At NCSM on Monday, April 23 at 9:30 AM: Building a Knowledge Base for Teaching

Jennifer Knudsen | April 19, 2018

Next week, we present at NCSM on how the 4-part model for argumentation is foundational knowledge on which teachers can build up teaching moves. Here it is in the program:

As a teaser, here are a couple of slides from the presentation:

First, here is the 4-part model that is at the heart of all our work on math argumentation. It’s been a useful way to structure the social process of argumentation for both teachers and students.

Once teachers have experienced argumentation for themselves, in our PD, they can start to build up a repertoire of teaching moves for each part. For example:

We’re going to discuss teaching moves for each part and invite you into the conversation with “Turn and Talk.” We’ll explain how we help teachers learn to use new moves—through methods based on improv theater. You may have read our earlier post "Are your students afraid of expressing their thinking because they don’t want to be wrong?" on improv with students; for teachers, we’ve invented special “teaching games.” Oh and BYOD—we’ll do some math together, too.

Try out one of our activities and let us know how it goes!

Follow @jen_knudsen to keep up to date on our blog entries.

The image in this blog post can be found in our book: Knudsen, J., Stevens, H., Lara-Meloy, T., Kim, H., and Shechtman, N. (2017). Mathematical Argumentation in Middle School—The What, Why, and How. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.