Assess Success: Exploring Authentic Assessment in the Mathematics Classroom

 BTC: Closing the Lesson Consolidating a Lesson Have a conversation Teacher scribe "I've put up three questions from today's lesson, but I may have put them up in the wrong order. What should the order be and why? Turn and talk." Once they've decided and shared, do the questions together. You are scribing , not instructing.  This is the first opportunity for students to notice and name the variation. They get the questions one at a time, so don't really have time to compare and contrast during  the lesson.  [Guided] Gallery walk -- only relevant for a divergent task (every group does it differently and now we can look at all of those different options for solving) Do/Give Some Notes Not everyone wants students to have notes to look back on -- linear progression from K to 12 Notes help PARENTS see what's going on in the classroom.  Because of this, we've become way too obsessed with note HAVING, leading to becoming too obsessed with note TAKING Writing ...

What's in a Name? Presentation Slides How old is the shepherd?   Goals: Shift teaching tools we already use to focus on mathematical language Introduce new strategies that can promote student understanding of mathematical language Why focus on language? Curricular Competencies - Communicating and Representing Core Competencies - Communication Equity Develop confident learners What are activities we may already be using where we can shift focus? Number talks Menu math - naturally differentiating problems (constraints-based task) Don't just let students do  the problem, but set the intention that they are labelling and communicating their understanding and what they're doing with each step. Push beyond "A, B, C = ____" -- have students actually  label the parts, the constraints that are being satisfied AND HOW "Language Roundup": do we understand the language that is included in the problem?  De-nom-in-a-tor --> every time you write out a word that stud...

Assessing Virtues: Ideas & Examples  There are many ways to be mathematical (visualization vs. defining things vs. etc).  "Problems that give me problems." -- These questions are so interesting that they bring up more questions.  Lecturing -- break up every 10 minutes to engage students in thinking Math is about thinking: The process, not the result Active thinking raises the class performance by at least half a letter grade Mudd Math Goals (Su's school) Coach Collaboration: https://bit.ly/hmc-math-collab Coach Communication: https://math.hmc.edu/su/writing-math-well/ Make Assignments More Exploratory Start with a natural question Many entry points Many solution methods Many ways to continue the investigation Goal: at least 1 interesting exploratory problem on each assignment Examples: DULL: Simplify... MORE INTERESTING:  - Two numbers sum to 10. Find a pair whose product is as large as possible.  - Which is larger: 9x11 or 8x12? Jelly beans in jars for esti...