The Secret to Better Focus, Shape Sense, and Math Fluency

Hey everybody. Welcome to Tier One Interventions podcast. We are here today to talk about a geo board. Geo board is a very interesting device and when I first looked at it, I only saw it from an occupational therapy perspective where we were working on it with hand strengthening and such. But I come to see how valuable it is as a math tool as well.

Today we are going to blend the math and the occupational therapy together so that you can understand better what it looks like to have a geo board as a intervention in your classroom. Welcome Jonily to today's episode and everybody else who is with us. It is great to have you here. This is being recorded Easter weekend and I know that you will have had Easter before you hear this, but I hope that you had a blessed Passover and or Easter depending on how you celebrate. So without.

Any further introduction. I think we are good for getting started. Jonily, go for it. Yeah, we're gonna jump right in. And as the math specialist, math coach, math content expert, the Geo Board is probably one of the most underrated tools. The other most underrated tool in mathematics is quiz air rods. We're not talking about that today, but just put a side note on that. The Geo Board is often the dark horse of math.

I would say math gap filling intervention. The Geo Board can teach many of our standards from preschool through high school. So there's a lot of math content that can be uncovered with the Geo Board. Today we're going to present the Geo Board in about a dozen different ways. So I might say a dozen ways to use the Geo Board today. And as I do that, I'm gonna be connecting each of our techniques and exercises with the math standards at each grade level and how the Geo Board connects.

So we're gonna look at this in terms of progressions, extensions, interventions, all using the Geo board. I will say that Geo Board is our, one of our reference tasks. It is much more of a tool than a task, but the reason it falls into the reference task category is there when we are. In our units of study and mathematics, the geo board can be referenced during a number of topics. So that is why that it falls in the reference task category.

Again, a geo board is either plastic or wooden, and it's got pegs that you can wrap rubber bands around. I am not, and for those of you that know me, I am not a fan of a classroom of 28 kids all having the geo board hands-on with the rubber bands.

So what I do is I have about six geoboards with rubber bands on hand. I love the actual concrete geo board in small group, not as whole class, but since I have six geoboards on hand, typically then I will identify students in the classroom with deficits and struggles. So here's where we're starting to combine that occupational therapy with intervention with differentiation within the tier one core general classroom.

Because I have five or six of the geoboards on hand, I'm gonna identify kids with deficits that I'm already aware of, deficits with. Handwriting. So maybe illegible handwriting deficits with fine motor deficits with focus and attention. So when we are in classrooms or we're talking with school personnel, any stakeholder, parents, teachers, intervention specialists, instructional coaches, principals, curriculum directors, whatever your role and title is.

When I ask what are your biggest needs, we start listing a lot of these deficits and gaps that kids have. Their handwriting is a struggle. They have pain when they write they really struggle with fine motor. They still can't tie their shoes. All of those things that we know are a struggle for students, focus and attention. The geo board, the physical geo board can actually solve and close those gaps and reverse those deficits.

The reason I have five or six on hand is I know who these students are in my classroom. I can very strategically give them the physical geo board, and then all students then will have the paper copy of dots. Or geo board templates. I, for most of our students average to typical to above average. They will not need the physical geo board. It is the only math tool and manipulative that we can bypass

the concrete with most kids. And I think all of that is really important to say because there are some manipulatives, like the blocks that every single child from our most struggling to our highest I'm gonna say what words do I wanna use? Very talented, gifted, mathematically, often, much more insightful than the instructor that is teaching the student. Even those students need those physical pieces to create what is in their mind. So lots of tidbits on the geo board before we get started today.

And I also want to launch us today with reminding us what is tier one interventions. Tier one is the typical general core regular instructional classroom. Typically, if kids have issues that we are responding to, they are typically pulled out of the classroom to have their needs met. We call those tier two or tier three settings, tier two or tier three interventions.

Our goal with tier one interventions is to have the students in the regular tier one core general classroom with the regular content classroom teacher, with the intervention specialist, with the occupational therapist, all in

the tier one core general classroom setting, so that kids can get exactly what they need without being pulled out. Now, will we co completely eliminate pull out? Absolutely not. I'm not advocating for that, but the number of, or the minimal number of pullouts that we can create in our schools, the better it's going to be for all students. So the Geo Board is one of those ways that we can have full inclusion and be able to meet the needs of all of these students.

