Engaging Tasks + Student Discussion = Math Success

  • Engaging students in challenging tasks coupled with the right support and space provided by the teacher fosters student thinking, discussions and approaches essential for building conceptual understanding, problem solving, reasoning, and other habits of mind for learning and using mathematics effectively. 
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    Teaching Practices
    Tasks
    Video from Classroom


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    Practices

    What do these practices look like?  Principles to Actions defines a set of research informed teaching practices that move from telling students to engaging students in reasoning, sense making and problem solving.

    Teaching Practices


    Tasks

    But what do the tasks look like?  All tasks are not the same.  They need to allow access and provide opportunity for students to struggle to make sense of a situation.

    Consider how students would engage the task associated with this image.

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    Classroom Video

    But how do you orchestrate a class discussion that is more than just “show and tell”?  Here is a glimpse.

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    Clip 2:



    Vote for this session at the SXSWedu Panel Picker and come explore how teachers use tasks to engage students (in groups and as a class) in developing their skill and understanding of math.