you yourself don't feel confident in like letting kids kind of go and do 'cause it's like uneasy, right? Like what are they gonna do? And that's, that's it. That's all. I know that's what it was for me, because like I told you at the beginning, I never felt like a math person. And it wasn't until I started solving the math in all the ways kids might do it, that actually gave me the confidence to be like, okay, go ahead and do it. I already know what you're gonna do. I got my guide right here. Right? And so if you're feeling uneasy about it, I think it's okay to just like give it a shot.

And if it's the worst, 10-15 minutes of your day. I dunno. 

Olivia: It's okay. 

Mona:Put it in your folder and try again the next time you're ready. Like, love it as a writer, I'm getting used to that, right? Like yeah. It's, we're drafting, we're revising and it's okay for our, our teaching practice to be that way [00:35:00] too. 

Olivia: Yeah. What would you say to an administrator then, how can they best support this work? 

Mona: This is research based instructional strategies, and this is classroom tested and proven and it works. And so we have to support teachers in not just providing them with resources, like curriculums that have instructional strategies embedded, because our curriculums do now, right? But we have to provide one clear goal as leaders of what we want and take one thing and try it for a while and saying, we're gonna just do this curriculum isn't one, it's like so many things. And so getting really clear on like who is our mathematician at our, our great school? Who is that kid and what are the skills that they possess and what do we as a school want for them?

And if we say we want kids to be problem solvers, we want kids to be [00:36:00] confident at explaining their thinking and being able to tackle a hard problem, whether it's on an exam or a standardized test or a college class or wherever. If we want them to be able to be confident at, at solving that, we have to think about what goes into making that kid confident.

Olivia: Yes. Yeah. 

Mona: And, and so the leader can provide time for teachers to do this work in community. Right. But it has to just be one focus, one focus. 

Olivia: One focus. I love it. Um, and I think it's important too, like what do you say to caregivers? How can they support mathematical thinking at home? 

Mona: Okay. Number one is we gotta stop saying things that deprecate math or ourselves in front of our kids. Like, oh, I don't know, honey, I didn't learn it this way. Mm-hmm. Can't say that anymore. And then [00:37:00] just approaching math in the same way that you do reading and literacy at home. Um, you know, my kids count things, my kids notice things. Um, we have conversations about books and stories just the same as we do about, like, it's so interesting. Look at those lines of those like… 

Olivia: Yeah. 

Mona: What is that? And here's what we do when we're, when we're reading books to little kids, we model our thinking, right? We're like. Oh, I'm wondering about why the rabbit has the basket. I wonder if he's gonna find any eggs, right. Or whatever. But we also have to do that about math. We have to show kids how we're thinking about mathematical situations. 

And that might be fabricated and that's okay, right? Like, um, but, huh, there's three toothbrushes in the jar. I wonder where the other one is. Hmm. How many are there normally in this jar? Just like super simple stuff, but noticing and like [00:38:00] modeling for your kids, because then what will start to happen in books, they're gonna start saying, oh, I noticed blah, blah, blah.

And then in your life they're gonna say, mommy, I noticed there's five plates at the table, but there's only four forks. I think we need another one. Right? Like, and they're gonna start noticing those things. Um, yeah. 

Olivia: I think that's, no, that's such a good point because I, that didn't even occur to me, and I'm just sitting here thinking, how often do we model just in literacy in general? We're told it's this ingrained sense of you have to read to your kids every night. You have to have books in your home. Yet it's such a, a low lift to also think through all of the mathematical pieces of our day and just start narrating because we do that all the time for our youngest when it comes to literacy. That's such a good tip. Um, are you ready for lightning round? 

Mona: I am. I am. 

Olivia: Okay. Here we go. All right. I'm gonna just throw a question at you and give [00:39:00] your gut response. Um, the first thing I wanted you to speak to is what's the biggest misconception when it comes to word problems? 

Mona: That they have to know the math before they can do them. That it's an application of math instead, I really think it's like the way we learn, we learn everything in context. 

Olivia: Yeah. 

Mona: Everywhere. And so if we make real-world math problems, how we see math learning, it just, this isn't lightning round. I'm sorry. I'm, I'm too wordy for lightning round. 