There are three very abstract math content pieces that are a struggle for even the general typical population, and those are the concepts of time. Money and measurement. Today we're gonna focus on the measurement piece. I'm also going to define measurement as we go. Measurement with a ruler, measurement with odd tools. Measurement as far as repeated reasoning. So we're gonna define measurement in a lot of different ways.

If we can get kids to master measurement, it is one of the ways that we can improve their understanding of number and improve their number sense. Also, when I ask classroom teachers and intervention specialists, what are some of the math content pieces that students most struggle with? What are the things that we wish students had more access to? And these three topics always come up.

The first is computation, fact fluency automaticity, those things. The second one is understanding equations and unknowns and inverse and that whole set of thing. The third one is always a bunch of random stuff, but it always falls into a category that I call shape. So today we are gonna focus on that shape piece.

Now if I ask teachers, intervention specialists, educators what students most struggle with in mathematics typically shape is not the answer that they say, but when I am uncovering their thoughts and perspective on students' struggles, all of those things fall into a category of shape. Understanding shape is the number one way to improve. Number sense measurement is very much directly connected to shape and characteristics of shape.

So I'm setting the stage today for all of the reasons that Geo Board is really the number one tool for not only closing math gaps, but also extending and increasing overall math achievement. The other two topics that we're gonna be talking about are precision

and accuracy and the similarities and differences of both of those. Sherry and I think very differently about our fields. My field is the math education field. Sherry's field is the occupational therapy medical field. And we are a little radical and very much outliers in the way that we perceive our fields. So oftentimes we are either misunderstood or the understandings are misinterpreted.

And today what we wanna do is we wanna share our perspectives and our nuances of how we can in less time achieve more by helping our students

in the tier one core general classroom. Before I go on any thoughts, comments, or questions on the overall outline? For today's topics, I want us to remember the big highlights we need kids to understand. Measurement in our focus is measurement today. Measurement is very much connected to shape, and studying.

Shape is the number one way to improve, number sense, and then also in order to create fewer gaps with math content and with non-academic issues kids are having, we're going to talk about this precision versus accuracy. As well. Those are our big topics today, and every exercise intervention tool and instructional facilitation is gonna tie back to those exercises. I am gonna share with you the folder, the folder that's gonna end up being the module in tier one with Geo Board.

There are a variety of audio lessons in the tier one interventions

course module for Geo Board. I think there are 24 audio lessons of me teaching some aspect of Geo Board with every grade level. You can see grade one, grade two, grade six, and a number of high school sessions as well with Geo Board. The lesson may not be specifically related to Geo Board, but it is related to measurement, shape, and precision and accuracy.

What you're also gonna have in the tier one interventions module is the standards, which I'm not gonna pull that out of this 'cause I have it saved elsewhere. I'm not even sharing with you my screen. I'm talking as if you can see everything I'm talking about.

Come on, people here is here are the audio lessons I was just talking about. There's just a visual of the audio lessons and I wanna show you, and if you're listening to this podcast, the audio version, you're obviously not gonna be seeing what's on my screen and I'll be articulate enough that you'll get an understanding of what's here. But if you go to YouTube Tier One Interventions podcast, you'll be able to see the screen as well as the audio.

But what I'm showing now is all of the standards that are connected to the use of Geo Board from kindergarten through algebra. And I'm just gonna scroll through this because I'm actually going to relate each of the exercises we do to the standards. But just as a visual, you can see all of the standards that we will accomplish today just by using the Geo Board tool. And I'm just scrolling quickly so that you can see there are 22 pages of standards.

Now, obviously I copied and pasted and the writing is big, but there are 22 pages of standards. And the way that we're gonna make these connections today is with a. Document called Geo Board Templates and Notes, and this is titled Geo Board Benefits Academic and Non-Academic. And then there's a note on this document that you will have access to C standards because there are notes in the standards of these connections to Geo Board.

And then also you have access to audio files that you can listen to that are me teaching actual students standards based on the Geo board. The first set of standards I wanna talk about are the mathematical practices because this is where we can start connecting to some of our non-academic standards. There are certain mathematical practices that G, that the Geo Board

will lend itself to mathematical practice for is model with mathematics. We want the students to have the ability to see where math phenomenon occurs in the real world, and that is a visual concrete experience, hence geo board mathematical practice. Number five is using appropriate tools strategically. Geo board obviously is a physical tool. Dot paper is a semi concrete representational tool. And grid paper is also another tool that we're gonna talk about today.

