At Traverse Boulder, I facilitated the following session on Tuesday, June 5, 2018.

Experiential and Instructional:
Promoting Productive Mathematical Struggle

How might we implement tasks that promote reasoning and problem solving to deepen conceptual understanding? Let’s identify and implement high quality tasks grounded in real experiences. Advancing the teaching and learning of mathematics cannot be accomplished with decontextualized worksheets. Discuss, sketch, and solve tasks that promote flexibility, creative and critical reasoning, and problem solving. Learning math should be anchored in depth of understanding through context – not pseudo context – and built on conceptual understanding as well as procedural fluency.

Here’s my sketch note of our plan:

Here’s the slide deck:

Just say no to worksheets.

Say YES to productive struggle and grappling.

Embolden your inner storyteller and leverage the art of questioning.

Context is key.