Stop Pulling Teeth: How to extract students mathematical thinking

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Stop Pulling TeethHow to extract students
mathematical thinking

• Deb Rosenfeld
• Suenita Lawrence
• Education Development Center, Inc.

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• Jane bought a birthday card.
• She gave the cashier 3
• and received 3 coins as change.

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Agenda

• Whats a headline story?
• Using headline stories in your classroom
• Lets make some headline stories!

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Prompting Questions

• What can you say?
• What questions can you ask?
• What do you want to figure out?
• What can you predict?
• What else do you need to know?

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Features of Headline Stories

• No particular question is asked
• Open-ended so there are multiple approaches and
  solutions
• Lead to further questions
• Allow for finding math in everyday situations
• No key words

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Framing Assessment
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What is formative assessment?

• Assessing as you go
• Part of your instruction

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Why formative assessment?

• Shows what students know and can do
• Helps teachers to
• better understand students thinking and
  reasoning
• pinpoint students errors or misunderstandings
• Informs further instruction

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Formative assessment How?

• Inquiry style discussion
• Routine check-ins
• Headline Stories!

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From the classroom

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• Consider what each response tells you about
  students thinking and understanding

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Grade 1 Responses
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Grade 5 Responses 10

• 1 9
• 0.1 9.9
• 0.1 ? 100
• 0.01 ? 1,000
• 2 1/2 7 1/2
• 8 feet 24 inches 10 feet
• 5 feet 60 inches 10 feet
• 9.9999999998 0.0000000002
• A 0 10 so A 10
• A B 10, B A 10, 10 - A B, 10 - B A

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Create your own Headline Story

• Think of a skill to assess
• Think of a context where it might be used
• Describe that scenario without posing a question

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Recording student responses

• Student idea page
• My idea, someone elses idea, new idea
• Snapshot of students responses
• Display on chart paper, take a picture, type up
  responses

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Teachers Voices

• Headline Stories get students thinking outside
  the box. How many different ways can you come up
  with one thing? And all of them are rightIts
  making them see that there are different
  options. - CV

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Teachers Voices

• Headline Stories make them think of their own
  things. It gets the mathematical mind started.
  - JT
• It gets students to think more abstractly. - LW

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Thank you!

• We hope you try out Headline Stories in your
  classroom!
• For more on Headline Stories and Think Math, look
  us up on the web
• http//www2.edc.org/mathworkshop
• or e-mail us at
• Drosenfeld_at_edc.org
• Slawrence_at_edc.org