Focus on Elementary School: Connecting Representations and Posing Purposeful Questions (Taking Action)
Presented by DeAnn Huinker and Paige Richards
Taking Action: Bringing the Effective Teaching Practices to Life in your Classroom Webinar Series
In this session, we use artifacts from elementary school classrooms to examine children’s mathematical thinking and dive into two of the teaching practices—mathematical representations and purposeful questions. First, we will examine what it means to develop representational competence by supporting connections among visual, physical, contextual, verbal, and symbolic representations. Second, we will examine each question as a key strategic tool to not only probe and assess children’s mathematical understanding but to surface mathematical ideas and make them visible for discussion. We will also consider implications for both in-person and virtual learning environments. Placing greater focus on representations and purposeful questions in elementary classrooms are core teaching practices for empowering children as mathematical doers, knowers, and sense-makers.
