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.
What captured my attention right away was the idea that a majority of students are not really thinking during a lesson. I was blown away when Liljedahl stated he was observing that “75-80% of students exhibited non-thinking behaviors for 100% of the time.” This immediately made me curious to see what methods would be suggested throughout the book that would help me engage my own students while teaching the new curriculum. However, I was encouraged to see how Liljedahl defines the three types of lessons in Chapter 1, because I feel like the activities we do within the lessons of Illustrative Math fall within the non-curricular task definition.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with Kate. The fact that he went to 40 different schools/classrooms and observed a majority of students showing no-thinking behaviors throughout the class is pretty impactful. I keep thinking about the mimicking portion and how it becomes an addiction for students at a certain point when they're not required to think deeper. I liked his example of route counting. Having students count 1-20. After the students count to 20 which is an example of mimicking, have students think about the numbers that surround a specific number, such as 17. I do this often in my younger small groups. He goes on to explain that asking the question about the numbers that are around a specific number is review and has students thinking about prior knowledge. It turned mimicking into thinking. It makes me think of other ways I can turn mimicking into deeper thinking. I look forward to learning more.
ReplyDeleteI 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.
ReplyDeleteI was nodding through “studenting behaviors. Yes, I did recognize those behaviors; they were present in my classroom “sometimes ago” when I was in elementary/middle school (as a student) but what shock me was percentage assign to them. I released that even if we combine ‘Mimicking’ and ‘Tried it’ students together in a class of 24 students, we will end up with 7 + students who don’t think or try it on daily bases.
ReplyDeleteI had my pause moment at “if we want our students to think, we need to give them something to think about”- the analogy came to my mind when I was reading about child behavior: ‘four years old didn’t communicate verbally until, one night at the dinner table, he did ask for his drink because there wasn’t one.’ We cannot give our students all variables and expect ,at the same time, to think how to get them. I am eager to learn how to get our students in a thinking stage.
The part that had me pause and think the most was when the book stated only 20% of students are trying to solve the math in front of them on their own and the rest aren't thinking about the math or engaged with it. This makes me really want to dive deeper into our math and pull out more math thinking tasks and figure out how to make them more consistently used in my class. I'm excited to read more of the book to learn how to better apply math tasks and really get students thinking about math.
ReplyDelete"Problem solving is what we do when we don't know what to do. ...(it) is not the precise application of a known procedure. It is not the implementation of a taught algorithm."
ReplyDeleteThis really struck me! Our current curriculum definitely teaches the algorithms and procedures in the first part of each unit and then the last couple of lessons are the problem solving and mathematical practices ones. With the assumption that you will apply the algorithms you have learned to solve the "real world" problems.
I'm looking forward to learning more about IM and how those lessons are organized.
For tasks, I'm wondering if there will be an "intro" mini unit created that we will do that uses non curriculum tasks and teaches how to work with a group.
Also, does IM have specific activities that are suggested for Vertical surfaces? Or are our early implementers flagging them as they teach the lessons?
Amy - I'm not sure if leaders are flagging them or not. I wonder what Melissa or Heather would say. There are "exploration" problems included in the IM curriculum that I have used on the non permanent surfaces...
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