Michael D. Steele – författare

Foster a love of mathematics by creating a more inclusive and empowering learning environment through asset-based teaching!

An asset-based perspective on math education means starting with what students already know instead of focusing on what’s missing. This approach elevates student thinking and reasoning skills. In this way, educators acknowledge that all students bring prior experiences, strengths, talents, and resources to the learning process and can contribute meaningfully in an authentic learning environment. Transform Your Math Class Using Asset-Based Teaching for Grades 6-12 provides insight into asset-based perspectives in mathematics education to create an environment where all students feel valued and capable of being doers of mathematics. In the book, Michael Steele and Joleigh Honey highlight the importance of using language, instructional routines, and systemic structure that positively impact student engagement, their math identity, and ultimately their outcomes.

Providing a wealth of knowledge and practical strategies that can be used to transform math classrooms into inclusive, supportive, and empowering learning environments, this book:

Adopting asset-based perspectives is about movement over time, not about flipping a switch. This book paves the path for an asset-based journey that ultimately helps to transform our math classrooms and advance all students’ learning and development.

“This book makes the five practices accessible for high school mathematics teachers. Teachers will see themselves and their classrooms throughout the book. High school mathematics departments and teams can use this book as a framework for engaging professional collaboration. I am particularly excited that this book situates the five practices as ambitious and equitable practices.”

Robert Q. Berry, III

NCTM President 2018-2020

Samuel Braley Gray Professor of Mathematics Education, University of Virginia

Take a deeper dive into understanding the five practices—anticipating, monitoring, selecting, sequencing, and connecting—for facilitating productive mathematical conversations in your high school classrooms and learn to apply them with confidence. This follow-up to the modern classic, 5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematics Discussions, shows the five practices in action in high school classrooms and empowers teachers to be prepared for and overcome the challenges common to orchestrating math discussions.

The chapters unpack the five practices and guide teachers to a deeper understanding of how to use each practice effectively in an inquiry-oriented classroom. This book will help you launch meaningful mathematical discussion through

·         Key questions to set learning goals, identify high-level tasks, anticipate student responses, and develop targeted assessing and advancing questions that jumpstart productive discussion—before class begins

·         Video excerpts from real high school classrooms that vividly illustrate the five practices in action and include built-in opportunities for you to consider effective ways to monitor students’ ideas, and successful approaches for selecting, sequencing, and connecting students’ ideas during instruction

·         “Pause and Consider” prompts that help you reflect on an issue—and, in some cases, draw on your own classroom experience—prior to reading more about it

·         “Linking To Your Own Instruction” sections help you implement the five practices with confidence in your own instruction

The book and companion website provide an array of resources including planning templates, sample lesson plans, completed monitoring tools, and mathematical tasks. Enhance your fluency in the five practices to bring powerful discussions of mathematical concepts to life in your classroom.

Over the past thirty years, Holt High School in central Michigan has engaged in a quiet revolution that has transformed mathematics teaching and learning in the district. From its roots as a rural high school housed in a single building in the 1980s, the high school mathematics staff has grown an innovative, meaningful high school mathematics curriculum that sees nearly every student in the district completing the equivalent of Precalculus. Tracking was dropped in favor of an evolving suite of supports designed to promote student success in unifying, rather than segregating, ways. Mathematics classrooms in Holt are discourse-rich environments where teachers and students explore meaningful uses for mathematics as they reason and problem solve together. This transformation took place and persists amidst changing professional partnerships, shifting district demographics, increasing accountability measures at the state and national level, and turnover in teaching staff and district leadership.

In this book, we explore the case of Holt High School though an exploration of how the mathematics curriculum has shifted over the past thirty years, and the conditions and supports that have been put in place in the district to make this work fruitful and sustainable. The story includes successes, failures, celebrations and challenges as we chronicle Holt’s high school mathematics evolution. Guiding questions, protocols, and reflective activities are provided for teachers and district leaders to begin the challenging conversations in their own district that lead to meaningful change.