Decide and Defend

Decide and Defend  #DeciDefend

After many trials, revisions, and refinements, we are thrilled to share our newest instructional routine, Decide and Defend. #DeciDefend for short!

We have seen that when students engage in the routine, they directly and quickly increase their capacities to make sense of another student’s line of reasoning, critique the reasoning, and develop a process for constructing a viable argument.

This routine is masterful at uncovering student thinking and conceptual understanding. So, we have some advice – start with content that is very familiar so that students are able to work on the lofty goal, which is to build the habits of interpreting, deciding, and defending like mathematicians.

The slides we use are available for download. We have a couple of tasks to share….and hope you’ll share some, too!  And, we will continue to add resources over the coming weeks and months.

When we implemented this instructional routine in classes late last spring, one student told us we should’ve done Decide and Defend before MCAS (MA state test), because it would’ve really helped her on the hard questions.  We agree – we think Decide and Defend is a productive vehicle to build productive struggle, stamina, and the capacity to critique reasoning and defend an argument.

We look forward to hearing how it goes!