Teaching Mathematical Thinking: Tasks and Questions to Strengthen Practices and Processes

This new resource by math education expert Marian Small helps schools and districts to refine their teaching of standards-based mathematical practices. Small devotes a chapter to each of the eight standards of practice and includes a discussion of what each standard looks like in grades K-2, 3-5, and 6-8. Specific attention is given to helping students make sense of problems and persevere in solving them (Standard 1) and encouraging students to create viable mathematical arguments and to effectively and respectfully critique the reasoning of others (Standard 3). The author also discusses how to formatively assess student performance for each practice standard. To provide additional support to U.S. teachers in their instructional planning, this resource includes attention to the Canadian math processes of visualization and mental math and estimation.