Mindset Mathematics

Engage students in mathematics using growth mindset techniques The most challenging parts of teaching mathematics are engaging students and helping them understand the connections between mathematics concepts. In this volume, you'll find a collection of low floor, high ceiling tasks that will help you do just that, by looking at the big ideas at the seventh-grade level through visualization, play, and investigation. During their work with tens of thousands of teachers, authors Jo Boaler, Jen Munson, and Cathy Williams heard the same message that they want to incorporate more brain science into their math instruction, but they need guidance in the techniques that work best to get across the concepts they needed to teach. So the authors designed Mindset Mathematics around the principle of active student engagement, with tasks that reflect the latest brain science on learning. Open, creative, and visual math tasks have been shown to improve student test scores, and more importantly change their relationship with mathematics and start believing in their own potential. The tasks in Mindset Mathematics reflect the lessons from brain science that: There is no such thing as a math person - anyone can learn mathematics to high levels. Mistakes, struggle and challenge are the most important times for brain growth. Speed is unimportant in mathematics. Mathematics is a visual and beautiful subject, and our brains want to think visually about mathematics. With engaging questions, open-ended tasks, and four-color visuals that will help kids get excited about mathematics, Mindset Mathematics is organized around nine big ideas which emphasize the connections within the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and can be used with any current curriculum.

Engage students in mathematics using growth mindset techniquesThe most challenging parts of teaching mathematics are engaging students and helping them understand the connections between mathematics concepts. In this volume, you'll find a collection of low floor, high ceiling tasks that will help you do just that, by looking at the big ideas at the seventh-grade level through visualization, play, and investigation.During their work with tens of thousands of teachers, authors Jo Boaler, Jen Munson, and Cathy Williams heard the same message--that they want to incorporate more brain science into their math instruction, but they need guidance in the techniques that work best to get across the concepts they needed to teach. So the authors designed Mindset Mathematics around the principle of active student engagement, with tasks that reflect the latest brain science on learning. Open, creative, and visual math tasks have been shown to improve student test scores, and more importantly change their relationship with mathematics and start believing in their own potential. The tasks in Mindset Mathematics reflect the lessons from brain science that:* There is no such thing as a math person - anyone can learn mathematics to high levels.* Mistakes, struggle and challenge are the most important times for brain growth.* Speed is unimportant in mathematics.* Mathematics is a visual and beautiful subject, and our brains want to think visually about mathematics.With engaging questions, open-ended tasks, and four-color visuals that will help kids get excited about mathematics, Mindset Mathematics is organized around nine big ideas which emphasize the connections within the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and can be used with any current curriculum.

Introduction 1Low-Floor, High-Ceiling Tasks 2Youcubed Summer Camp 3Memorization versus Conceptual Engagement 4Mathematical Thinking, Reasoning, and Convincing 5Big Ideas 9Structure of the Book 9Note on Materials 17Manipulatives and Materials Used in This Book 18Activities for Building Norms 21Encouraging Good Group Work 21Paper Folding: Learning to Reason, Convince, and Be a Skeptic 22Big Idea 1: Connecting 2D and 3D Worlds 27Visualize: Seeing Slices 29Play: Playing with Clay 34Investigate: The Area of Slices 40Big Idea 2: Constructing Figures to Scale 47Visualize: What is Scale? 50Play: A Fishy Image 55Investigate: Magnifying Solids 61Big Idea 3: Seeing Proportional Relationships 69Visualize: Growing Dough 72Play: is It Proportional? 80Investigate: Sizing Up Proportions 86Big Idea 4: Understanding Percents in the World 93Visualize: Painting Percents 95Play: Building Benchmarks 103Investigate: What's It Going to Cost? 109Big Idea 5: Building Intuition about Probability 119Visualize: is It Fair? 121Play: Fair Sums? 131Investigate: What's in the Bag? 136Big Idea 6: Modeling Probabilities 145Visualize: What's the Chance of That? 147Play: Probability Carnival 155Investigate: Go, Go Galton Board! 163Big Idea 7: Sampling to Understand Populations 171Visualize: Sampling Dots and Beads 173Play: Catch and Release 180Investigate: Wildlife Populations 186Big Idea 8: Operating with Opposites 197Visualize: Line Dancing 199Play: Integer Tic-Tac-Toe 207Investigate: Coordinating Multiplication 216Big Idea 9: Using Algebra as a Problem-Solving Tool 225Visualize: Case by Case 228Play: (Non) Linear Pattern Puzzles 237Investigate: Linear Letters 245Big Idea 10: Exploring Circles 251Visualize: Building Hunches about Circumference 253Play: Dissecting Circle Area 260Investigate: Unraveling Circles 267Appendix 273Centimeter Grid Paper 2741" Grid Paper 275Snap Cube Grid Paper 276Isometric Dot Paper 277Dot Paper 278About the Authors 279Acknowledgments 281Index 283