Teaching Strategies
Collaborative Grouping
Our current mathematics curriculum, College Preparatory Mathematics Core Connection 3 (CPM), is designed to enhance student learning through real-world activities and collaborative learning. Students work in heterogeneous teams of four, each team member having a specific role: resource managers get supplies; recorder/reporters share the team’s work with the class; facilitators get things started by asking someone to read; and task managers keep the team focused. My role is to be a facilitator of student learning as they become active participants in their collaborative teams. This may include providing support and guidance, facilitating discussions, and promoting the use of higher-order thinking skills. CPM’s student-centered and problem-based curriculum consists primarily of word problems in the form of scenarios with few examples of how to solve problems. Each requires varying degrees of language translation before the mathematics can be addressed.
Think Ink Pair Share
I ask my students to engage in topic discussions to assess their conceptual understanding. I start by asking a question and allowing them time to think (wait time). I ask them to write down their response before discussing it with their partner, and then with the whole class. I find my middle school students more likely to share with the entire class after discussing with a partner first. After a few students have shared, I follow up to make clarifications and correct errors. The class returns to their writing to make necessary modifications. Students share one final time with their team to make sure that everyone understands the concept. I will select a one or two teams with an accurate explanation to share with the whole class. This activity fosters student accountability and presents opportunities to address content misconceptions.
Practice and Review Time
Students are assigned homework practice after each lesson and core homework problems are used to review concepts from the prior lesson. For example, at the start of lesson I provide students with 30 seconds to review a problem I have written on the board and write as much information and details they can recall about the problem. Using a stopwatch, I walk around to make sure each student utilizes their 30 seconds. If I notice any students who cannot think of anything to write about the problem, I provide them with an entry point by focusing on a specific piece of the problem and ask probing questions. If students are still unable to recall information, they are instructed to listen to the responses of their classmates and be prepared to repeat what they have heard their classmates share.
A few times per week, I save time for teams of students engage with more practice problems through textbook problems, worksheets, or student generated problems. In general, I give students time to practice and review skills individually and within small groups. Students have processing time with problems on their individual whiteboards and then are asked to share their thinking and learning with a partner or within a small group. I try to provide students with a few examples of problems and then ask teams to discuss any patterns they find within their observations or calculations, form a conjecture, and work to justify their conjecture.
Gallery Walks
I use Gallery Walks as a strategy for students to visually share ideas with a poster, project, or presentation. I place each team at a station around the room to set up their work. Students walk around the room with their team to quietly evaluate other team’s work and provide written feedback. Teams write three positive comments and one “next time try” comment. After the Gallery Walk, teams read and discuss the comments they received from their classmates, then select and share one plus and one delta they feel is most useful feedback for their team.
Number Talks
I use Number Talks as a 10 to 15 minute review, to summarize, or as a way to assess overall understanding. Number Talks are basically a mental math activity where we think, ink and share (think consists of mental math, but some students need to write out their thoughts, thus ink means to write). After several minutes, students share with the class the strategies they used to find their answer, which I record on the board. I find that this whole class processing time helps to encourage collaboration, student discourse, and mathematical discussion. My students seem to focus more on content when they hear it from peers. They become engaged and are encouraged to explain their thinking, justify their reasoning, and make sense of each other’s problem-solving strategies, following the standards for mathematical practice. Number Talks are ideal for formative assessment and checking for understanding. Sometimes, I use number talks as a way to gauge whether or not certain students require additional support. Conversely, if students answer the questions with ease, I feel comfortable with giving a quiz or moving on to the next topic.
Journal Entry Using Sentence Frames
At the end of each lesson, students write in their math journals. I ask my students to write about something they learned or reviewed and give an example. I provide sentence frames for extra support, to help guide thinking, and as a method of scaffolding for my English language learners and students who struggle with writing. I write a sentence and leave a blank line for students to fill in the blank with a word, sentence or illustration.
For example:
A. Exponential notationis a shorter way of writing ________(repeated factors), for example:
10 × 10 = 102 = 100.
B. Exponential notation has two parts. One part of the notation is called the The base is the number that is being multiplied by itself. The other part of the notation is the exponent, or power. This is the small number written up high to the right of the base. The _____ (exponent), or power, tells how many times to use the ____ (base) as a factor in the multiplication.
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