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.
Multiple research meta-analyses find that students who struggle the most in math benefit from explicit and systematic instruction. In this session, participants will learn to apply critical features of systematic math instruction. Content examples will range from number sense to whole and rational number operations.
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)
