Math Place – Balanced Instruction in Math Place

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The Question text: How are three-part lessons used to balance instruction in Math Place? 

Diane Stang, lead author sits at a table with the Math Place product.

Diane Stang says: It’s also really important that we balance the instruction that we’re using with students so we have many three-part lessons that are built into Math Place, but they have direction. Some are very investigative in nature so the kids are really exploring the math, they’re using a lot of concrete materials. In a lot of other cases, they’re a little more directed, getting more explicit at the teaching. But what we make sure that throughout all the lessons there’s a good balance of shared learning, guided learning and independent learning. So the shared learning what we’ve done is we’ve built in a lot of math talks so there’s a lot of opportunities for the kids to learn together along with the teacher. And we’ve also built in many guided lessons. So for instance there’s a lot of guided math lessons that go along with little books where the teacher can actually differentiate for small groups of students while they’re learning. So this is very handy as well. We also have a lot of independent learning, paired and independent learning but the independent learning is essential because in a lot of cases, kids will demonstrate their learning in the small group or with pairs, but we have to be able to see that they’ve actually mastered these concepts on their own.

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