Running head MATHEMATICS 1

Mathematics Instruction

By

Megan Heathman

Master’s Portfolio ED 698

Dr. Katherine Spanger, Ph. D

July 29, 2017

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Abstract

There is a lot of debate in the world over mathematics education and which approach is

best for student achievement and learning. Some adults today face the challenge of negative

stereotypes and emotions surrounding mathematics and their math education through school. As

an elementary teacher, I have a unique opportunity to develop a love for math in students before

they also establish a negative attitude about the subject. Through a multi-pronged approach of

both conceptual understanding as well as procedural knowledge, I’ve tried to develop a

classroom environment that fosters collaborative discussion, engagement, and excitement around

the study of math. Each student brings their own individual perspectives and learning into the

classroom, which means that there must be varied approaches to helping students become

successful at reaching the standards. Each student can be great at math, and it no longer needs to

be a subject that is faced with dread and discomfort, but with excitement and an eagerness to

learn more.
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Mathematics Instruction

Goal 4: A teacher knows the teacher’s content area and how to teach it.

Mathematics

Candidates know, understand, and use the major concepts and procedures that define number and

operations, algebra, geometry, measurement, and data analysis and probability. In doing so they

consistently engage problem solving, reasoning and proof, communication, connections, and

representation.

The Problem We Face

In the United States, many people say that they “just aren’t good at math.” Not only are

many adults stuck in this fixed-mindset frame of thinking, but in addition, many don’t feel

embarrassed or uneasy about this self-analysis; they simply accept it as a fact of life. At the

same time, if someone were to not be a good reader, they would be unlikely to admit this

shortcoming, being that illiteracy is often equated with ignorance, lack of education, and even

being considered stupid (Abbott, 2010).

Why would society view it as being acceptable to do poorly at math, but not at reading?

Four explanations have been offered based on research of national literature and mathematics

education. First, people often think that mathematics is something you are good at because you

were born that way, essentially invoking a fixed-mindset view of learning abilities. You could

even be a smart person, but just not be able to learn math. Secondly, many adults today believe

that all you need to get by in today’s world is “shopkeeper arithmetic,” or a basic understanding

of math principles. Only experts need to do higher-level math, and they can figure those

problems out for you. Third, math is a subject where only the elite will ever shine. Therefore,

educators should really only focus their time on those students who are going to succeed and stop
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trying to provide remediation to others. Finally, many believe that math should be studied at an

advanced level only by those people who are going into math-intensive careers, like a computer

scientist, physicist, or engineer. The only reason to teach higher-level math education in schools

would be to assure that the nation has enough of these talented individuals in the end to fill the

jobs needed in these fields (Abbott, 2010).

These views paint a bleak future for math education as a whole, and certainly do not

place an emphasis on furthering the study of mathematics in our schools. Fortunately, there is a

change underway – a change to our fundamental thinking of math education and how it should

be experienced in school. Many teachers are rediscovering a love for math through their

teaching training and professional development activities (Abbott, 2010). Teachers are

becoming passionate about reforming math education to make it accessible to all learners from

an early age, before children can develop negative attitudes. Teachers are beginning to move

away from the concepts of math through rote memorization and repeating practice, and into an

understanding that math education must allow students to make sense of math ideas for

themselves. Teachers need to be mindful of what their students understand, not merely what

they can do (Burns, 2010).

This is the type of mathematical understanding that I hope to instill in my students. Not

only a procedural knowledge of the operations, but a deeper-level of knowledge base that goes

beyond the simple functioning of math. Through this mindset, students can begin to interpret

math their own way, and through their own schemas, so that every student can be successful

(Cole & Wasburn-Moses, 2010).

Principles and Standards of Math Learning

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For many years, teachers and students have relied heavily on procedure-based

mathematics. This is the understanding that you simply follow the rules and concepts taught to

get the right answers, teaching students that you do not need to know why, but simply invert and

multiply and you will be correct. The problem with this is that students do not understand the

underlying principles behind the math. In other words, they don’t truly understand mathematics.

Luckily, the Common Core is moving away from this approach, and expecting more of an

emphasis on understanding in mathematics (Strom, 2013).

