Goals

By the conclusion of this unit, participants will:

• Watch part of a lesson (video) and engage in three grade level/span mathematics mini-lessons (stations) and reflect on:

  • Mathematics content (depth)

  • Student engagement

• Consider how attending to content and engagement in these (and similar) ways supports the development of expert learners who are purposeful and motivated (UDL framework)

• Make specific plans for enhancing the depth of content and options for engagement afforded students in their own work

Big Ideas

The following big ideas are essential to develop a deep understanding of place value and number sense content: 

• Counting is an effortful process and subitizing, enumerating (1:1), cardinality, ordinality are all significant understandings. 

• Each new greater place value is 10 of the previous place value.

• Equal quantities can be made on the place value chart by grouping and ungrouping 1s or 10s or 100s. This is pivotal for understanding regrouping in subtraction and division.

• The motivation for place value is that it makes counting more efficient requiring fewer numerals and allowing counting by groups of 10’s or 100’s or other powers of 10.

In order to remove barrier to engagement for students in mathematics, the following strategies/structures to recruit interest, provide options for sustaining effort and persistence and self-regulate should be utilized:

• Use student relevant real-world contexts to develop content understanding 

• Use tasks with low floor entry points and multiple solutions or pathways  

• Offer meaningful student choices EVERYWHERE to promote student autonomy 

• Provide structures and tasks that normalize sense-making through productive struggle  

• Facilitate meaningful student collaboration and discourse  

• Engage students in, and demonstrate, self-reflection and personal goal setting