Enhancing Math Understanding in K–5 Through Hands-On Manipulatives with Keri Brown

🎙️ Podcast Episode: Enhancing Math Understanding in K–5 Through Hands-On Manipulatives with Keri Brown

Deedee Wills [00:00:00]:

Well, hello, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. I’m Dee Wills. And I’m. Adam is out today. I mean, it’s not like he’s out out, but he’s just not here. He’s absent. He has a note from his mom, but I have my very good friend Keri Brownwith me, so. Hi, Carrie.

 

Keri Brown[00:00:19]:

Hi. Thanks for having me.

 

Deedee Wills [00:00:21]:

You’re welcome. We just actually been chatting for a little bit. I’m like, wait a minute, we better stop and start recording. Otherwise going to be on for like two hours, and then we won’t have an episode because I wouldn’t have recorded anything. But super glad that you’re here. It’s always good to see you. Tell everybody a little bit who don’t know you already. I mean, everybody knows you, but tell everybody who you are, where you live. You survived the storm.

 

Keri Brown[00:00:46]:

Oh, my gosh. We just hit tornadoes, which is insane. Two days ago. Anyway, I am a Southern girl. You can’t tell by the accent. I’m from Alabama. And as the day goes on, I think I get more and more country and the twang just gets worse. But this is my 17th year, and I’ve taught kindergarten in first grade the last two years. I am an interventionist, and it’s a lovely job. And I would say if you ever get a chance to switch and do something different, that would be the go to, because I absolutely love it. Most days.

 

Deedee Wills [00:01:25]:

Most days. I mean, what’s. What’s nice is that, you know, you are learning, like, probably more than you would if you were maybe just in the classroom. Is that accurate?

 

Keri Brown[00:01:38]:

Oh, my God. It feels like my first year teaching.

 

Deedee Wills [00:01:42]:

Really?

 

Keri Brown[00:01:42]:

Every day? Yes.

 

Deedee Wills [00:01:44]:

Because you have to come up with new tricks all the time, right?

 

Keri Brown[00:01:47]:

Yes. And things I think I know well. You think like, oh, yeah, I’ve seen it all. And then they come in and do something I’ve never seen. I’m like, okay, hold on, let me get myself together. I don’t even know what to do right now.

 

Deedee Wills [00:01:58]:

I need to write this down because I don’t even know what’s going on here. So you. I was under the impression that because we’re going to talk a little bit about math today, but I was in the impression that you were the math interventionist. Was that something you were doing last year or did I totally make that up in my head?

 

Keri Brown[00:02:14]:

So I was hired, you guys. So, funny story. I was at Dee Dee’s house and had an interview, and I pretty much got hired at DD’s house for a math interventionist. Position. So that was last year. And because of money, of course. Money rules everything. They said, if you want to keep your job, you are going to. Well, they didn’t say it like that, but I am doing reading as well as math to make everybody happy, so.

 

Deedee Wills [00:02:46]:

Yeah, Well, I mean, you. Your. Your knowledge base is vast. Everybody who knows you knows that you know your stuff, but you’re learning a whole lot of new stuff, too.

 

Keri Brown[00:02:57]:

Yes, I am, but I love it. I mean, I do love reading. I think I just like math a little bit more. So I was very excited to just do math.

 

Deedee Wills [00:03:07]:

Yeah. Yeah. So when. When Adam and I. Adam not being here and I asked you to. I’m just. I’m kidding. Asked you to join us. One of the things you want talk about was using math manipulatives. And you mentioned that you were doing this great book study in your. Is your whole school or is it your. The team of math interventionists. Are you, like, in a coort Cohort?

 

Keri Brown[00:03:33]:

No, it’s actually. It’s actually my whole school is doing this book study. So when they come and do their PLCs, part of it is covering what’s in the book during their PLCs. It’s actually kind of, you know, it’s kind of lovely that everybody’s on the same page.

