September 2024 Teacher Voice

Carla Haas, Central High School Grand Junction, CO 

I was fortunate to be able to participate in the course Powerful Practice: Evidence-Informed Math Teaching offered through CDE. What a valuable course for understanding and improving practice in the math classroom at any level!

One of my favorite modules in the course was the unit that discussed the three aspects of rigor. As teachers, many of us have learned the importance of balancing teaching for conceptual understanding and procedural understanding. This course reminded me of that balance and included application as the third aspect of rigor. The three-legged stool, labeled with conceptual understanding, procedural understanding, and application, was the perfect visual for planning a lesson.

I recently taught a lesson in our similarity unit that compares side ratios and area ratios of similar figures.  Students started with concrete activities using flat tiles and rulers to discover what happens to the area of a figure when the side lengths are doubled or tripled. Next, students worked in groups to apply this concept to solve problems. They formalized what happened (for example, doubling all side lengths quadrupled the area; tripling all side lengths made the area nine times larger) and wrote a generalization of the big idea using variables to help convey the idea with precision. Finally, all students engaged in additional application problems to build fluency with the process. All three legs of the "rigor stool" helped make for a successful learning experience for students.

I was also excited by the module, “Expectations: The Power of Asset-Based Language.” We have long known that as teachers, our words have power. This module looks at how our language and expectations affect student beliefs and achievement in mathematics. It’s powerful stuff! Those are just two of my favorites. I encourage you to check out this and other modules in the course, which you can learn more about on the CDE website.