Session Summary

This session provided new opportunities to give and evaluate explanations, which was the basis for discussing the features of good explanations. Practices like explaining were connected with goals that have been articulated for student learning, such as those in the Common Core State Standards for mathematics. Finally a classroom video was the basis for identifying the work that teachers do to support students’ engagement in mathematical reasoning.

The next session uses the Three-Coin Problem and the 21¢ Problem to introduce the idea of “scaling” mathematics problems and uses video workshop to support learning about how colleagues scaled and used the Pool Border Problem in their classrooms.