The fantastic new ways to teach math that most schools aren’t even using by Corey Drake
This is an exciting time to be a mathematics teacher-educator.
In the past two decades, we have developed a much better understanding not only of how children learn math, but also of how to teach math – and how to prepare teachers to teach math. A short (though incomplete) list of teaching practices that we know work to support student learning includes posing challenging tasks that connect to children’s prior understandings and out-of-school experiences, providing opportunities for children to make sense of and talk about mathematics, and promoting the use of mental mathematics based on patterns in our number system.
1) Ask students “why” at least once every day. Why did that strategy work? Why does that strategy make sense? Why would this work for all numbers?
2) Instead of looking only for whether a student’s answer was right or wrong, focus on what was right in the student’s work. Then build on what the student did understand in your next discussion and next task.
3) Use your textbook as a tool. Find meaningful tasks in the materials — or tasks that could be meaningful and accessible for students with small changes in numbers or contexts.
4) Provide at least one opportunity each day for students to solve and explain problems mentally (without pencils, paper, calculators, or computers). This promotes students’ sensemaking, creativity and, most importantly, their sense that they are mathematicians.
No comments:
Post a Comment