Creating Mathematicians

Standards of Mathematical Practice (SMPs)

If you are not already familiar with the Common Core Standards of Mathematical Practice, you should be! They are 8 principals for that should be used to provide math instruction. They are as follows:

1.       Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them

2.       Reason abstractly and quantitatively

3.       Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others

4.       Model with mathematics

5.       Use appropriate tools strategically

6.       Attend to precision

7.       Look for and make use of structure

8.       Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning

In other words, we don’t just want our students to be able to do math, we want them to be mathematicians! We don’t spend 6 years teaching students words and definitions, and then start teaching them to read. Neither should we just teach math skills independently and then suddenly expect students to problem solve. Context is just as important in math as it is in reading. That is why one of the ten principles of Thinking Math is “Base instruction on situational story problems” (#3).

Look at the verbs in the SMPs, Make sense, reason, construct, model, use, attend, make use of, express. These are the actions of a mathematician. These are the challenges that face our students.

 So what might this look like in a classroom? Glad you asked. Below is a video taken from a 3rd Grade classroom, but this type of teaching strategy can be applied in every grade.