Here’s what we did today
- Discussed last night’s “gross problems” (and made connections to kids’ struggles with place value concepts)
- Examined a variety of strategies for solving addition and subtraction with multidigit numbers (“alternative algorithms”)
- Watched Dan Meyer’s TED talk: Math Class Needs a Makeover and discussed some of the “yeah, buts…” that emerged for us
- Made “Iceberg posters” for procedures at each of our grade bands (see the picture below)
- Generated a list of reasons to put conceptual development before procedural development:
- helps with retention
- helps with flexible use of #s
- rushing to fluency can cause anxiety and “bad” feelings about math
- builds on students’ prior knowledge
- conceptual dev. serves as a check for computationshttp://veritasium.com/education/the-uncomfortable-effort-of-thinking/
- in the real-world, problems are more likely to be more conceptual than procedural
We also watched the video about “The uncomfortable effort of thinking.”
Here’s what’s due for tomorrow
Read Principles to Actions, the section titled “Support Productive Struggle in Learning Mathematics” (pp. 48-52). In your notebook, write a response to this prompt:
Review the “Beliefs about teaching and learning mathematics” chart (p. 11, Obstacles). What beliefs are evident in Ms. Flahive’s and Ms. Ramirez’s classrooms (see fig. 21 on page 51)? What impact do those beliefs have on students’ opportunities to grapple with the mathematical ideas and relationships in the problem?