 

Deedee Wills [00:03:48]:

Yeah. So it’s called Mastering Math Manipulatives by Sarah Delano Moore and Kimberly R. Rby. And I had every intention of, like, diving into this book. And I’ve been, like, looking out into my driveway for the Amazon guy for, like, days. And I kept getting those, your book has been delayed. And I’m like. But I’m meeting with Carrie on Monday, so I need to have it. So I. I have it. I have it out of the container, but I have. I don’t know anything about it. So can you tell everybody kind of why you are liking this book and why maybe that might be something they might want as well?

 

Keri Brown[00:04:22]:

So I’ll do a backstory on why the book was. Well, I can’t say why because I didn’t choose the book. The math coach at my school chose this book because something she noticed since the pandemic and just everything with kids using things that there has been a huge decrease and children using and sharing manipulatives. And I didn’t notice it when I had my own classroom because I was still doing the things. And now that I’ve moved to a new school and I have everyone’s kids, I do notice that it is a little bit harder for them to manipulate things. They don’t know what to do. And I don’t know if that’s just because people are still very, you know, germaphobe or what it is. And so we’re trying to get everybody into moving back to using manipulatives and realizing this is why they’re needed. And students should be able to model what they’re doing with concrete objects and being able to model on paper and being able to explain it. And so I think her thought process was, well, if we’re all doing this as a school, then it’ll be a little bit easier for everybody to talk it out, figure out easier ways to kind of get back in the groove and make sure whatever skill you’re teaching, we’re doing something with manipulatives. And it’s pretty cool because I did a session recently at a conference and it wasn’t about manipulatives, but it was about math. It was about math centers. And so I pulled something from this book, like one of the hardest manipulatives to use, or you would think when you look at it, you can’t do much with it, is two color counters because it’s just red, yellow, or if you get a different one, like the white and blue ones or whatever. But it’s two colors. Like how many things can you do with two colors? Well, there’s a whole thing in this book of all the ways you can use them. And it’s just crazy. The list of ideas and ways, massive. Yes. But it just gets you thinking of, okay, just because you have cubes, you can use cubes for all these things that just have to be over counting or making towers or whatever. Like all the things that you have in your classroom, you can use them in different ways with different skills, with every grade. So kindergarten, first, second grade, because I’m at a primary school. But the book does go up to third grade, but we don’t have third grade, so.

 

Deedee Wills [00:06:54]:

Well, you know, when I was shopping for this book, I noticed that there was an upper grade version as well. So there is a second one. I’ll go ahead and put links in so you guys can find this book if you want it. I think you’re going to want it. But I noticed that and I was like, holy smokes. Because I don’t think of. I don’t actually ever remember using math manipulatives period, because I can’t, you know, this was like, you know, I was in great school, covered wagons. Dee Dee was in grade school.

 

Keri Brown[00:07:25]:

That’s that.

 

Deedee Wills [00:07:25]:

That’s like, that’s the timeline, right? Electricity invented. Dee Dee was in grade school, but I don’t ever remember having really using math manipulatives. But I was just. You were just talking about the color counters. And when I open this up, there’s 13 activities that you can use those colored counter. That’s crazy to me. Although now that I read some of those. Those things, there’s one to one correspondence, cardinality, more and less. Sorting and counting, decomposing numbers into pairs in more than one way. Making 10 cumulative property with addition with two color counters. I mean, there’s a whole bunch of stuff in here. I was kind of thumbing through some of the other activities, like linking cubes. And it was talks about groups of multiplication. So I guess, you know, I can see why this would be such a great book for you to talk across multiple grade levels. Right. It kind of reminds me a little bit. I don’t know if you remember, Kathy Richardson had these books, Developing Math Something or Another Knowledge. A really memorable title. Developing a really memorable title. I don’t remember what it’s called, but Kathy Richardson wrote these a long, long time ago. And I have them in a safe place somewhere in my house. But I also made me think a little bit about these math minimalisms. Manipulatives. About our friend Kim Atit, who always talks about concrete, pictorial and abstract. Right. So introducing math concepts in a concrete way. And I’m wondering, and it sounds like what. Maybe what you’re. You’re saying is that there has been a lot of pictorial teaching and maybe not such. Yeah, yeah.

