Goal:
Think like a mathematician! Connect visual representations to algebraic expressions by chunking, changing the form, and/or connecting to math you know.
Event Information:
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Wed23Jun20211:00 pm - 3:00 pm EDT, 10 am - 12 pm pacific
Live Webinar
Are you worried about how your students will approach learning mathematics in a post-pandemic classroom? Structural thinking, a building-on-strengths approach, and reasoning routines are three critical ingredients to address unfinished learning. In this webinar, we will explore how to integrate all three as we develop students’ capacity to interpret mathematical content, including expressions, equations, graphs, and representations, with confidence. We will focus on structural thinking in critical concepts in middle school mathematics: ratio and proportional relationships, algebratizing arithmetic, rational number concepts, geometric relationships, and/or functions. Leave the webinar with concrete strategies to advance your students’ unfinished learning while teaching grade level content.
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Typically we provide just one visual, but in this task set we played with providing three terms of a visual pattern. The annotation remains the same on each of the three terms so students can key in on the way the chunks grow, or do not grow.
I did this task today with my students and left out the representation for 3(n+1) +3. After the students matched the other two expressions with two pictures, I had them draw a representation for the lonely expression. It went really well! When I do it again next year though, I’ll have the W pattern already printed out for the students so it is easier for them to then just show the representation by grouping, circling, moving, etc. It was a hard pattern for them to draw. I watched Amy model a “Connecting Representations” task in Delaware 2 weeks ago, so I modeled after her. It went really well!!!
Sounds like it went well! I agree that drawing the representation is tedious, and annotating a copy of it is more effective. Grace and I typically recommend that you provide one copy per partnership so that students continue to work together rather than transitioning to individual work. Please keep us posted as you test-drive additional tasks. These reflections are so valuable for others as they implement. Thank you!