All of those tools allow for a hands-on visual sensory experience for kids. So not only are we gonna be talking about the math content and standards today, and the non-academic interventions to help students increase their functioning and executive functioning skills, we are also going to be talking about how to increase students' habits and habits of mind with math tools, practices, and processes.

When I talked about precision and accuracy, there is an actual mathematical practice, number six that is titled Attend to Precision. Precision. In this mathematical practice standard is really about students being able to communicate precisely to others, being able to be articulate. And this really has to also do with accuracy as well. And we're gonna, again, we'll talk about the similarities and differences and the final mathematical practice that is gonna be very evident today is number eight.

Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning. Especially with use of the geo board and dot paper, we are gonna do the same exercises over and over again with different numbers.

This gives us repetition. We also are going to be practicing in our classrooms spaced repetition because I'm not gonna be doing a geo board unit for two or three weeks straight. I'm gonna be referring to and bringing in the geo board or dot paper tools during every unit that I teach mathematics and referring to those sensory visual pieces to help understand the content in the new unit.

So through this space practice and repeated reasoning techniques, students are going to be able to increase their precision and accuracy and through repeated reasoning of our specific measurement and shape techniques, they're going to increase their number sense as well. On this notes document, I'm actually going to be using the document to draw the notes that I'm teaching today.

I will save those drawings and then you'll have access to all of the notes and visuals that I'm creating as we speak today. Let me pause for just a moment. Any thoughts, comments, or questions? And I see in the comments, yeah, low scores and measurement across the board. Because we typically will do like a measurement unit.

And the other thing is measurement is often very misunderstood. So a couple of things today is, number one, how to embed this idea of measurement within the other con all of the other content standards we teach and not alone, but also reinventing the interpretation of what measurement actually is and looks like. Very good. Any other thoughts, comments, questions? I'm gonna throw it in again from a different perspective, vertical versus horizontal.

So like when you're teaching it, you're teaching it on the board and then they're seeing it on a desktop. So it's really hard to change the perspective. And I'm only saying that too because as a, an evaluator when I show things, it's a little different than what the kids are seeing. It. So let's talk about this in two different ways. The first thing when you, this is really fantastic, Theresa.

The first thing you said was vertical horizontal, and that is actually chunk number one today that I'm ready to dive into. But I'm thinking vertical, horizontal as far as measurement lines, your thinking perspective of where the student it is being. So we're actually going to jump into chunk number one, exercise and solution for deficits today, which I'm going to call dots and spaces and with Dotson spaces, the first technique we start with is measuring with vertical and horizontal lines.

But before we get into chunk number one, let's call this chunk number zero. Let's call this chunk number zero, Theresa. And then Sherry, if you guys can give us a little bit of a behind the scenes glimpse of what is it Theresa, that students are struggling with and maybe what is it called, or what is your intervention that you use when we're always showing things in the classroom vertically, but the kids are sitting and looking at their desk horizontally. Can you both talk about that?

We're gonna call this chunk zero. Sherry? Absolutely. Our brains have several reflexes that automatically get triggered

when we move our head that the main one is called is vestibular. So a lot of teachers have heard that word, but really don't understand what it means, and I try to summarize it and make it as simple as possible. And basically the vestibular system is trying to keep your head perpendicular to the ground. So when you're on a rollercoaster, you're up, you down, you're going around in circles, you might get upside down. When you get off of there, that first step or two, you feel wobbly.

It's also the same, similar thing when you get off roller skates, you're trying to figure out where your body is in comparison to the ground. The problem with kids who are struggling is that system isn't working effectively enough that it triggers that same effect as if you got off a roller coaster. Just by looking up at the chalkboard versus, and then looking back down at their paper, they lose track of where they are. Their body is going, oh, I don't know about this.

This isn't making any sense to me. They are very frustrated because every time they look up, they have to scan the entire board to figure out where they left off. Imagine the amount of time that is wasting in their brain just scanning the board, trying to figure out where they left off so that they can maybe copy the next segment. That, come on, we have a pie, 3.14, whatever the rest of it is, if you have a hundred digits of pie up on the board, they're gonna get lost awful quick.