 

Keri Brown[00:09:14]:

Yes, kind of. Yes, it’s. It’s interesting because I guess as an interventionist, I’m already getting the lower end of children, which I also do enrichment. So I, I kind of get both ends of it. I get the higher kids and I get the lower kids. And with the lower, like, they are just very confused on what to do. Like, they’ll shuffle things around, but they don’t really know why they’re shuffling things around or what to do with them. And these are like second grade students. So it’s like, okay, there’s a disconnect somewhere that we need to fill in. Okay, this is what you need to do when you’re trying to use them for editing. Or this is what you need to do when you’re just trying to make a set. Like, I have some second graders that are still working on making a 10. And so it’s like, okay, let me give you a 10 frame and put these on there. And I had to be very explicit because the child was very confused. And it’s like, okay, well at your old school, because they were new to our school, clearly you all weren’t using manipulatives at all.

 

Deedee Wills [00:10:21]:

Yeah.

 

Keri Brown[00:10:22]:

Because it was like he never seen them. And so trying to fill that little gap and fix that. Because they don’t know what to do.

 

Deedee Wills [00:10:31]:

They did not know what to do.

 

Keri Brown[00:10:34]:

No.

 

Deedee Wills [00:10:35]:

You, you mentioned making 10. One of my favorite making 10 games that I would play with my students in kindergarten because I didn’t get to play with manipulatives when I was in kindergarten. But one of my favorite, you know, you give them all a 10 frame and then you give them a do dice. That’s those wood dice and I have plus one or plus two on them. And then they just play with a partner. So they roll the dice and if they have a two, they put two on the 10 frame and they say, I have two, I need eight more to make 10. And now it’s their partner’s turn and then they roll and they add on to the 10 frame. So if they added, if they got a one, then they would, they would say, I have three.

 

Keri Brown[00:11:11]:

Right.

 

Deedee Wills [00:11:11]:

Because they added it, I need seven more to make 10. So they go back and forth, but they have to make a 10 perfectly. So the whole time they’re thinking about making 10. But it’s a game, so they’ll play it for a really long time because then when they’re done, whoever wants that win ones, Whoever won that 10 frame set, you know, they get a point now, now they continue to play. But like that was always our favorite making 10 game. And, and so we did a lot of hands on. But clearly I, I think you’re right. I think during that pandemic period, and I can see why germs and such people just sort of stopped using it maybe certainly where you’re, where you are right now in your life.

 

Keri Brown[00:11:58]:

I think a lot of like you have to do like we do already. I know like the state of Alabama, a lot of schools do already. So there’s a lot of. You got to get your minutes, you’re on the computer. So then it’s just like it’s a lot of time you got to spend on other things. And then maybe there’s like a decrease in centers. I, I don’t know the reason. I’m just take a guess on why. But like there’s just a lot of factors on why. I think maybe teachers have stopped using them as much, but it was funny When I was at the conference, I kind of asked the question to the teachers in attendance, like, how many of you use them every day? And not a lot of hands went up. And I didn’t ask them why or anything. But I think maybe it’s the same thing that’s happening here. It’s just, you know, you just got out of the groove of doing it and you’re in a new routine. Because after Pandemic, like, life was different.

 

Deedee Wills [00:12:50]:

Our life was different for sure.

 

Keri Brown[00:12:52]:

And so now it’s just trying to get back to what we were doing before that, you know.

 

Deedee Wills [00:12:58]:

And the thing I love about math, mathematics, about manipulatives is that it does definitely make things more concrete. But because like I was in school, I was always like having to like memorize everything. And I think, you know, one thing that we spend so much time as elementary lately, we’ve talked about the science of reading, which of course is very, very important. But there was a lot of emphasis before on memorizing high frequency words. And the same thing with like memorizing abstract things like adding this digit and that digit together to come up with a new digit. And like, you’d have students subtract and you’re like, that doesn’t even make sense because they didn’t have, you know, that concrete. This is why, like, I was never good at math. Like I in, in high school, I know my teacher was like, oh my gosh, girl. I didn’t understand math, like really understand it until I became a teacher and I had take all those classes and they were able to teach it in a way that was really not memorizing algorithms. It was like knowing it. Right, right. And that’s what math manipulatives help us to do. Right? Develop that number sense.

