I really enjoyed this article; I like that it parallels a lot of what we've discussed in class. Reading the first half of the article was interesting because the author prefaced the story with a prompt to pay attention to Ms. Dunn's use of the Five Practices, but I had never been introduced to those practices before. Even though I didn't know the specific practices, though, I could still easily see that Darcy Dunn's teaching method was very intentional and successful.
When I got to the section about the Five Practices, I realized we had already discussed most of the practices in class, however I really enjoyed the extra detail and explanation. The two most interesting practices to me are "Sequencing" and "Connecting".
I find the idea of sequencing interesting because, until we discussed it a couple of weeks ago, I had never thought about how much a lesson could benefit from a teacher monitoring student's ideas during individual work, and then picking the order in which she would like her students to present their ideas. This is a simple way for a teacher to take control of a lesson and guide it the way she wants, but still allow her students to do the reasoning and creating. I liked when the article talked about how Ms. Dunn intentionally chose to present the ideas that the majority of students had before calling on students with more unique ideas. The article states that "presenting other strategies first validated the thinking of the majority of students in the class and left them open to considering an alternative approach" (5 Principles for Orchestrating Productive Mathematics Discussions). I have never thought about the benefits of presenting in this order, and I think that this is a very insightful method.
I related with the connecting principle because I think it is essential that students are continually pointed back to the main idea of the lesson. If the structure of the lesson doesn't have a clear underlying theme that the students can grasp, they will often leave a lesson with no clear take-away idea. I like how Darcy Dunn incorporated this principle.
When I got to the section about the Five Practices, I realized we had already discussed most of the practices in class, however I really enjoyed the extra detail and explanation. The two most interesting practices to me are "Sequencing" and "Connecting".
I find the idea of sequencing interesting because, until we discussed it a couple of weeks ago, I had never thought about how much a lesson could benefit from a teacher monitoring student's ideas during individual work, and then picking the order in which she would like her students to present their ideas. This is a simple way for a teacher to take control of a lesson and guide it the way she wants, but still allow her students to do the reasoning and creating. I liked when the article talked about how Ms. Dunn intentionally chose to present the ideas that the majority of students had before calling on students with more unique ideas. The article states that "presenting other strategies first validated the thinking of the majority of students in the class and left them open to considering an alternative approach" (5 Principles for Orchestrating Productive Mathematics Discussions). I have never thought about the benefits of presenting in this order, and I think that this is a very insightful method.
I related with the connecting principle because I think it is essential that students are continually pointed back to the main idea of the lesson. If the structure of the lesson doesn't have a clear underlying theme that the students can grasp, they will often leave a lesson with no clear take-away idea. I like how Darcy Dunn incorporated this principle.
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