In mid-May 2023 the four PIs gathered at the Castle Cottage in Stony Lake, Michigan for a week-long retreat. During the retreat, we finalized our analysis and drafted a paper that provides an overview of the teaching practice of building on MOSTs, the culmination of six years of work on the grant.

At the beginning of May 2022, the four PIs and five research assistants gathered in Park City, Utah for a weeklong retreat. We were also occasionally joined virtually by another researcher and our external evaluators. During the retreat, the group discussed various aspects of the project's work, specifically analyzing the four elements of the building practice: Establish, Grapple Toss, Conduct, and Make Explicit. We reconceptualized developing a conversational bubble as part of Establish since it establishes the focused discussion that students will participate in as they engage in joint sense making about the MOST. We also made long-term dissemination plans and worked on writing conference proposals and papers for publication.

In July 2021, the MOST project held a two-day retreat in Salt Lake City, Utah to work with the project's teacher-researchers. These teacher-researchers are six middle and six high school mathematics teachers from across the United States (see the Staff page for more details). During the retreat, the teacher-researchers explored the four elements of the building practice: Establish, Grapple Toss, Conduct, and Make Explicit. The teacher-researchers learned how to enact each MOST-Eliciting Prompt (MEP) in their classrooms by engaging in activities that included critiquing and creating public records, sorting student contributions, analyzing transcripts of classroom interactions, and rehearsing the significant components of each element of the building practice. They will use Swivl, an innovative video collaboration system, to record student mathematical thinking and interactions in a whole-class discussion in Fall 2021. These recordings will provide the research team data to analyze enactments of building that will deepen their understanding of the building practice.

At the beginning of June 2021, the four PIs and four research assistants got together in Eagle River, Michigan for a weeklong retreat. We were also joined by another researcher virtually and an external evaluator for part of the week. During the retreat, the group discussed various aspects of the projects' work and the upcoming (July 2021) working retreat with the teacher-researchers who are assisting us with the project. Specifically, we refined our language for the building practice to suit our conceptualized meanings and discussed diagrams, pictures, and crucial aspects of each of the four elements of the building practice. We also made long-term plans and worked on writing conference proposals and papers for publication.

At the end of August 2020, the four PIs and six research assistants launched the work of the 4th year of the project.

In May 2020, the four PIs and four research assistants continued our work by using the Zoom video conferencing platform for a weeklong retreat. We were also joined by an external evaluator for part of the week. During the retreat, the group discussed various aspects of the project's work, especially the building subpractices (Make Precise & Grapple Toss). We continued developing our Recognizing MOSTs book in order to help teachers identify mathematical opportunities in student thinking, and also the MOST Coding Instruction Manual for training new research assistants for Fall 2020. Furthermore, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, we discussed how to adjust the research project plan to suit the new normal environment in classrooms.

At the end of July 2019, the four PIs and three research assistants got together in Park City, Utah for a weeklong retreat. We were also joined by an external evaluator for part of the week. During the retreat the group discussed various aspects of the projects' work including a game plan for coding and analysis of the enactments of building generated by the teacher researchers during the previous year.

In August 2018, the MOST project held a two-day retreat in Chicago for the project's teacher-researchers. These teacher-researchers are 6 middle and 7 high school mathematics teachers from across the United States (see the Staff page for more details). During the retreat, the teacher-researchers were introduced to the practice of "building" on opportune instances of student thinking (MOSTs). Through several activities, teacher-researchers unpacked and practiced the implementation of mathematical tasks designed by the MOST PIs to elicit predictable MOSTs. The teacher-researchers will each enact these tasks in their classes with the intent to build on the MOSTs that emerge. Video of their enactments will serve as the foundation for the research team (teacher-researchers, research assistants, and PIs) to learn more about the practice of "building."

In May 2018, the four PIs and two research assistants got together in Park City, Utah for a weeklong retreat. We were also joined by an external evaluator for part of the week. During the retreat the group discussed various aspects of the projects' work and the upcoming (August 2018) professional development for the teacher researchers who will be assisting us with the project. We also made long term plans and worked on writing conference proposals and papers for publication.