The idea was to see if we could break the logjam of having too much to look at—so, what about events of
particular interest or importance? What happens when your ears perk up, because something of consequence
happened? Could we capture the importance of those “events of interest?” We tried to categorize those, and came up
with three focal aspects of classroom activity. First, there’s the general classroom environment. That has to do with
managerial issues—whether the students are unruly or sitting there waiting to be called on but petrified, or active
participants, and so on. You can talk about those things independent of whether you’re in a math class, a social
studies class or anything else. Second, there are the classroom mathematical norms.