How to Prepare

You can refer to resources during the exam. So, you should focus on familiarizing yourself with the resources available to you. The more familiar you are with resources, the less time you'll spend looking for them.

I suggest that you review:

• course readings about (1) children's thinking about counting, addition/subtraction, and multiplication/division and (2) about teacher discourse moves. This includes but is not limited to readings from Young Children's Mathematics, supplemental readings from Children's Mathematics (Carpenter et al. 2015).
• course materials (slides, activities, etc.) related to children's mathematical thinking and teacher discourse moves
• videos of problem solving (you have MANY links to videos included in Young Children's Mathematics) and number talks (these can be found from weekly materials).
• weekly activities that we have done together in class to analyze video of children's thinking and teacher discourse moves. You can do some practice analysis by looking at videos again and comparing your analysis to our analysis from class.
• rubric. Make sure that you are clear what is expected and that you feel prepared to meet those expectations.

Be prepared to do the following:

• identify problem types
• recognize different strategies for solving various problem types (e.g., direct modeling, counting, number facts). Remember that strategies are NOT determined by the tools that students use! Students can use manipulatives in a counting strategy, or they can draw a picture to directly model.
• discuss the levels of abstraction and conceptual understanding problem solving strategies demonstrate. Could the student solve the problem without the story? Do students use properties of operations (e.g., commutative, associative) to solve problems? How do students make meaning of operations?
• describe, with detail, what the students knows and can do. Remember to ground your claims in evidence (i.e., what students did or said)!
• identify examples of different types of questions or discourse moves used by the teachers
• evaluate the effectiveness of different types of questions or discourse moves for eliciting, supporting, or extending student thinking using evidence (i.e., how the student(s) responded)
• identify a missed opportunity and describe a specific question or discourse move that you would use and why