 

Keri Brown[00:14:09]:

Yes. But I think sometimes they just don’t understand the abstract. Like just because you’re saying, oh, let’s put two and two together, but like, what is two? I don’t know what two is.

 

Deedee Wills [00:14:20]:

Right.

 

Keri Brown[00:14:20]:

Yet you’re saying, put two and two together and I can memorize two plus two is four, or like two dogs and two more dogs is four dogs, but I don’t know what two plus two is.

 

Deedee Wills [00:14:31]:

Right, right.

 

Keri Brown[00:14:32]:

And so it’s like you have to show them that this is a one, this means one. And I think maybe we’re skipping over there, just not spending enough time on that. And then when they get into larger numbers, they’re confused because you can’t memorize so many larger numbers. And I think that’s where the struggle is coming in with first and second grade because you can’t memorize it anymore. Like, I can teach you in kindergarten your facts up to 10, but you can memorize most of those.

 

Deedee Wills [00:15:00]:

Right? Right.

 

Keri Brown[00:15:01]:

You know, the reason why three plus seven is ten.

 

Deedee Wills [00:15:05]:

Right?

 

Keri Brown[00:15:06]:

Right. So I don’t. I don’t know. It’s just one of those things that I’m like, oh, hopefully, you know, within the next two years, kids are back to how they used to be. Right. And they can actually do this with manipulatives. But it might just be where I am. I don’t know. The whole world might not be like this.

 

Deedee Wills [00:15:23]:

Well, I mean, I think there’s. Maybe it’s in a pocket where you are, But I’m sure it’s also what people are seeing with. Maybe their school’s not that way, but they have students who come in that are that way. And now they’re trying to figure out why is this child, like, not, you know, conceptualizing math? Maybe because that was a reality. I have seen a lot of. You know, I typically work with schools that, like, they want to talk about reading things, so I don’t really go in and talk about math. But oftentimes I’ll come in as they’re finishing a math activity. And it is very. Page 102 answer these questions instead of this really fun exploration of math. Right. So I love that you’re doing this book to bring that back up.

 

Keri Brown[00:16:12]:

What’s funny? When I first started teaching in Alabama, they had this initiative of. It’s called Amsterdam. So it’s Alabama math science technology initiative. So we’re like, they would have us to come in for two summers. We had to do two weeks where we would do a week on math, a week on science. But everything was exploratory for the kids. Like, all of the math that we were teaching, it was more, okay, here’s the idea. Kind of let them figure it out so they knew why. And, like, that was how I started teaching. And so I’m still very in that mind of we have to let them explore more instead of just telling them this is what it is, because this is what it is, and kind of let them figure it out. Because there’s always more than one way to get to it here.

 

Deedee Wills [00:17:04]:

Right.

 

Keri Brown[00:17:04]:

When it comes to math.

 

Deedee Wills [00:17:06]:

Right. When it comes to math. I know that I’ve heard some rumblings. I don’t know if it’s. It’s true or not, but I’ve heard some rumblings of, like, a science of. Of math. I think there’s a company who’s trying to push that out there right now. So I’d be curious to see what that looks like. Is it more Explore plus explicit? You know, because we don’t want to stick in the explore mode, just like we didn’t want to stick with the explore mode with ELA activities, but we also needed to give them time to perfect, perfect that skill. Right. So I think that having explicit lessons, along with multiple ways to come to a conclusion with math, multiple ways to think about it, seems like a really healthy thing to do.

 

Keri Brown[00:17:58]:

Yeah, it is. Yeah. So it’s funny, I keep talking about this book and I was telling Didi earlier, there’s these other books that we have.

 

Deedee Wills [00:18:06]:

Yes, I want to know about those too.