And the same thing happens in literacy where they're trying to copy notes from the board, or you have a word problem and they're trying to get the content down on paper. They're not gonna be able to get that flow going from one step to the next, making those associations with the vocabulary. And the symbols that go along with it, they're gonna get themselves confused.

So the make a quick connection for the classroom teacher as a classroom teacher and intervention specialist in the tier one core general classroom. Because I wanna make this point too, and this is why we call this tier one interventions, is because when we pool kids in tier two, tier three intervention, oftentimes we're not showing something on the vertical. So this may not be an issue.

And so kids go back to the regular classroom and then we wonder why they've done so well in small group pullout intervention. There's a lot of reasons, but then they go back to the tier one core general classroom, and this is why we do this podcast. This is why we do this course. Because in the regular tier one general classroom, the facilitation

practices are oftentimes very different than in small group. So number one, the reason we're telling you this as a core classroom instructor is number one, just awareness. So if students tend to be checked out or off task, or you exi, or they're exhibiting some behaviors that are negative. This could be one of the reasons why. So number one is awareness. Just understanding the looking up and down and up and down and trying to find the place is causing this quote unquote dizziness.

And so when we are feeling uncomfortable, what's gonna happen is we're going to act out in some sort of negative behavior because we are frustrated and uncomfortable. So oftentimes when we're trying to treat behaviors in the classroom, it's actually much more associated to kids trying to attend and are unable to attend. So number one, awareness. But number two, Sherry and Theresa both, if you can talk to us about what do we do in the classroom, then that is a quick intervention.

Very subtle, allows for differentiation, allows for those kids to get what they need. If we're identifying that this is a struggle for them. I'm gonna also throw another wrench into this because Sherry did visual, a vestibular, but there's also visual. So if you have a visual tracking issue, you are also gonna have difficulties. So vestibular and visual can be together, and it also can be separate. So if you have visual tracking, it's the eyes that are the problem, not just the vestibular.

So what you can do for these kinds of kids is give them a slant board if they need to be seeing things on that. That kind of a, an angle. It's just a matter of also giving them the time and also doing some remediation in these kinds of kids as well. So you work on, and the kids with the vestibular, you're gonna, you're gonna need them to be maybe standing to do some of these tasks as opposed to sitting because they may be better off standing and not having to move their head as much.

The kids with the visual tracking issues, you work on the visual tracking exercises to help them because they need it more so for the reading as well. So you do some of the, the. The box string kind of things. You have them look out and look back and things like that. But those kids may also benefit from, an eye exam and see if they, they benefit from that and they've had visual tracking issues. But those kids can also use, the slant board and things like that to put it on a different level.

But I love a slant board right on the desk because they're looking forward, it's vertical to vertical and they can write, they don't need to worry about it. And it's very easy to do 1, 2, 3 of those in a classroom. And just kids always have access to it. There's no reason that they can't. I love the next point. They just may need to stand. Boom. So see, some of these things are very simple that we just don't think about as classroom teachers.

And then Theresa, you said one other thing that I know for Sherry and Theresa, these are all just very matter of fact, but for a classroom teacher intervention specialist, these are things that we don't think about and they're very quick fixes. But I can't remember the other thing that you had said that was a quick fix, but we'll remember it as we go and I'll remember it as we go. But other thoughts from Theresa or Sherry For Chunk zero, which is the, which are these, I'm gonna say non-academic.

Deficits or issues that truly affect the academics that are just, there

are some quick solutions for in the regular classroom, but any other connections or explanations on that? Back at you. Sherry. Sherry, we need to hear you. She was on mute. Let's try that again. Back at you, Sherry. All right then. Let's do this better. Okay. So another thing that I think about is the, before you start the instruction, I talk about this all the time, is that preparing the body for the movement.

So it's almost like getting that the head ready for the bobbing up and down, doing some exercises that are going to help the brain get started before you start the academics. So it's prepped and ready to go. Has anybody ever tried to. I'm gonna just try to say that like simply lift weights, like just even a three pound weight, doing like an elbow curl. The first one is oh man. And then number two and number three are pretty easy.