The Common Core does not solely focus on an understanding of math practices and leave

behind the teaching of procedures. Such a practice would simply swing from one end of the

pendulum to the other. Instead, it focuses on a balanced approach, integrating both the Standards

for Mathematical Practice as well as Standards for Mathematical Content, both emphasized with

equal importance (Burns, 2012).

The Standards for Mathematical Practice

The practice standards in Common Core apply to math education at all levels. These are

the standards that we would expect all students to become proficient in as they move through

their education career. These standards are not necessarily meant to be taught explicitly, but

rather they should be the outline for “what we do when we do mathematics,” as Marilyn Burns

(2012, p. 41) states. According to The Common Core Website (www.corestandards.org) The

Common Core Standards for Mathematical Practice are as follows:

1. Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.

2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively.

3. Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.

4. Model with mathematics

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5. Use appropriate tools strategically

6. Attend to precision.

7. Look for and make use of structure.

8. Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.

These practice standards are imbedded and developed through all the math that is taught in the

classroom. For example, taking a simple word problem that I give my class, I can develop

several of these practice standards with students, such as “Eric has 57 marbles that he’s collected.

His friend, Alex, has 39. How many marbles do they have all together?” I let the class work on

this problem individually for a while, then asking the class to respond out loud. Of course, most

students will arrive at the correct answer of 96, but I’m not as much concerned with whether they

got the right answer or not. I want to know how they got to that answer. Now we can start

digging into the interesting part of the problem.

I ask Katy to describe for me what she did to come to her answer of 96. She says, “Well,

I know that I can turn the 39 into 40 by taking one away from 57, then all I have to do is add 40

and 56 to get 96.” This shows me that she is using several different standards by making sense

of the problem, reasoning quantitatively, attending to precision, and looking for structure. I then

ask another student, Ben, to explain his thinking. “I had my whiteboard in my desk, so I wrote

down 57 + 39 and did the addition to get 96.” This is another great example of using appropriate

tools as well as modeling with mathematics. As several students explain their different

reasoning to come to the correct answer, I am able to fill the board with all of their different

responses. Through these exercises, students are critiquing one another’s methods and learning

that there are multiple ways to model a single problem.

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This is just one example of how the practice standards take care of themselves when real

math is happening in the classroom. When these standards are at the core of math that is

practiced in the classroom, it steers the focus away from getting the “right answer” and focuses

instead on helping students to think problems through, reason, model, and talk with one another

about the math. As Marilyn Burns (2012) says, “Here’s the mantra for a lesson: If kids could be

successful without having to think or reason, then the lesson is not good enough” (p. 40). Often I

find myself falling into the trap of thinking, “They responded with the correct answer, so they

understand and we can move on to the next concept.” What these standards emphasize is a

deeper understanding of how the math works, so that students aren’t simply able to “get the right

answer,” but can also explain why they came to that conclusion and how their thinking and

reasoning works. That is the goal of the practice standards.

The Standards for Mathematical Content

Of course, The Common Core Standards would not be complete if they only focused on

the practice of mathematics and did not teach the content and procedures behind those math

practices. The Standards for Mathematical Content vary at each grade level and covers the

mathematical content areas and procedures that should be taught. For example, at the third grade

level, students should be focusing their instruction time on four basic content areas according to

The Common Core (www.corestandards.org):

1. Develop an understanding of multiplication and division and strategies for multiplication

and division within 100.

2. Develop an understanding of fractions, especially unit fractions.

3. Develop an understanding of the structure of rectangular arrays and of area.

4. Describe and analyze two-dimensional shapes.

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These are the specific content standards that are addressed in my classroom throughout the year,

but it is important to still remember that these are not separated from, but imbedded within the

practice standards as well. They work together, giving students a complete and balanced

perspective of mathematics understanding. These standards call for a balance of procedures and

understanding, cautioning that students who lack understanding in a topic will rely of procedures

too heavily (Burns, 2014).

