Summary of Module
This module consists of four activities, each of which can be enacted multiple times throughout a mathematics methods course. The four activities are: (1) analyzing video cases, (2) analyzing curriculum spaces, (3) analyzing lesson plans, and (4) analyzing an observed lesson or one’s own teaching practice. In these activities, prospective teachers analyze classroom practices through four lenses: teaching, learning, mathematics task, and power & participation. These activities can be completed in any order (though we typically start with Activity 1) and are designed to be repeated multiple times over the semester to support prospective teachers’ learning.
Goals for Prospective Teachers
- identify and analyze aspects of mathematics teaching and learning that support teachers eliciting and building on children’s multiple mathematical knowledge bases.
- see mathematics classrooms in more detail, suspend everyday interpretation, and learn to look for patterns that otherwise go unnoticed at a conscious level.
- identify and analyze aspects of mathematics curriculum materials with respect to eliciting and building on children’s multiple mathematical knowledge bases.
Prospective teachers use a quadruple “lens” approach to analyze video cases for children’s mathematical ideas; knowledge resources; participation and status issues; and instructional strategies that facilitate mathematical thinking/reasoning of diverse students.
Prospective teachers use the Curriculum Spaces Analysis Table to analyze and adapt one or more lessons from commonly used curriculum materials to open “spaces” for eliciting, building on, and integrating children’s multiple mathematical knowledge bases.
Prospective teachers use the video lenses to analyze enacted teaching. This teaching could be another teacher’s practice observed by the prospective teacher or video recordings of their own teaching.
Prospective teachers evaluate a lesson plan they have written for its potential to open spaces for eliciting and building on children’s multiple mathematical knowledge bases using the Curriculum Spaces Analysis Table from Activity 2. The analysis is intended to inform instructional planning and lesson development.
To cite this module: Bartell, T. G., Drake, C., Roth McDuffie, A., Foote, M. Q., Aguirre, J., & Turner, E. E. (2015). Mathematics Classroom Practice Module. In C. Drake et al. (Eds.), TeachMath Learning Modules for K-8 Mathematics Methods Courses. Teachers Empowered to Advance Change in Mathematics Project. Retrieved from: http://www.teachmath.info
TEACH Math 