My observation was scheduled for today, but it didn’t happen because I had to attend a meeting so I won’t post about that\u00a0today. \u00a0Since I am probably more concerned about keeping this #MTBoS30 streak alive than I should be, I am going to post a link to something else instead. \u00a0Below is one of my “Mathematical Thinking” worksheets from last cycle and I want to see if anyone could help me encourage students to write proofs on some of these tasks.<\/p>\n
In this worksheet I wanted students to work on proving ideas, by that I mean taking something that works in some situation, and showing that it works in many, or infinite situations. \u00a0I wanted it to appeal to a broad range of student content levels so all of the proofs are based on number concepts, not really algebra or geometry.<\/p>\n
Students struggled in writing proofs, although most were able to make appropriate guess as to what the proof would show. \u00a0Students would largely show an example of any of these statements with different numbers, but wouldn’t know the first steps to actually come up with a proof.<\/p>\n
For the first page, lots of students would say “7+8+9=24, 3*8=24, It works” and have nothing else to say.<\/p>\n
I need help figuring out how to get students to write\u00a0a statement describing how the phenomena present in their examples can be applied to the rest of the number system.<\/p>\n\n\n