Best Practice

Todays Standards for Teaching and Learning in Americas Schools

By
Zemelman Daniels - Hyde
Summary
Chapter 4
Best Practice in Mathematics

The authors begin with the supposition that in schools that teach mathematics in the
traditional way, students must struggle through a curriculum of incomprehensible
symbols and rules, memorizing facts and procedures and that math instruction is detached
from any meaningful experiences with manipulative materials and real world
experiences. Math taught in such a manner promotes the feeling that mathematics is so
difficult that only a few bright students can understand it. Although this view of
mathematics is erroneous, many have come to believe that they are incapable of doing
math. As students progress through the grades, fewer and fewer students understand and
enjoy math, and by college, only a small percentage of students elect to major in
mathematics. Further, others take only the minimum courses required even in a time
when many careers depend upon mathematical knowledge.

A Look at the Standards Documents

In this section, an overview or the Professional Standards for Teaching Mathematics

(2000) published by the NCTM was presented.
Six major principles are offered as a vision for teaching mathematics:
Equity (maintaining high expectations and support for all students)
Curriculum (articulating coherent, important mathematics across the
grades).
Teaching (challenging and supporting students in building new
knowledge).
Learning (helping students build an understanding of mathematics by
actively creating meaning by connecting new knowledge with their prior
knowledge).
Assessment (supporting the learning of important mathematics through
formative and summative assessment of what students actually
understand).
Technology (expanding the mathematics that can be taught and enhancing
student learning).
It was noted that the ten principles above are applied to the ten standards for grades
K-12. These standards are grouped as five content standards that address the familiar
branches of mathematics, and five process standards which describe the interrelated
aspects of cognition that build understanding of concepts. Additionally, a section of
expectations of what students should understand, know, and be able to do for each of the
five content standards for each grade level provide a great resource to those developing
curriculum frameworks.
 Best Practice
Todays Standards for Teaching and Learning in Americas Schools
By
Zemelman Daniels - Hyde
Summary
Below is a list of the content standards and process standards put forth by the NCTM.

Content Standards
Number and Operations
Algebra
Geometry
Measurement
Data Analysis and Probability

Process Standards
Problem Solving
Reasoning and Proof
Communication
Connections
Representations
As teachers, it is our job to help student learn how to use these processes appropriately
to develop the mathematical knowledge described in the content standards.

Qualities of Best Practice in Teaching Mathematics

Teachers should help all students understand that mathematics is a dynamic,

coherent, interconnected set of ideas.
The goal of teaching mathematics is to help all students understand concepts and
use them powerfully.
Numbers and computation are an important part of mathematics, but they are only
part.
Mathematics is a science of patterns.
Concepts describe patterns and relationships.
Concepts are abstract ideas that explain and organize information.
Teachers can promote coherence by emphasizing big ideas and helping students
see the connections among concepts.

It was noted that among the five top-scoring countries in the teaching of mathematics
in the Third International Mathematics and Science Study, it was found that those
countries focused more on reasoning and understanding than U.S. schools which stuck
more to procedures and facts. The curricula of high-scoring countries had more in-depth
study of fewer topics each year while the U.S. had superficial coverage of thirty to thirty-
five topics. The high-scoring countries included significant amounts of algebra and
geometry in grades six through eight, while in the U.S. eighth graders study almost
exclusively arithmetic topics with little coverage of algebra and virtually no geometry.
 Best Practice
Todays Standards for Teaching and Learning in Americas Schools
By
Zemelman Daniels - Hyde
Summary
The goal of teaching mathematics is to help all students understand concepts and
use them powerfully.
Students should:
Develop true understanding of mathematical concepts and procedures.
See and believe that mathematics makes sense.
Understand that they can become more confident in their own use of
mathematics.
See and believe that mathematics makes sense.
Come to recognize that mathematical thinking is part of everyones mental
ability.
Develop a deep, connected understanding of mathematics promoting the
learning of computational skills.

The authors made clear that conceptual understanding does not come by teachers
telling students what a concept is, rather concepts are built by each person; understanding
is created. Students must explore many examples and talk about what they see and think
as well as hear explanations from a teacher.

