I am officially opening my calendar up to start booking jobs for the 2025-2026 school year! As I look to the future and get excited about the continued work in improving the teaching and learning of mathematics, I can’t help but reflect on the last twelve months.
As we have all flipped our calendar to 2025 I have been intentionally looking back on my days in my districts and what we have been able to accomplish.
Throughout the last year, I have traveled quite a bit… Check out Kappel Consulting’s stats for the year below.
School Districts: 16
States I worked in: 3
Conferences I presented in: 4
Hotel Nights Stayed: 31
Flight Taken: 15
Flight Miles: 13,065
Miles Driven: 11,382
I don’t take the opportunity and privilege of working with all of the administrators, teachers, and students I work with lightly. I am truly so blessed to do what I do. I have witnessed some great teaching and learning of mathematics in grades K-12 this year. My favorite days were always the days I was fortunate enough to be in classrooms and experience the learning happening first hand. Whether it was in a kindergarten, 2nd grade, 7th grade classroom, or any other grade… watching the learning happen and the math make sense were for sure my favorite days. I take a lot of pictures in classrooms and some of my most favorite moments in 2024 are pictured below, but certainly not all of them.
I loved seeing how this 1st grade teacher had each student’s set of math manipulatives stored. The plastic tote held a dry erase marker & eraser, a clock, two color counters, base ten blocks, a die, plastic coins, and some snap cubes. The plastic totes hung from each student’s desk with a hook on a magnet. Students knew immediately where to get their math tools and it was so easy for them to put them back away.I remember smiling so big walking into this kindergarten classroom where students were using compostable seedling planters as a 10-frame and two color counters to build numbers. Each student had two 10-frames so that they could build numbers greater than ten. The teacher rolled a 20 sided die and students had to use their number cards (0-10) to show the number and then build the number using the two-color counters in the 10-frames. Notice on the far right, they were building 13. So the students took their 10 card and 3, then put them together. This allowed students to visually see 10 and 3 make 13 with their double ten-frames, but also with the number cards. We then extended the conversation where students shared how they made the numbers with the two colors. See the examples in the pictures.This bulletin board is from a third grade classroom that uses this area of the room to have math talks daily. This picture was taken later in the year (March) and listening to the conversation, I could tell the students were fluent in talking math. This teacher had her students working on the following just from this 10-15 minute time block: area, perimeter, fractions (eighths). elapsed time, rounding to multiple place values, place value, coins, and various ways to build multi-digit numbers.
The 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th grade teachers in one of my districts hopped on board when I suggested they start a March Madness bracket but for Number Hive, one of my favorite digital math games . If you aren’t familiar with Number Hive, shoot me a message, I’d love to share it with you! The students were so engaged and thrilled to be a part of Number Hive Madness. When I go back and visit, students challenge me in a game of Number Hive and it brings me so much joy!I loved how this 6th grade teacher used square inch tiles and two-color counters to make solving one step equations conceptual. I was so proud of this teacher and have share this idea with so many middle school teachers.Students in that same 6th grade class then went to their vertical non-permanent surfaces (VNPS) and drew out a visual for one-step equations with their group. It was so awesome to see students understanding the concept of using the inverse operation to solve equations. They truly understood the concept this day and I was so happy for them to be learning conceptually before procedurally.I took this picture in a 1st grade class where the teacher took the idea of data science and focused on it weekly. She used data that was directly from her students and used that information to get the students engaged, notice & wonder about information, and answer so many questions. You’ll see in this picture, the teacher wrote the questions out. She did that to lead the students in the conversation and front load some information before their conversation. Each set of data was collected and discussed for a week. Monday- Ask the question and gather data, Tuesday- What do you notice? What do you wonder?, Wednesday- Answer posed questions by the T, Thursday- Answer posed questions by the Ss, Friday- Combine class data with another class and see what happens to the dataDecimals are first introduced to students in 4th grade and it’s a big shift for student to understand that decimals are part of a whole and the extension of what they know of the place value system. I highly encourage teachers to do a Daily Decimal to slowly introduce the decimal ideas starting day 1 of the school year. This helps to keep it conceptual, tying it to concepts they’re already familiar with, money & a hundreds chart. Doing a Daily Decimal allows students the time, space, and conceptual opportunities to truly understand decimals and the connections to whole numbers.On day 97 of the school year I jumped in an co-taught with this teacher. We dove deeper in the understanding of place value, fraction-decimal equivalency, and decomposing a part of a whole in more ways than one.
If you are interested in having me come out and work with your district, please don’t hesitate to reach out. If you are a teacher, feel free to pass along my information to your administrator and we can set up a conversation. All work is customizable for your district, school building, and teacher/student needs. I am here to help you and your team with whatever it is you need. Work I typically do in a district, but not limited to:
Present on PD days (customizable)
Observations (math visits) & coaching
Data Analyzation
Intervention & Enrichment
Setting up a math block
Curriculum needs (using rubrics to look deep in current curriculum or into a possible adoption)
Deep dive into the standards and/or vertical alignment conversations