Olivia: You're the best. Uh, what about, what's the most underrated math skill?

Mona: Noticing. 

Olivia: Uh, fastest way to improve math teaching and learning. 

Mona: Stop talking. 

Olivia: So good. See, seriously, you're lightning. You got it!

Mona: The teacher stops talking Less, less teacher talk more, more student talk. 

Olivia: More kids. Yeah. Um, student [00:40:00] says, I'm done after two minutes of grappling. What do you do? 

Mona: Um, Can you solve it another way? Show me what you did. Show me your thinking. 

Olivia: Nice. All right. Um. I would love to end and wrap on what is your vision for classrooms where every student has a positive math identity? 

Mona: Yeah. It's the energy in the room of a classroom where everybody has a positive math identity is like excitement to solve. Like I know I've made progress at a school. That I'm working at when it goes from like, math is silent, scribbling, right…the, the pencil sound with with teacher voice but then the energy shifts. There's an energy shift of we're gonna do Word Problem Workshop. We're gonna be, we're solving [00:41:00] problems. Are you coming in? Are we gonna do this today? Right? That excitement, that feeling. And kids are not afraid to share their ideas. They see sharing in progress thinking as part of it. And here's the best part, I think, is when teachers are modeling this like growth language, right? Of growth mindset, language or whatever, in context of math. And we start to hear it in our students when they're talking to each other, you know? And so I think a classroom of problem solvers is loud. It's motivating to everyone, but it's also a space where everybody has access and, and not only everyone feels pushed, but they feel supported. 

Olivia: Yeah. Yeah. And this book also speaks so much. To equitable access because everyone gets exactly what they need.

Mona: Yes.  

Olivia: Everyone getting the same is very [00:42:00] different than everyone getting what they need. And it also, Mona, it frees teachers up to truly give kids what they need because you have this confident community of learners that they also wanna help each other. 

Mona: Yeah. 

Olivia: And so it's this lifting each other up. And that's what I got. You know, I did have a math identity where I didn't see myself as a mathematician, but through knowing people like you and others in the math community, I've developed self-confidence like, no, I need to do the math and then I will understand the math better. So thank you for this book, but also thank you for your footprint in our community of educators and all of the different ways that we can access your brilliance. So I appreciate you so much. 

Mona: Thank you. Thank you so much. This is just an on one more conversation in this big conversation of, you know, the work that is hard and, but I [00:43:00] wanna like, I guess just end with this, is that the student in Word Problem Workshop classrooms in student-centered math classrooms is the most important, right? It's student-centered, but outside of any instructional strategy or any resource, the teacher in the knowledge the teacher has of those learners and their decision making and experience and passion - the teacher is the most important person in the classroom. And so in a world where the listener, teacher, parent, whoever might not feel valued, know that like I wrote this book with that assumption that you are the most important person in the classroom.

Olivia: Well said, Mona. Well said. Well, thank you. Take care. Schoolutions Teaching Strategies is created, produced, and edited by me. Olivia Wahl. Thank you to my older son Benjamin, who created the music playing in the background. You can [00:44:00] follow and listen to solutions wherever you get your podcasts or subscribe to never miss an episode and watch on YouTube. Thank you to my guest, Mona Iehl, for sharing how we can fundamentally change how our children see themselves as mathematicians.

Here's my invitation for you. Tomorrow when it's math time, resist the urge to show your students how to solve the problem. Instead, try just one piece of Mona's framework. Give them a challenging problem and let them grapple. Then, get curious. You could ask, Tell me about that, or What are you thinking instead of, good job, or try again.

If you're ready to join our math community, grab Mona's book, Word Problem Workshop. It's linked in the show notes. Follow her incredible work at Mona Math and check out our Math Chat podcast for ongoing inspiration. If this conversation shifted something in you, please [00:45:00] share it with a colleague who might be struggling with math instruction, or that caregiver friend who continues to say, I'm not a math person. We can change that narrative together. 

Make sure to tune in every Monday for the best research-backed coaching and teaching strategies you can apply right away to better the lives of the children in your care. And stay tuned for my bonus episodes every Friday where I'll reflect and share connections to what I learned from the guest that week. See you then.