Mine the Gap for Mathematical Understanding, Grades 6-8 : Common Holes and Misconceptions and What To Do About Them Paperback / softback

by John J. SanGiovanni, Jennifer R. Novak

Part of the Corwin Mathematics Series series

Paperback / softback

Only a few left - usually despatched within 24 hours

Description

Being an effective math educator is one part based on the quality of the tasks we give, one part how we diagnose what we see, and one part what we do with what we find.

Yet with so many students and big concepts to cover, it can be hard to slow down enough to look for those moments when studentsâ€™ responses tell us what we need to know about next best steps.

In this remarkable book, John SanGiovanni and Jennifer Rose Novak help us value our studentsâ€™ misconceptions and incomplete understandings as much as their correct onesâ€”because itâ€™s the gap in their understanding today that holds the secrets to planning tomorrowâ€™s best teaching. The authors lay out 180 high-quality tasks aligned to the standards and big ideas of Grades 6â€“8 mathematics, including number systems, integers, ratio and proportion, equations and expressions, geometry, and statistics and probability.

The tasks are all downloadable so you can use or modify them for instruction and assessment.

Each big idea offers a starting task followed by: what makes it a high-quality taskwhat you might anticipate before students work with the taskfour student examples of the completed task showcasing a distinct "gap"commentary on what precisely counts for mathematical understanding and the next instructional stepscommentary on the misconception or incomplete understanding so you learn why the student veered off coursethree additional tasks aligned to the mathematics topic and ideas about what students might do with these additional tasks Itâ€™s time to break our habit of rushing into re-teaching for correctness and instead get curious about the space between right and wrong answers.Â Mine the Gap for Mathematical UnderstandingÂ is a book you will return to again and again to get better at selecting tasks that will uncover studentsâ€™ reasoning, better at discerning the quality and clarity of studentsâ€™ understanding, and better at planning teaching based on the gaps you see.Â