The Five Practices in Practice [Middle School]
Successfully Orchestrating Mathematics Discussions in Your Middle School Classroom
- Margaret (Peg) Smith - University of Pittsburgh, USA
- Miriam Gamoran Sherin - Northwestern University, USA
Foreword by Dan Meyer, Includes 65+ Minutes of Online Video
Corwin Mathematics Series
Take a deeper dive into understanding the five practices—anticipating, monitoring, selecting, sequencing, and connecting—for facilitating productive mathematical conversations in your middle school classrooms and learn to apply them with confidence. This follow-up to the modern classic, Five Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematics Discussions, shows the five practices in action in middle 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 middle 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 and 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.
"This books takes 5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematics Discussions to the next level as readers experience what these practices look like in real mathematics classrooms in middle school. The authors specifically address the challenges one might face in implementing the classrooms by providing recommendations and concrete examples to avoid these challenges. This book is a must read for teachers who want to amplify their classroom implementation of the five practices."
Cathy Martin, Executive Director of Curriculum & Instruction
Denver Public Schools
“This book is so incredibly practical and grounded in the hands-on implementation of the five practices! It takes the ideas of the earlier book, which focused more on the “what” of each practice, and looks closer at the when, why, and how that is so important for teachers in their planning. In each chapter, I found myself nodding in agreement as the authors described challenges in using the five practices and thoroughly enjoyed the opportunities to reflect on the practices in relation to my own planning and teaching.”
“At Illustrative Mathematics we were looking for a framework that would enable us to embed in our curriculum ambitious but achievable goals for teacher practice. The five practices was the perfect fit: a memorable, learnable set of principles that could be used by novice and veteran teachers alike to get their students thinking and sharing their reasoning.”
“This book is packed with practical guidance, support, and actual footage of what it looks like to enact ambitious teaching through these practices. If there’s a teacher or leader out there wondering how to ensure their classroom embraces ambitious teaching that is empowering and equitable, this is your guide. Read it. Practice it. Make it yours. There just isn’t anything else out there pushing us to think and act as strategically in our math classrooms like this does.”
The only reason for not adopting the book is because "The Five Practices in Practice (9-12)" book was released. In the future, I may jigsaw the 5P middle school and 5P 9-12.