One-On-One Interviews

In the world of reading, it is common to have reading interviews with students, record

their DIBELS fluency, perform Running Records, and have kids discus and interpret what

they’ve read. Why would those same practices not be applied to students’ math understanding as

well? Instead, many times the focus is on if students can complete the page (Strom, 2013). Can

they get the answers correct? If so, then they must be ready to move on to the next concept. The

reality could be that they are simply able to complete the procedure, but have no concept of the

underlying principles for why the procedure works the way it does. One-on-one interviews are a

great way to find out what students really understand about a math lesson (Burns, 2010).

These interviews involve an open discussion with students about how they arrived at a

certain answer. Rather than trying to guide students to the correct answer, the goal of the

interview should be to discover how they came to the answer they found. This can reveal some

big surprises about student thinking and how they are reasoning through problems. Sometimes,

it may appear that a student has a solid understanding on a concept, but when they are presented

with a similar problem approaching the concept from a different perspective, they are not able to

complete the problem (Burns, 2010).

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This information is essential for guiding instructional decisions and determining where

students are in their conceptual understanding. Some of these questions can be asked during

classroom lessons as well. Probing with things like, “Why do you think that?” or “How did you

figure that out?” as well as “How would you explain your answer to someone who disagreed?”

Students are then able to comment on classmates’ responses, offering differing opinions, or

giving an alternative method to arriving at the same answer. All of these conversations are

essential to having a complete picture of what students understand. As Burns (2010) stated in

her article, “The more information we have about them, the better prepared we are to make

effective instructional decisions” (p. 22).

The “Math Wars”

Within the field of math education, there has been an ongoing debate, a “math war” as

some have coined it. Despite calls for reform, decades of research, and millions of dollars on

teacher development, the war rages on. It is between two opposing views on how students learn

math. One side believes students have the capacity to understand and construct their own

mathematical ideas, while the other side insists that the mastery of traditional content in math

must be taught first (Allen, 2011). Those advocating for a constructivist approach to

mathematics argue that students should not have to memorize techniques out of context or

complete pages of mindless exercises, only to become proficient in a procedure without

understanding the true methods behind the concept. The opposing view reasons that students

have no way of constructing a truly solid foundation of knowledge without first having the basic

techniques and procedures taught to them through a more traditional method of explanation and

repeated practice.
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The problem that I see with this dichotomy of views is that it does not allow for a

balanced concept of math education. It is true that evidence suggests that students who merely

memorize facts are able to solve simple problems easily, but have a difficult time when faced

with more complicated and difficult problems requiring an understanding of the underlying

principles behind the procedure (Heitin, 2016). However, that does not prove that students

should have no base knowledge of the procedural underpinnings in mathematics. The conclusion

that more research is pointing to, and the strategy that I agree with for my classroom practices, is

that of a balanced approach between procedural knowledge and conceptual understandings

(Ansari, 2016).

A strong mathematics education blends these two views in order to build students with a

strong base in procedural knowledge and also the ability to explain conceptual understandings

within the procedures. Why would we want to create, on one hand, students who can quickly

solve arithmetic problems, but who do not have the conceptual knowledge to be flexible

mathematical thinkers; or, on the other hand, students who are able to reflect and explain their

mathematical problem solving, but are unable to quickly find answers to complex calculations

because they lack the mathematical fluency (Ansari, 2016)? To me, the only logical solution is

to have a balanced approach to both scenarios. Students should be able to fluently solve basic

multiplication facts, but should also be able to understand the meaning behind the numbers that

they are solving operations with.

This also reflects back to the underpinnings of The Common Core Standards and their

two-pronged approach to math education. As discussed earlier, the standards emphasize a

balanced approach between the practice standards (focusing on a deep understanding of

mathematical practices used throughout a student’s lifetime) and the content standards (focusing
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on the procedural methods used for different mathematical concepts). Having one without the

other would simply create a skewed and incomplete perspective of mathematics for students, not

equipping them with the necessary tools or understandings to build new knowledge and approach

flexible problem solving (Burns, 2012).

Construction of Mathematical Understanding

Every student enters into my classroom with their own range of mathematical skills,

understandings, intuition, interests, approaches to learning, and needs. It is my job as a math

teacher, just as in every subject, to discover these differences and develop a teaching strategy

that appeals to the needs of every student as they construct an understanding of mathematics.

