Take a deep dive into the five practices for facilitating productive mathematical discussions
Enhance your fluency in the five practices--anticipating, monitoring, selecting, sequencing, and connecting--to bring powerful discussions of mathematical concepts to life in your middle school classroom. This book unpacks the five practices for deeper understanding and empowers you to use each practice effectively.
- Video excerpts vividly illustrate the five practices in action in real middle school classrooms
- Key questions help you set learning goals, identify high-level tasks, and jumpstart discussion
- Prompts guide you to be prepared for and overcome common challenges
Includes planning templates, sample lesson plans and completed monitoring tools, and mathematical tasks.
Margaret (Peg) Smith is a Professor Emeritus at University of Pittsburgh and a mathematics education consultant who has worked with mathematics teachers across the country. In addition, over the past two decades she has been developing research-based materials for use in the professional development of mathematics teachers. She was a member of the writing team for NCTM's Principles to Actions: Ensuring Mathematical Success for All (2013; nearly 100,000 copies sold). She was also co-author of the following books: Five Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematics Discussion (2011; over 90,000 sold); Five Practices for Orchestrating Productive Task-Based Discussions in Science (2013; over 10,000 sold); (Taking Action: Implementation Effective Mathematics Teaching Practices Grades 6-8 (2017; published in April currently on best sellers list) and Taking Action: Implementation Effective Mathematics Teaching Practices Grades 9-12 ((2017; published in April currently on best sellers list). She has been working with middle school teachers in the Syracuse City School District for the past three years and will use this site for filming classrooms for the middle school book.
Miriam Gamoran Sherin is a Professor and Associate Dean for Teacher Education in the School of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. Her research interests include mathematics teaching and learning, teacher cognition and the role of video in teacher learning. She has published extensively in both research and practitioner journals.
Mathematics Teacher Noticing: Seeing through Teachers′ Eyes, edited by Sherin, V. Jacobs, and R. Philipp, received the AERA Division K 2013 Excellence in Research in Teaching and Teacher Education award. In 2016, she received National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, Linking Research and Practice Outstanding Publication Award for her article "Connecting Research to Teaching: Lenses for Examining Students' Mathematical Thinking." A 2017 article in
Kappan addresses key myths about using video effectively with teachers. Sherin has considerable experience working with practicing teachers and in collecting and analyzing classroom videos. Sherin has pioneered the use of "video clubs" in which teachers watch and discuss videos of mathematics classrooms with colleagues. She currently works with districts across the U.S. to explore how teachers can effectively record and share videos from their classrooms.