 

Keri Brown[00:18:08]:

They’re if anybody’s interested, they’re per grade level and I think go up to like fifth grade. But I have the kindergarten, the first and second grade books. And they’re math in practice. And they’re called teaching, like teaching first grade, teaching second grade, teaching kindergarten. And the publisher is Heinemann. Am I saying that correctly?

 

Deedee Wills [00:18:29]:

Yeah, Heinemann.

 

Keri Brown[00:18:31]:

But they are amazing. So during our plc, we also have been covering just like some of the ideas in the book, but it’s different ways of teaching different skills. And like one thing that kind of stood out to me and one of them, which since I’ve never taught second grade, like all the second grade stuff is new to me. So I feel like a brand new teacher. When we talk anything second grade, there’s like this little four way. So it’s just a little like graphic organizer. But when they’re doing addition and subtraction word problems, having the kids like write their word problem. And this could be once you’ve taught them to write out their own. And they love doing that. And then they do a model of it and they do the equation and then they do a part where they have to show their thinking, but it’s just multiple instead of just, oh, here’s the word problem, answer it.

 

Deedee Wills [00:19:24]:

Yeah.

 

Keri Brown[00:19:24]:

Move on to the next one. Because when they go and they do their standardized test, whatever test you do in your. Your area, sometimes they have to explain why. They don’t know how to explain why. But like in here it was saying to do like, it’s called four ways, but they just break it up into four ways. So they’re explaining in more than one way every time that they. Not every time, but you know, giving them a chance to do this every so often. Yeah, but explaining answer in different ways. And when I introduced this. They absolutely loved it, and it was so easy for them to do.

 

Deedee Wills [00:19:58]:

I like that. I mean, I think that, you know, oftentimes we do get to. Here’s the problem. What’s the answer? Like there? It’s so, I guess, linear, but, like, if it’s. I don’t even know if that’s the right word to use. It’s probably not. You’re like, somebody’s listening, going, oh, my God. D know it’s not linear, but there’s just, like, one. You know, there was just one way. But if this student got the wrong answer but had the right process, then, you know, oh, okay, this is where they got hung up. Instead of. They either understand it or they don’t. Right. Like, that’s kind of the question answer is they have it or they don’t versus explaining it. You can kind of see if they have complete misconceptions or if they’re really close, but they just made one calculation error or something like that. Yeah, yeah.

 

Keri Brown[00:20:50]:

No, I think your word is correct.

 

Deedee Wills [00:20:53]:

Okay, good. You’re my mouth girl. You got to tell me if I’m not.

 

Keri Brown[00:20:56]:

I mean, I don’t know, but, I mean, it made sense to me when you were saying it, but yes, I agree with. With all of that. I just. I just think they have to become more thinkers. It was funny. I was talking to someone who’s. I think she works for, like, the state of Alabama. I’m not sure her real job, but I was asking her, like, how do we help children learn how to think? Because I think that’s part of it. Like, they don’t know how to think, but, like, how can we teach a child how to think? Yeah, I think sometimes that’s where I get stuck. Like, I don’t know. You know, when you have the kids that just stare, like, they stare. I stare. So then we’re, like, staring, and then.

 

Deedee Wills [00:21:31]:

We’Re really good side eye also, by the way. So, you know, they’re like.

 

Keri Brown[00:21:38]:

But like, how do you get a kid to get out of it? Like, how do you. Like, what do you do? And so I think, like, pulling in more of just being able to watch them manipulate things would help. Sometimes they don’t know how to explain it with words, but they can explain it when they manipulate, or they can explain it when they write it out, or they can explain it when they’re drawing a picture of it, but they just don’t know the actual words to say sometimes. So giving them multiple ways of explaining the answer is maybe better than just saying okay, tell me. And then you all are staring at each other.

 

Deedee Wills [00:22:14]:

Well, and you also, you know, during that time when you’re saying they’re drawing it out, you can help them come up with the words to articulate their thinking. Right. But they. They do. They’ll, like, oftentimes students will just stare you out, and you’re like, well, look, I perfected this game. You know, like, I’ve been doing this game for a long time.