The variety of student interests and abilities implies that there must be a variety of teaching

strategies as well. These strategies include schema-based instruction, scaffolding, peer-mediated

instruction, and concrete-representational-abstract sequence.

Schema-Based Instruction

This method of instruction involves having student break down word problems into

specific parts in order to understand how to proceed. Students may use diagrams or some other

representation to turn the problem into an equation that needs to be solved and locate the missing

information. As students solve different problems, they are able to recognize a specific schema

related to different problem types. As a teacher, I want to make sure that I am representing

problems multiple ways, so that students are able to develop their own schemas to solve various

problems. For example, if given a simple word problem such as, “Ruth had $6 in her piggy bank.

On her birthday, her aunt gave her $7 more. How much money does Ruth have now?” When

presenting this problem I may start by drawing six dollar signs under Ruth’s name. I can then

draw seven more dollar signs under her aunt. When they are all drawn, students are able to find
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the total number of dollars. This can then be represented with the addition problem 6+7=13.

Guided and independent practice can then help students to solidify the concepts and apply what

they have learned (Cole & Wasburn-Moses, 2010).

Scaffolding

Scaffolding is a method of instruction that builds new instruction onto previously taught

skills. This allows students to use what they have already learned to master new knowledge.

This type of understanding is especially important now, when math is understood as a more

integrated discipline to be taught while making connections among mathematical disciplines.

Scaffolds can include different tools that students can use, such as checklists or explicit modeling

and demonstration by the teacher. Scaffolds are not intended to be permanent supports for

students, but are meant to fade out over time as students develop proficiency in skills (Cole &

Wasburn-Moses, 2010).

I use scaffolding throughout many of my lessons as an introduction to new knowledge by

reviewing previously learned information. For example, when first introducing the concept of

multiplication, I ask students to solve a problem using the repeated addition method that we had

learned before. I may give a problem such as, “Amy has four bags of apples. Each bag has three

apples inside. How many apples does she have all together?” We then discuss what different

methods we might be able to use to solve this that we have already learned. Mandy suggests,

“Couldn’t you just add three four times? That would give you twelve apples.” Using this

method of repeated addition, we can begin to look at different multiplication problems that could

be solved. Over time, I introduce students to the concept of multiplication, how it relates to

repeated addition and how they can use this previous knowledge to solve problems.

Peer-Mediated Instruction
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Peer-mediated instruction is the method of having pairs of students work collaboratively

on structured and individualized activities. This provides a unique opportunity for students to

engage in targeted mathematical communication and interaction. Often times, students can be

paired by ability level, with higher performing students being paired with lower performing

students. In this model, both students can take turns acting as tutor and tutee through the

problems. This allows each student to take the leadership role, increasing their ownership over

their own learning. Students need to be trained first on the methods of this model and how the

roles of tutor and tutee work for each student. These models can provide a different mode of

learning for students compared to the traditional teacher-centered approach (Cole & Wasburn-

Moses, 2010).

Concrete-Representational-Abstract (CRA) Sequence

This model represents the continuum of learning through first the use of concrete

manipulatives, followed by representational pictures, and, finally, abstract symbols. This method

of instruction works particularly well during inquiry-based instruction, during which students are

able to use manipulatives to work through inquiry-based activities. The use of manipulatives,

physical materials that students can maneuver to solve many different problems, can be

particularly effective for students who struggle with conceptualizing math concepts. Once

students have mastered the skill using manipulatives, they can move on the representational

phase. During this phase, they use tally marks, pictures, or other semiconcrete items in order to

represent and solve the problem. Finally, students are able to move into the abstract phase, in

which they use traditional numbers and symbols to solve problems (Strom, 2012).

