Math-Big Ideas

From Classroom Discussions Chapter 9, I think the big idea was the power of planning. Having a course of action, predicting conversation and discussion will help to facilitate your lesson plan as well as be able to make changes during your lesson to help fit the needs of your students. Also the importance of being able to reflect on your lesson and make a decision of where to go from there in terms of the needs of your students and what they actually pulled away from it.

From the article, “Listening to Students: The Power of Mathematical Conversations” I think the big ideas is the power of conversation. In math we think that it is a students job to sit and write down the problems and repeat to learn the method. In fact it is important to give students opportunities to have them talk out what they are thinking. Most importantly defending their answers, opinions is very valuable and teaches children to be responsible for their learning and their decisions in all subject areas.


From the article, Discourse That Promotes Conceptual Understanding I think the big idea was similar to the listening to students. It talked about strategies we can use as teachers to illicit understanding of concepts. This meaning, teach strategies that will promote understanding, but also teach strategies where students defend their answers and prove why it is or is not correct. Having children respond to why they chose a certain strategy or how they got a certain answer makes the children dig deeper then just having the right or wrong answer. Super important in all subject areas and especially math. It is not always about getting the right answer, but understanding how they got to that answer that is important.

The article, Putting Umph into Classroom Discussions, big ideas were how important discussion in the math context is important in reasoning and understanding within the students. It allows students time to defend their thought process and also gives teachers insight on what that student was thinking. They also talked about the importance of discussion with the whole class and being able to argue or discuss a problem and their reasoning for getting it.