Victoria Jacobs and Rebecca Ambrose
To better understand how teachers can capitalize on the power of story problems, Jacobs and Ambrose analyzed teacher-student conversations in problem-solving interviews. They identified eight categories of teacher moves that, when timed properly, were productive in advancing mathematical conversations.
David Coffey and Esther Billings
The authors describe how they adapted an approach from reading comprehension instruction to help future elementary school teachers (enrolled in a mathematics content and pedagogy course) emerge as literate professionals capable of reading and making sense of professional educational articles. To be productive professionals, preservice teachers and higher education professionals will learn to work collaborativesly to learn to comprehend professional education articles.
Carmel Diezmann
In this article, the author presents a series of number sense activities to be used in the classroom that encourage young students to use and refine their estimation, prediction, and observation skills. The activities explore the relationships between the number of objects in an opaque container and (1) its fullness and (2) the size of the objects in the container. Informal, on-the-spot assessments inform the teacher's instructional planning and decision making throughout the activities.
John Quinn, Brian Kavanagh, Norma Boakes, and Ronald Caro
A team of authors, including a fourth-grade teacher and his professor from a local graduate school, describe culminating and assessing elementary lessons with an index card recap and peer review. In an urban district that traditionally struggles with standardized testing, this activity prompts students to summarize and communicate the day's lesson and key ideas in a format that is easy to implement and continue, and that helps assess student learning.
David Coffland
Extending a simple activity can transform a lesson into an exploration of multiple Standards. This article includes the solution process undertaken by a class of fifth and sixth graders while making students aware of the standards involved in their lesson. Examples of activities for the classroom are included.