6. Attend to precision.
How are second and third grade teachers helping their students attend to precision?
How can students be helped to:
- communicate precisely to others
- use clear definitions in discussion with others and in their own reasoning
- state the meaning of the symbols they choose
- careful about specifying units of measure
- calculate accurately and efficiently
- give carefully formulated explanations to each other
What are you doing to help students develop this practice? What makes it hard? What challenges are you encountering?
Having a class generated word wall or list of definitions that they can use from past learning to help explain strategies and solutions to their peers would help them to use precise language. The idea of students talking and explaining their solutions to problems in both large and small groups help them to be more precise and concise so that they are understood by their audience. Precision is also about neatness when showing your work. What about using graph paper to aid in place value, charts etc… The teacher needs to model precision as well. You can’t expect your kids to be neat and precise if you aren’t.
How are second and third grade teachers helping their students to attend to precision?
How can students be helped to:
• communicate precisely to others
• use clear definitions in discussion with others and in their own reasoning
• state the meaning of the symbols they choose
• give carefully formulated explanations to each other
What are you doing to help students develop this practice? What makes it hard? What challenges are you encountering?
At the second and third grade level, vocabulary is still a frequent struggle. Things that we do that are essential when helping the students to communicate precisely are pre-teaching meanings, practicing communication skills, using correct vocabulary while modeling, and posting words on the math word wall. Asking them to clarify their statements and helping them to choose the correct language is also a strategy that we use. In addition, when students are stuck and struggling with putting their math thinking into words, they are allowed to ask friend to help them out. This helps to take the pressure off of the first speaker while allowing the more expert speaker to model.