Many students enter secondary mathematics classes without having established proficiency with whole and rational numbers. This lack of mastery increases students’ cognitive load when learning complex problems. The purpose of this session is to share methods for efficiently establishing computational fluency while teaching secondary math content.
The struggle is real. But productive struggle is more than a catchphrase. It is the result of five actions that teachers take so that students struggle, persevere, and succeed. In this session, participants learn about how struggle in mathematics is grounded in identity, environment, planning, support, and reflection. Participants will acquire strategies to support them before, during, and after the lesson and the struggle. Instructional strategies, classroom resources, and lesson seeds will be shared for use as soon as the first day of school.
There are many things to consider when we engage students in mathematics. What makes our task extremely difficult is that we teach a specific age of students that function and think in multiple grade levels. This makes differentiation seem impossible but it doesn’t need to always feel this way. Come explore how the purposeful use and sequence of the right tasks can unlock what students know and inform our next move in the progression of learning. (Grades 2-6)
