Stop Pulling Teeth:How to extract students’ mathematical thinking

Deb Rosenfeld

Suenita Lawrence

Education Development Center, Inc.

Jane bought a birthday card.

She gave the cashier $3

and received 3 coins as change.

Agenda

• What’s a headline story?• Using headline stories in your

classroom• Let’s make some headline stories!

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?

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

Framing Assessment

WHAT? WHY? HOW?

Formative Assessment

What is formative assessment?

• Assessing as you go

• Part of your instruction

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

Formative assessment: How?

• Inquiry style discussion

• Routine check-ins

• Headline Stories!

From the classroom…

+ = 10Consider what each response

tells you about students’ thinking and understanding

Grade 1 Responses

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

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

Recording student responses

• Student idea page:

My idea, someone else’s idea, new idea

• Snapshot of students’ responses:

Display on chart paper, take a picture, type up responses

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 right…It’s making them see that there are different options.” - CV

“[Headline Stories] make them think of their own things. It gets the mathematical mind started.” - JT

“It gets students to think more abstractly.” - LW

Teachers’ Voices

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@edc.orgSlawrence@edc.org