5 Practices Orchestrating Productive Math Discussion

In the book, 5 practices orchestrating productive mathematics discussion, it discusses five practices that will improve student-centered discussion (Smith & Stein, 2011). These six practices are anticipating, monitoring, selecting, sequencing, connecting, setting goals and selecting tasks. The first practice is anticipating. In the book, 5 practices orchestrating productive mathematics discussion, it states, “Anticipating requires that teachers do the problems as many ways as possible” (Smith & Stein, 2011). This is also a great time to involve colleagues and other educators. They will be able to give you examples that you would not have thought about. During last semester, I had my peers make a histogram. I gave them M&M’s and told them to use a histogram to describe how many different colors are in the bag. Then, I told them to differentiate between the peanut and plain M&M’s. At home, I had to find map out ways to solve the problem. I was actually …show more content…
This is when the teachers puts all of the student’s hard work together and show how they relate to each other. I think it is a good opportunity to let students judge their peers way of thinking and ask questions to get a better understanding. In the book, 5 practices orchestrating productive mathematics discussion, it tells us that we can use this time to get students to compare their peers’ explanations (Smith & Stein, 2011). The sixth practice or zero practice is setting goals and selecting tasks. In this section of the book, 5 practices orchestrating productive mathematics discussion, it tells us that it is important to pick goals that will show the students the task they will master when they finish the lesson. Then, it tells us how important it is to select a task at the peak of Bloom’s Taxonomy (Smith & Stein, 2011). I see that it we need to get students to dig deeper and critically think about each topic. This will motivate the students to want to learn in the