I use the CRA sequence throughout my math teaching in the classroom as students learn

new concepts and ideas. Going back to the idea of multiplication and developing an
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understanding of multiplication strategies, I like to begin each topic by using some kind of

manipulative to represent the problem. With multiplication, we would often use colored

counters. I give each pair of students a pile of counters and then present them with this problem:

“Zach has all of his toy cars arranged in equal rows. There are three rows and each row has

seven cars. How many cars does Zach have?” I then ask partners to use their counters and work

together to find an answer to the problem. Using this method, they are able to use manipulatives,

and also work cooperatively to discuss and come to a shared response to the question.

Typically, after giving students some time to work together and find their answer, I ask

one or two students to come to the front and explain their thinking. David and Nicole come up

and explain, “We arranged our counters just like Zach would have arranged his cars. So we

made three rows of seven counters.” David adds, “Then we both counted them all and decided

that the total was 21.” I have another group, who came to the same response, but through a

slightly different method, share their thinking. Ally and Mia share, “We did the same thing as

David and Nicole at first and made three rows of seven counters. But then, instead of counting

them all, we just added 7+7+7 and got 21.” As a class, we discuss these different techniques and

then all try some other problems together using the counters.

After trying several problems with the manipulatives, I ask students to try the next

problem by just drawing a picture. They could use X marks, or tallies to represent their counters.

I give them another problem, and have students work in pairs to draw a picture to represent the

problem on their whiteboards. Using the same method, I have a few students share their thinking

with the class and we discuss their methods. Throughout this process, if I feel that some students

are struggling with moving to the representational step in the sequence, I have them move back

to using the counters. I may have them try it first with counters and then draw a picture from
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what they created with the counters. This allows students to move through the continuum at

their own pace, not rushing or skipping mastery on a single step.

Finally, I show students how to represent the problem using numbers and symbols, the

abstract representation. I explain to them what the multiplication symbol looks like, and we

work on writing equations for each of the drawings that we created for the problems. Students

may have drawn an array of 4 rows with 8 in each row, which we would go back to and discuss

what the multiplication equation would look like for that array. We all conclude that 4 X 8 = 32

is the correct equation, because there are 4 rows and 8 tallies in each row.

Once we have completed these steps of the sequence together, I have students work on

problems independently. The great part about utilizing this method is that students are able to

work at their own pace and to their own understanding. If some students still need the

manipulatives to show a concrete representation of the problem, they are able to do that. Other

students may just need to draw a picture to represent the equation. Still others may be

comfortable simply solving the abstract equation using their base knowledge of repeated addition.

This process continues throughout each new lesson that I teach in the classroom and every new

concept that students are learning.

Conclusion

Although mathematics in this country may have a negative connotation with many adults,

I have a unique opportunity to implement a positive outlook on math for my students. The

debate and discord among professionals about how mathematics should be taught may continue

to rage, but with a balanced perspective and an understanding of where students are coming from,

I can reach each student and help them be successful mathematicians. Teaching math much

involve both a focus on an understanding of the practice of mathematics as well as an underlying

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foundation on the procedures required to perform algebraic functions. The methods used to

acquire these understandings must be varied and rich, allowing students to engage in dialogue

and cooperative learning experiences with their peers.

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References

Abbott, M. (2010). Winning the math wars: No teacher left behind. Seattle: University of

Washington Press.

Allen, K. (2011). Mathematics as thinking. Democracy & Education, 19(2), 1-7.

Ansari, D. (2016). No more math wars. Education Digest, 81(7), 4.

Burns, M. (2010). Snapshots of student misunderstandings. Educational Leadership, 67(5),

18-22.

Burns, M. (2012). Go figure: Math and the common core. Educational Leadership, 70(4), 42.

Burns, M. (2014). Uncovering the math curriculum. Educational Leadership, 72(2), 64.

Cole, J. E., & Wasburn-Moses, L. H. (2010). Going beyond “the math wars.” Teaching

Exceptional Children, 42(4), 14-20.

Common Core State Standards Initiative. (2017). Retrieved July 28, 2017 from

http://www.corestandards.org

Heitin, L. (2016). Math education; ‘Ten questions for mathematics teachers and how PISA can

help answer them.’ Education Week, (10).

Strom, E. (2012). Common core: Solve math problems. Instructor, 122(3), 19.

Strom, E. (2013). How to do math right. Instructor, 123(1), 39.