Teaching for conceptual understanding means helping students build a web of

interconnected ideas. Teachers provide experiences for students in which they actively
engage in these key processes:
Making connections
Using reasoning and developing proofs
Problem solving
Creating representations
Communicating ideas

Of special note, students should develop capability with five critical problem-solving
strategies. These strategies are based on creating representations.
Discuss the problem in small groups (language representations).
Use manipulatives (concrete, physical representations and tactile sense).
Act it out (representations of sequential actions and bodily kinesthetic sense).
Draw a picture. Diagram, or graph (visual, pictorial representations).
Make a list or a table (symbolic representations).
 Best Practice
Todays Standards for Teaching and Learning in Americas Schools
By
Zemelman Daniels - Hyde
Todos los estudiantes deberan entender y ser capaces de usar conceptos numricos, operaciones y procedimientos
computacionales. Summary
All students should understand and be able to use number concepts, operations, and
computational procedures.
Counting: Building one-to-one correspondence and number sense. Note:
Traditional basic skills teaching moves children too quickly from counting to
memorizing basic facts. Contar: construccin uno a uno, correspondencia y sentido numrico.
Las habilidades tradicionales bsicas de enseanza llevan a los nios del conteo a la memorizacin de datos bsicos.
Number relations: Decomposing and recomposing quantities to see relationships Relaciones numricas:
among the numbers. It is essential for children to invest great amounts of time descomposicin y
recomposicin de
investigating these relationships. It facilitates other processes immensely. cantidades para ver
relaciones entre
Place value: Creating sets of ten with objects and beginning to understand
Valor espacial: iniciar el conocimeinto nmeros. Facilita otros
procesos inmensamente.
de la ubicacin posicional.
positional notation.
The meaning of operations: Creating models (mental maps) and realizing that El sentido de las
operaciones: crear
operations have multiple meanings. modelos o mapas
Fact strategies: Thinking strategies for learning the facts and operations. With mentales para realizar
operaciones que tienen
extensive
Estrategias reales: desarrollo de estrategias
work with number relations, students can group the facts into patterns muchos significados.

para aprender los hechos y operaciones for meaningful understanding, derivation, and recall.
en parejas para aprendizaje significativo,
derivacin y renombrar.
It is important to distinguish between memorization and automaticity. Automaticity
requires thinking about fact and number relationships while memorization requires
students to focus directly on committing to memory the results of unrelated computation.
automatizacin requiere pensar acerca del hecho y relaciones numricas mientras que memorizacn requiere que los estudiantes se enfoquen directamente en
aprender de memoria los resultados de sucesos no relacionados.
All students must have opportunities to do algebra and reason algebraically
throughout their K-12 school years.
The curriculum should engage all students in context-based problems, using
tables, graphs, and equations (especially functions).
Students should be able to flexibly move back and forth between different
Los estudiantes deberan ser capaces representations.
de moverse flexiblemente en diferentes
representaciones grficas como lo son: Activities should help students build an understanding of the big ideas of algebra:
tablas, grficas, ecuaciones. deberan poder
change,
entender ideas de lgebra, cambio, variables, variable, equality/equation, function, rate of change, and linearity.
ecuacin...

Geometry and measurement concepts are best learned through real-world

experiences and problems. NCTM wants students to understand:
Geometric concepts
Characteristics and properties of two- and three-dimensional shapes
Coordinate geometry to represent relationships
Units of measure

Concepts from statistics, data, chance, and probability thrive on real-world

applications. The NCTM urges teachers to provide challenging tasks in which students
formulate questions and design their own studies that can be addressed with data that they
collect, organize, and analyze. Requiere maestros para proveer retos en los estudiantes que formulen cuestiones y diseen sus propios estudios
Students need: que pueden ser dirigidos con datos que se colectan, organizan y analizan.

To understand a variety of statistical methods and when to use them.

To be engaged in a variety of probability experiments.
 Best Practice
Todays Standards for Teaching and Learning in Americas Schools
By
Zemelman Daniels - Hyde
Summary
It should be noted that teachers should exercise caution in pushing theoretical
probability too soon.
assessment debera ayudar a los maestros a entender mejor lo que los estudiantes saben y hacer sentido a decisiones acerca de enseanza y aprendizaje actividades.

Assessment should help teachers better understand what students know and make
meaningful decisions about teaching and learning activities.
Teachers should use a variety of assessment methods:
Written los maestros deberan usar una variedad de tcnicas o mtodos:
escrito, oral y formatos de demostracin.
Oral
Demonstration formats

Standardized tests are better suited to evaluating programs rather than assessing
individual students.

At the end of the chapter, the authors included a chart: Recommendations on

Teaching Mathematics. The chart is divided into two main sections. One is Teaching
Practices to Increase, and the second is Teaching Practices to Decrease. While the chart
is too lengthy to include here, it is impressive that the Practices to Increase section
focuses on the teacher as a facilitator of learning. This section points out the importance
of manipulative materials, representational problem-solving strategies, creation of
students own representations for abstract ideas, discussion groups, justification of
answers and solution processes, and recognizing and describing patterns, just to mention
a few. Always, the focus is on the communication of math ideas. The Practices to
Decrease section makes clear the need to spend much less time with rote processes,
memorization of isolated facts, premature introduction of highly abstract representations,
doing fill-in-the-blank worksheets, and relying on authorities (teacher, answer key). This
chart is a helpful tool to aid teachers in redesigning math instruction.