 

Keri Brown[00:22:33]:

So, yeah, it’s.

 

Deedee Wills [00:22:34]:

It.

 

Keri Brown[00:22:35]:

It’s hard. So just the teacher life is hard.

 

Deedee Wills [00:22:38]:

They do have it hard. You know the other thing I love about math? Manipulatives, because it. I love them because it feels like play to me. It feels more like play. And we. Everybody knows that through play, students acquire knowledge a little bit easier. They certainly have more time on task. So I just. I do love using manipulatives, but there. It’s hard. It’s hard to manage manipulatives. It can be hard to manage manipulatives in a class of 20 or 25. I have a couple of ideas on how to help do that. But do you have some suggestions on managing, or is that something that you guys have talked about yet as a.

 

Keri Brown[00:23:20]:

School on managing them all?

 

Deedee Wills [00:23:23]:

Managing all the manipulatives?

 

Keri Brown[00:23:26]:

I think they have. I mean, I have my way. That worked for me when I was still in the classroom, where, honestly, I put everything off on my kids because it’s up to them to keep the room clean. It’s up to them to put all their things back. It’s up to them to know what they can use with which games. And so I just said super high expectations. And, like, when we’re doing centers, they know what manipulative. I would have everything labeled in buckets. And so they knew if they needed cubes, they knew if they needed dice, they knew if they needed, like, 10. Like, they knew what they needed. And then they got, like, they would grab their own things and then put it back when they were done, just because that was just how I was used to teaching. Because I have to be honest, like, Keri Browndoesn’t like to do a lot of work during the day. So I put it off on.

 

Deedee Wills [00:24:21]:

Kids find that really hard to believe. You’re like, so hard work. You work so hard. But there’s a difference between working and. And I don’t want to say babysitting, because I think oftentimes that’s the way we. But, you know, doing for them. Yeah, right.

 

Keri Brown[00:24:40]:

So I just like to teach them to organize. So, like, at the Beginning of the school year. I think that’s when I did the most work of, like, okay, this is where everything goes. And, like, being very explicit every single day. So then it was like the room runs, and I don’t even have to be in there or if I was out for any reason. Like, my kids knew where everything was in the room.

 

Deedee Wills [00:25:00]:

Back to, like a disaster.

 

Keri Brown[00:25:03]:

Oh, never, never. Everything was always put back where it was supposed to be because I had spent the time putting in the work at the beginning of the year. So I don’t really have a good answer for that just because I think I’m insane at the beginning of a school year. So I would love to hear your idea.

 

Deedee Wills [00:25:19]:

Well, I could tell you, but then I’d have to. No, I’m kidding. I was.

 

Keri Brown[00:25:21]:

We.

 

Deedee Wills [00:25:22]:

I’ll tell you my. I’ll tell you what I did because. But I was going to tell you. We. Adam and I talked to our good friend Katie Mency. Ruckers. Ruckers. Now, because she’s a married, old married woman, but we talked to her, and she’s a TK teacher. And she was talking about the exact same thing about setting those expectations and. And not really moving forward if things aren’t the way you want them to be. Right. I. E. Your manipulatives look like they, you know, threw up all over your house, in your room or whatever. What I did for mine, because I. Every. The math lessons that Deanna and I wrote a long time ago was all hands on math. And so every. Almost every lesson had manipulatives. You know, in a class of 2022, you could spend a lot of time saying, okay, count out. You know, we’re using beans today. We’re using this today. And there’s that transition period of handing them out and getting them in that will make you want to sniff that glue that you might have in your classroom. I mean, I. It used to just seem like it was a big time suck for us because, you know, all of those transition times can be when things go afoul with student behavior, has been my experience. So we made math toolkits, and they were just basically binders with a zipper pouch that students shared for that exploration. Hands on learning part of it. And then we would just put inside of that zipper pouch, whatever manipulatives. Because usually you’re using it for four days in a row or three days in a row. You’re not using something brand new every single day. So I would load it up. And then when I knew tomorrow we weren’t going to use that manipulative anymore. I would have the students put those away, the manipulatives away. And then, you know, as I was prepping for the next day, I could slide in whatever we were going to use the next day. So just math toolkits. That’s what, that’s what I did. It’s not anything like earth shattering, but I, I have in there, I have like all of the work mats that they might use. So if they have a, you know, I was gonna say a Venn diagram. I mean, no, you know that thing where there’s like a circle and then there’s another circle and another circle and then there’s a lot those in there.

