Student-centered Instruction

Every student regularly experiences instruction that is student-centered and is designed to maximize students’ use of language. Lessons create space for students to participate in discourse to promote conceptual understanding, which then leads to procedural fluency, problem-solving, and application. 

• 5 Practices / Bansho / CGI

• 360° Math

• Three-Read Protocol

• Mathematical language routines

• Mathematical instructional routines

• Three-Act Math Tasks

• Think-Pair-Share-Compare

• Workshop / Stations / Math Centers

We subscribe to the commonly held belief amongst the education community that the person in the classroom who is doing the talking is probably the one who is doing the learning. In many typical classrooms, teachers are doing most of the talking, which means the students are learning far less than they otherwise could. In response, classrooms need to be places where students are active participants in their own learning who regularly participate in academic discourse with their peers. Moreover, students should be provided opportunities to invent their own solution strategies prior to being taught standard algorithms that might be applicable. 

To provide the type of student-centered instruction necessary for students to become mathematically literate, the teacher will use instructional strategies that are unlike a typical classroom instruction of the past. We begin with the premise that students need to do most of the talking. In a typical classroom, the teacher does nearly all of the talking (up to 90%) and when students do speak it is generally limited to short one- or two-word answers. Student engagement is at its lowest when teachers are talking. On the flip side, however, student engagement and comprehension improve when they are the ones doing most of the talking.

• Building Thinking Classrooms:  https://buildingthinkingclassrooms.com/ 

• 5 Practices Blog post:  https://illustrativemathematics.blog/2018/01/09/the-5-practices-framework-explicit-planning-vs-explicit-teaching/