Building Thinking Classrooms: Closing Lessons with Intentionality – Peter Liljedahl, Jon Orr and Kyle Pearce
As educators of mathematics around the world embrace the ideas shared in Building Thinking Classrooms, more and more students are being positioned to think collaboratively during math class instead of simply mimicking steps, rules, and procedures. While this shift in mathematics teaching practice is a massive leap in the right direction, our work does not stop once students solve the thinking task at hand. Rather, the real work for the facilitator now begins. Join Peter Liljedahl, Jon Orr, and Kyle Pearce as they discuss one of the most important, yet often overlooked parts of an effective problem based mathematics lesson: the closing.
About Peter Liljedahl
Professor, Author, Simon Fraser University
Dr. Peter Liljedahl is a Professor at Simon Fraser University and the the author of the recently released book “Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics, Grades K-12”. Peter works in teacher education and consult regularly with schools and school districts on matters of teaching, learning, and assessment.
About Jon Orr
High School Math Teacher
Make Math Moments
Jon is a math teacher at John McGregor Secondary School in the Lambton-Kent District School Board in Ontario Canada. When not teaching his students and spending time with family he leads workshops and presentations on teaching pedagogy in the math classroom. He is a co-host of the podcast Making Math Moments That Matter along with his friend Kyle Pearce. Lately he is excited about promoting struggle in his students and talking math with primary aged kids while creating math prompts for MathBeforeBed.com. You can follow his classroom lessons, routines, and educational thoughts at Mrorr-isageek.com, makemathmoment.com and also on Twitter: @MrOrr_Geek
About Kyle Pearce
Educator
Make Math Moments
Kyle is the K-12 Mathematics Consultant with the Greater Essex County District School Board, where his passion for mathematics fuels him to Make Math Moments by sparking curiosity, fuelling sense making, and igniting teacher moves.
When he is not working on the next media-rich contextual math task and recording episodes of the Making Math Moments That Matter Podcast, he is spending time with his wife and two children.
He shares his most recent noticings, wonderings, reflections and resources in mathematics content knowledge and pedagogy by delivering workshops across North America and blogging on www.makemathmoments.com, www.tapintoteenmin
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Building Thinking Classrooms: Closing Lessons with Intentionality – Discussion
What was your big take away from this particular lesson?
What is something you are still wondering?
Share your thinking below.
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3 Replies
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My big takeaways were how to consolidate the lesson from the bottom rather than the top and how to change the note-taking that my students are doing to make it more effective. However, I plan to label the quadrants of the note-taking just like the quadrants of the coordinate plane. I teach 6th grade math and students often mislabel the quadrants. This will allow me to teach and reinforce the labeling of the quadrants by labeling our note-taking sections the same way.
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The importance of closing a lesson is so important. It’s in the closing that the real learning happens.
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Remember to consolidate the lesson!!!
