ED 411/518

Fall 2005

Class #3 Assignment

Please complete #1 by Tuesday, September 27:

1. Choose your task for the mini-problem assignment

a)Carefully read the mini-problem assignment sheet that was passed out in class. (It is also posted on the Assignments page of our website.)

b)Work with your cooperating teacher to identify the problem that you will give to the class, as well as the date and time of day you will teach the problem.

c)Send me an email with the problem you selected and the date you will be teaching it. Please send this email as soon as possible, but no later than Tuesday, September 27, at 8pm.

Please complete #2 and #3 in your notebook by our next class meeting:

2. Beginning to think about the mini-problem

a)Read: Standard 1: Worthwhile Mathematical Tasks. In National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (1991). Professional Standards for Teaching Mathematics(pp. 24-32). Reston, VA: Author.

Note: I will send you an email with an electronic version of this reading.

Consider your mini-problem task in light of this standard. Choose three of the bulleted points (on p. 25) and, in your notebook, describe how they relate to your task.

b)Read Chapter 5 in Classroom Discussions: Using Math Talk to Help Students Learn. Be prepared to use ideas from this chapter to plan your mini-problem in class next week.

3. Observing student’s thinking

a)Read Chapters 2 and 3 in Children’s Mathematics: Cognitively Guided Instruction.

b)Continue our work on observing students’ thinking and asking questions by watching six more clips of students solving addition and subtraction problems. (Directions for accessing the clips are listed below.) For each problem, make a record of the student’s strategy. Then write the next question you would want to ask the student and note the purpose of the question. You may want to organize your thinking in a table:

Problem / Record of student’s
strategy / Next teacher question &
purpose for that question
Counting strategies:
Join (result unknown) #1: James has 5 clay animals. During art he made 9 more clay animals. How many clay animals does James have now?
Join (result unknown) #2: James has 5 clay animals. During art he made 9 more clay animals. How many clay animals does James have now?
Join (change unknown): Jane has 7 trolls in her collection. For her birthday, her friends give her some more trolls. Now she has 11. How many did her friends give her?
Separate (result unknown): Abubu had 12 stickers. He lost 4 of them. How many does he have now?
Derived facts strategies:
Join (change unknown): Keisha has 6 beads. How many more does she need to collect to have 13 beads all together?
Join (result unknown): Lucy has 8 fish. She buys 5 more fish. How many fish will Lucy have then?

Directions for accessing clips:

  1. Clips can be found on the red CD-Rom (#1) that came with the book.
  2. After inserting the CD, if it doesn’t start by itself, navigate to the disk menu and click on Start.exe. (Note: This should be no problem for PC users. However, if you are using a Mac, you will need to run the CD in classic mode. If you have trouble playing the CD, please let us know right away.)
  3. Once the interface has loaded, click on the “addition and subtraction” tab (this will probably be the one that automatically appears).
  4. Clips are listed by strategy (direct modeling, counting, derived facts) and problem type. To access the videos, click on the boxes by the problem types. The corresponding video will appear in the upper right, with the word problem written below. Click the play arrow to play the video.
  5. You should watch the counting and derived facts clips. (We saw the direct modeling clips in class.)

Note: In the table above, I listed strategy and problem types in order to help you identify which clips you should watch. You are not responsible for memorizing these labels. However, you should think about how problems can differ by what the action is and by what is unknown. In addition, you should think about how students can solve problems in different ways and how the structure of the problem can influence their approaches.

Mathematics Methods Planning GroupPage 1 of 2

University of Michigan