Reflect after reading the Introduction and Chapter 1:
Why do the types of tasks matter in math classrooms? Why is the delivery important?
Consider the following questions:
- What is resonating with you from the reading?
- What caused you to pause and think during this section?
Respond and Interact
After reading these chapters, please post your response to one {or more} of the prompts above. Read our colleagues' reflections. Feel free to respond to someone by sharing a comment, insight or interesting possibility.
My understanding of the types of tasks and why they matter is because students must first learn how to work through a task. The initial tasks need to be fun and engaging, using information they already know. Once they get a handle on what the process is (how to think through them) then we can move on to curriculum based tasks and or harder tasks. The delivery is important because we don't want it to look or sound like how we have been teaching, so their mindset and habits change.
ReplyDeleteI teach in MAP - math assistance program - I have always struggled with what do I teach? Do I teach to the student need? Their holes? Or do I teach along side the curriculum and help them get a better grade on their next unit test? The more learning I do the more I understand it is filling in the holes, if they don't have that foundational understanding, they won't get the higher concepts. I pulled out a couple lines, pg. 25 "...stop worrying about curriculum." pg 29 "mimicking is not thinking and therefore not learning" I'm ready to make some changes and help my students think.
I also though paused and thought, it's interesting that we are learning how not to teach in a "traditional setting", yet this book study I would consider traditional learning. :)
Angie, ditto to your comment about "I have always struggled with what do I teach? Do I teach to the student need? Their holes? Or do I teach along side the curriculum and help them get a better grade on their next unit test?" I find when I am working 1:1 to support math students with their lesson I take a pause because I know the reason they are struggling with the current lesson/unit is in part due to their exisisting deficits in math. Ex: multiplication fact table fluency is REALLY preventing nearly 50% of my students from getting current 6th grade standards at a reasonable pace.
DeleteUnderstanding concepts is the basic step for learning, but to approach instruction in an effective way is the essential part. Coming from a math background I understand the importance of culture of thinking in problem solving, and through this book I want to explore the proven efficient approaches for thinking-classrooms. It will enable me to help the students more effectively.
ReplyDeleteThe macro move discussed in the first chapter make sense, as the thinking task will work as a warm-up for the more challenging work that follows. And the already engaged brain can functionally grasp the problem and contemplate solutions more efficiently. As per the author “Mimicking is bad as it displaces thinking. Mimicking happens not alongside, but instead of thinking.” Therefore, the students who are willing to think will be more successful at solving them.
I was nodding as he was describing the "studenting" behaviors. I also felt convicted when I read, "Thinking is a necessary precursor to learning, and if students are not thinking, then they are not learning." It reminded me of so many math lessons where I just stood up there and asked kids to do what I was doing. They weren't thinking at all - they were just mimicking me. 😳 I hope they had a better teacher somewhere down the road. lol.
ReplyDeleteLiljedahl captured my attention right from the introduction. I was immediately interested in the idea that students aren't really thinking. He says multiple times that "Everywhere I went I saw the same thing - students not thinking and teachers planning their teaching on the assumption that students either couldn't or wouldn't think." I already want to know what Liljedahl suggests to change this! I also related to the idea of 'studenting'. I haven't heard that exact term before but how he describes it seems very accurate. I am looking forward to reading this book and learning from it!
ReplyDeleteI was very encouraged while reading the first part of this book. While I feel as though I encouraged student thinking in my classroom, I am realizing how much more I could have done! One thing that really resonated with me was starting with non curricular tasks to engage and promote thinking in the students. Like others have mentioned, "studenting" is a term I had not heard before starting this book, but it really does convey what I was see in classrooms. I feel like the macro move from chapter 1 is something that I can help teachers accomplish right away.
ReplyDeleteI was resistant to start reading this book but once I started, Renae was right- its a n easy read and makes sense.
ReplyDeleteSomething that resonated with me was how to actually get students thinking instead of them mimicking when solving problems. I want my students to get more students engaged in thinking rather than following steps but have been guilty of mimicking. To help with resilience in a student, kids need to know that it is okay to fail, and if they see everyone else failing too, then they know it's a safe place to fail and can learn to be successful from that. We have to move away from the i do, we do, you do model and this book shows how important the delivery of the task/problem is and how we can't allow the kids to watch us model solving it anymore because then we are setting them up to mimic. Instead, we need ot teach them to think and to really engage in the mathematical understanding on their own.
Your thinking about how we need to get away from I do, you do, we do was my thinking as well. I thought I was doing such a great job by doing this method. Need to rethink and reteach...
DeleteIn my small groups, I have often pulled warmups from different sites that will allow kids to think, problem solve, and work together to find the answer. It is magical when this happens. But there are also other times when I work 1:1 with a student, or I work with a quieter group where they are comfortable simply saying, "I don't know." I am curious to keep reading and see if there are solutions to that, or some good follow up questions that help students come out of that thought process and into an attempt to figure it out. I can say for certain, however that I have witnessed those times where we did the "I do, we do, you do" where I did not get the participation I was looking for.
ReplyDeleteThis chapter really resonated with me; especially the idea of mimicking vs thinking. I remember being a student in my high school math class and trying to mimic the example problems our teacher showed us as my way to solve the assigned problems. I never really learned how to solve those problems on my own.
ReplyDeleteI tried using the primary counting task on page 27 in my kindergarten classroom. I loved using this question as a way to get my students thinking before we did our usual counting routines. I am excited to learn more from this book.