As I begin a new semester with excited new pre-service teachers, I am inspired by Ilana Horn’s book @ilana_horn, Motivated- Designing Math Classrooms Where Students Want to Join In! She identifies five features of a motivational classroom: Students’ sense of belongingness, the meaningfulness of learning, students’ competence, structures for accountability and students’ autonomy. Dr. Horn shared how the mathematics classrooms are socially risky places and how we need to decrease that social risk to increase student participation and math talk. Thank you to stellar teachers like @pegcagle, Rafranz Davis, Sadie Estrella, Chris Luniak, Fawn Ngyuen, Elizabeth Statmore who open up their practices and routines that motivate student participation. I believe all their effort builds each and every student to have math power. M-power “empower” as I like to call it.
This powerful message aligns with 7 best equitable teaching practices that I call COMPUTE to provide equity in the math classroom that I will share with my pre-service teachers and with teachers I work with Lesson Study.
COMPUTE for Equitable Teaching and Learning in the Math Classroom
- Caring, celebrating and connecting to cultural diversity, cultural contexts and the world we live in to engage in mathematics.
- Owning the math- Allow students to share their mathematical thinking and author math ideas that builds on collective knowledge
- Motivating student to learn by providing experience that taps into learners curiosity and interest where they find challenge and academic success.
- Problem Posing and Problem Solving as the core math activities to develop metacognition.
- Understanding with competence and confidence that builds students’ math identity
- Targeted feedback to math learning for individual needs and accountable learning
- Emotionally supportive learning environment where learners feel safe, valued and cared for where mistakes are embraced as steps to learning.
(See blog connecting COMPUTE Equity with Math Modeling Activities that Connect to Students Lived Experiences http://drjennifersuh.onmason.com/2019/08/20/m-power-through-mathematical-modeling-foregrounding-equity-in-modeling-activities/