 

Keri Brown[00:27:37]:

Thank you.

 

Deedee Wills [00:27:38]:

Yep. I have like that in there so that they. And dry erase markers so they can write on there. So all of those different types of like work mats they might need, plus any manipulatives and a dice and a dry erase marker. So that’s what I did. It did take a bit of time before school started. It was like one of those summer projects. But it was really helpful. It was really helpful.

 

Keri Brown[00:28:00]:

So I did that for small groups. But again, I told you I don’t like to do a lot of work. So that would be like our Friday thing and all my kids would bring theirs to the rug and we would dump it out and a kid would clean it all up and then another kid would put all the things in there. But I only made that for my small groups, which, same idea.

 

Deedee Wills [00:28:21]:

That’s why you don’t have to have your gray hair dyed. And I started doing that when I was like 28 because I was like, I’m doing it all. But you’re smart. You’re smart. So this is a great book. And you also really like these other kind of grade level books that you have. So I’ll, I’ll link all of those in. Um, tell everybody like you’re going to finish out the school year, but I know you’re doing other things this summer. So tell everybody where they can come find you, where they can see you. Your social media conferences, all the juice. Give them all the juice.

 

Keri Brown[00:28:59]:

If you are interested, I share all of my ramblings at Enchanted Kindergarten. It’s with the D. I don’t know why I did that. So everybody emails me and puts a T. I never get their emails. So it’s garden, like flowers. And I’ll be this summer in Nashville and Austin and I’m pretty low key this summer and I’ll be in Vegas next month doing A conference as well. So just a few places.

 

Deedee Wills [00:29:31]:

You were everywhere. Yeah. If you’re going to go anywhere, Vegas next month is way better than Vegas. And in July, remember how hot it is? Miserable. Oh, how fun. So they can see you. They can see you live, and then they can also see you in Vegas.

 

Keri Brown[00:29:49]:

Right.

 

Deedee Wills [00:29:50]:

And then.

 

Keri Brown[00:29:51]:

And virtual. I’m doing the Educator Summit, so if you haven’t purchased your ticket, you should.

 

Deedee Wills [00:29:58]:

I know. I’ll put a little link in there to your. Your link. So they get a. I think they get a discount. I don’t. Depends on what time they’re watching this or listening to this, but Educator Summit’s always good. Do you remember what you’re talking about? No, I can’t remember either. I know I’m talking about something.

 

Keri Brown[00:30:17]:

I’m doing first and second grade math. Oh, yeah. So it’ll be on first and second grade math ideas. Yes, yes, yes. That is what I’m doing. I almost, like, had a brain fart for a moment.

 

Deedee Wills [00:30:31]:

I’m glad you’re doing the math, though. That’ll be great. It’s always good to get some other, you know, because I. I feel like a lot of conferences, myself included, most of the time I am talking about something ELA related. So to be able to have some math that you can go back and watch again and again is always amazing. What else. What else should we know about you? Well, I’ll put all of your links for your social so people can find you and the books that you enjoy. And thank you so much. We should have just said bad things about Adam because he’s not here to defend himself.

 

Keri Brown[00:31:08]:

We don’t have time. I mean, I know.

 

Deedee Wills [00:31:10]:

We’ll stop recording and then we’ll do that. How does that sound?

 

Keri Brown[00:31:15]:

On a good time?

 

Deedee Wills [00:31:16]:

He did miss out on a good time. He’s doing family stuff and that’s important too. So we’re. We’re happy for him. But thank you so much, Carrie, for being here. I’ll see you soon. Bye.