Culturally Responsive Strategies for Math InstructionSOUTH DAKOTA INDIAN EDUCATION SUMMITSEPTEMBER 24, 2012

Cultural Responsiveness of Common CoreHow do Standards for Mathematical Practice relate to Native American pedagogy?

Standards for Mathematical Practice

1. Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively 3. Construct viable arguments and critique reasoning4. Model with mathematics5. Use appropriate tools strategically6. Attend to precision7. Look for and make use of structure8. Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning

www.corestandards.org

Ojibwe Pedagogy Standards of Math Practice

Learning from watching

Community Orientation

Oral History

Learning from mistakes

Personal Sovereignty

Commonality of Common Core

Modeling Math

Group Communication

Contextualized problems

Using Counterexamples

Multiple Solutions/Reasoning

Food for Thought

The depressing thing about arithmetic badly taught is that it destroys a child’s intellect, and to some extent, his integrity. Before they are taught arithmetic, children will not give their assent to utter nonsense; afterwards, they will.

(Sawyer in Burns 1994, 119)

Divergent Thinking Study

CITE HERE

Traditional Paradigm

Fact Fluenc

yProcedural Fluency

Math Fluency

Modern Paradigm

Procedural Fluency

FactFluency

Conceptualization

NCTM, 2000Add it Up, 2001

American Educator

If students fail to gain conceptual understanding, it will become harder and harder to catch up, as new conceptual knowledge depends on the old. Students will become more and more likely to simply memorize algorithms and apply them without understanding.

(Willinghelm, 2010)

Variables Impacting Student Success

Quality of the

Curriculum

Quality of the

Instruction

Quality of the School

Environment

Quality of the

Student’s Home

Environment• Schools control 3 out of 4 critical variables that determine student success in mathematics.

Fennel, 2002

Five Strategies

1. CONTEXTUALIZE CONCEPTS2. INSTIGATE REASONING3. PROMOTE REPRESESENTATION4. INITIATE DISCOURSE5. GENERALIZE RULES

Contextualizing concepts

Create “hooks”Use humorTell storiesEngage interestMake mysteriesRelate to kids

Estimating Products

Instigating reasoning

Ask great questionsAsk LOTS of questionsWait for answersGive helpful infoCreate safety

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Promoting representation

Use problems that can be drawnCreate partial models (informal procedure)Introduce “possible” solutionsHave manipulatives availablePositively reinforce alternative solutions

Initiating discourse

Share in pairs and small/whole groupsDevelop routines for “discussion”Have students share solutionsCenter student analysis on student workCause debate

Finding Perimeter of a Rectangular Shape

Generalizing rules

Flip the paradigmForce students to conjectureTest ideas and hypothesesExtend problemsUse algorithms to summarize thinking

From 27% to 95%

Tower-Soudan becomes Reward School (Top 15% of MN schools)

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Thank you!