Big Ideas and Understandings as the Foundation for Elementary and Middle School Mathematics - Management Assignment Help

Assignment Task

Task

E ducation has always been grounded on the principle that high quality teaching is directly linked to high achievement and that high quality teaching begins with the teacher’s deep subject matter knowledge. Mathematics education in the United States has been grounded on this principle, and most educators and other citizens have always believed that our teachers have adequate content knowledge given the high mathematics achievement of our students. Unfortunately, research conducted in the past ten years has shown that the United States is not among the highest achieving countries in the world, and that our teacher’s subject matter knowledge and teaching practices are fundamentally different than those of teachers in higher achieving countries. Research is beginning to identify important characteristics of highly effective teachers (Ma 1999, Stigler 2004; Weiss, Heck, and Shimkus, 2004). For example, effective teachers ask appropriate and timely questions, they are able to facilitate high-level classroom conversations focused on important content, and they are able to assess students’ thinking and understanding during instruction. Another, and the focus of this paper, is the grounding of a teacher’s mathematics content knowledge and their teaching practices around a set of Big Mathematical Ideas (Big Ideas). The purpose of this paper is to initiate a conversation about the notion of Big Ideas in mathematics. Although Big Ideas have been talked about for some time, they have not become part of mainstream conversations about mathematics standards, curriculum, teaching, learning, and assessment. Given the growing evidence as to their importance, it is timely to start these conversations. A definition of a Big Idea is presented here along with a discussion of their importance. Then a set of Big Ideas and Understandings for elementary and middle school mathematics is proposed. The paper closes with some suggestions for ways Big Ideas can be used. In working with colleagues on the development of this paper I am rather certain that it is not possible to get one set of Big Ideas and Understandings that all mathematicians and mathematics educators can agree on. Fortunately, I do not think it’s necessary to reach a consensus in this regard. Use the Big Mathematical Ideas and Understandings presented here as a starting point for the conversations they are intended to initiate. What is a Big Idea in mathematics? Teachers need to understand the big ideas of mathematics and be able to represent mathematics as a coherent and connected enterprise. (NCTM, 2000, p. 17) Teachers are being encouraged more and more through statements such as the one above to teach to the big ideas of mathematics. Yet if you ask a group of teachers or any group of mathematics educators for examples of big ideas, you’ll get quite a variety of answers. Some will suggest a topic, like equations, others will suggest a strand, like geometry, others will suggest an expectation, such as those found in Principles and Standards for School Mathematics (NCTM, 2000), and some will even suggest an objective, such as those found in many district and state curriculum standards. Although all of these are important, none seems sufficiently robust to qualify as a big idea in mathematics. Below is a proposed definition of a big idea, and it is the one that was used for the work shared in this paper.

The above Management  Assignment has been solved by our  Management Assignment  Experts at onlineassignmentbank. Our Assignment Writing Experts are efficient to provide a fresh solution to this question. We are serving more than 10000+ Students in Australia, UK & US by helping them to score HD in their academics. Our experts are well trained to follow all marking rubrics & referencing style.

Be it a used or new solution, the quality of the work submitted by our assignment experts remains unhampered. You may continue to expect the same or even better quality with the used and new assignment solution files respectively. There’s one thing to be noticed that you could choose one between the two and acquire considered worthy of the highest distinction.