Interesting Read-Marshall's Memo

I thought the website mentioned in this article might be helpful to those who want to get a “jump start” with implementing the eight Standards for Mathematical Practice in their math lessons.

Marilyn Burns’s Online Math Assessment Tool

(Originally titled “Go Figure: Math and the Common Core”)

                In this Educational Leadership article, math guru Marilyn Burns says she is passionate about the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics. Why? She likes the way the standards separate eight standards for mathematical practice…

-    Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.

-    Reason abstractly and quantitatively.

-    Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.

-    Model with mathematics.

-    Use appropriate tools strategically.

-    Attend to precision.

-    Look for and make use of structure.

-    Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.

from specific, grade-by-grade content expectations. These strands should be constantly interacting in classrooms K-12.

                Burns says doing mental math (for example, solving 15 x 12 without pencil and paper) is especially helpful in revealing students’ mathematical thinking. “We all know students who can borrow, carry, and invert and multiply yet are unaware when their answers are unreasonable,” she says. Mental math is an important skill for everyday applications – dividing up checks in a restaurant, deciding when to leave for an appointment, adjusting recipes, and estimating savings from buying something that’s on sale. But Burns believes asking students to think through problems out loud can also provide invaluable formative insights to teachers and help improve math teaching.

To this end, Burns and her colleagues created a free online formative assessment tool – the Math Reasoning Inventory – http://mathreasoninginventory.com/Home/VideoLibrary – with video clips showing students’ math reasoning as they wrestle with 6^th-grade problems in whole numbers, decimals, and fractions. She suggests searching for Monica, Alberto, Malcolm, and Cecelia and then for the specific whole-number math problem they were asked to solve. “Watching these videos is helpful because observing students mentally solve math problems and explain their reasoning helps bring meaning to the practice standards,” says Burns. “It’s important not to think about ‘fixing’ students who don’t demonstrate particular skills or understanding, because partial understanding and confusion are part of the learning process – students learn in their own ways, at their own paces.”

 

“Go Figure: Math and the Common Core” by Marilyn Burns in Educational Leadership, December 2012/January 2013 (Vol. 70, #4, p. 42-46), www.ascd.org; Burns can be reached at mburns1941@gmail.com.