And then all of a sudden your muscles get fatigued and then they start to get hard again. It's just similar to that. So the exercise that I am going to suggest to you is the handstand flip. So I've talked about the handstand flip before, but for those of you who may not have heard this, if you are listening to the podcast, the audio file, you're gonna wanna go over to YouTube so that you can see more of what I'm gonna have you do.

Just a moment while I stand up and I will try to get back a little bit

further than my chair is going to allow. Wow, we rise up in the world, don't we? So here goes my head. 'cause I want you to see my arms. There we are. So you're gonna have your hands flat. They're gonna be in full extension over your head. What you're trying to do is you're trying to squeeze your glutes together, squeeze your abdominal muscles together, keep your hands flat toward the ceiling.

You'd be surprised how quickly kids are doing this with their hands because they don't have enough strength in the back of their arm to hold that position. One of the things that you can think about when you're doing this is you can prep the head, then look at the ceiling, look at the floor, look at the ceiling, look at the floor, look at the ceiling, look at the floor.

While you're holding your arms up over your head, you're squeezing your glutes, you're squeezing your abdominal muscles together to make yourself as small as possible around your core. And then right before you go back to sit down, you go down and the try to get those hands flat, palms flat on the floor. Woo. Stand up, sit down, go back to work. What you've done is you've tensed up your muscles throughout your entire body for a brief amount of time. You've given them a chance to relax.

You've activated your vestibular system, and then you gave yourself by this going flat to the floor and standing up. You've given your, the muscles that you tightened up, chance to relax and come back to it. But they're now prepped for movement. Theresa, were you gonna add something? I was gonna add the comment you made about children not.

Being able to do some of these things, you would be truly amazed if you, I had an activity set up for the kids and all they needed to do was move their arms in circular motions following a pattern, and they like maybe three times

into it, were like, oh, I'm so tired. Oh, my arms hurt. They just cannot maintain anything. They, it's, they fatigue so, so quickly. And these are the kids that are outside running, kicking a ball. But when it comes to the upper body, they just fatigue so, so quickly. So it's amazing to see them even struggle to put their arms up. But when you invented this and thought about this it's the opposite of what they're doing.

They're always down and so having them go up is counter to what they're normally doing. So having them go up is stretching those muscles in the opposite direction and it is exactly what they need to be doing. It also prevents falls. I know this is sounds like it doesn't have anything. No. This is really great. This is like so life skill as well. Go ahead Sherry. I like this. Yeah, it prevents falls.

So where I got this idea was after reading some of the new research that's out on fall recovery and one of the things that they're, that we do for falls in older adults is we create. Situations where we're weightbearing and the more you can full weight bear

with your entire body weight on your limbs, the better it is for your limbs. Great ways to do this are standing and walking. That's how we do it for our legs. When we do it for our arms the plank where you're out in front of you is good, but it's not putting your arms in a nine, 180 degrees from your body that I was trying to figure out a great way to do that. And the best way to say that happens is a handstand that is your full body weight, but an actual handstand.

I have real honest in this handstand, but let's face it, how many of us can really get into a handstand? If I don't want 28 kids to have geoboards with rubber bands, I sure don't want 28 kids doing a full fledged handstand. And even if we do it against the wall, we look like dominoes. So how I was trying to figure out how to get that position and still be effective now. I will often have a four inch book available.

So I'm putting different size books on their hands when they're in that extended position to see what they will tolerate for several seconds. I'm not saying that when you're doing that in preparation for a math assignment, that's something you do. It's something that we can extend like in a tier three situation in preparation for that with the kids. But this muscle back here in the forearm is so weak for many of us.

That is one of the drivers to illegible handwriting is the dorsal side of our forearm is very weak.

Our triceps are very weak, so we need to find ways to strengthen them. Boom, y'all. This is like hidden gold right here. So just to reflect on chunk zero, which was not planned chunk zero are awareness definitions for the classroom teacher and intervention specialist. Being aware of what maybe behaviors kids are exhibiting and then how to reverse those negative behaviors through some non-academic interventions. And also, not only just awareness, but what do we do as a classroom teacher?

What are some nuggets, exercises? Quick 32nd techniques that we can embed in our regular core tier one instruction. So chunk zero, non-academic interventions. Hopefully you got something from that.

Hey, if you wanna learn more about the Geo Board, go over to disability labs.com and look for the course that says Tier One Interventions Workshop Geo Board. We look forward to seeing you in class.