How much is that turkey in the window?

Disclaimer: I receive no financial benefit for my endorsement of the Context for Learning Mathematics (CFLM - Fosnot et. al.) curricula or the associated professional development resources shared in this series.

In my efforts to make my classes for preservice elementary teachers more accurately reflect the work of teachers, I try to craft my lessons as professional development sessions. We spend a significant amount of our time applying the Five Practices for Orchestrating Discussions to activities from established K-6 mathematics curricula. Recently, we used a lesson from CFLM's The Big Dinner unit in anticipation of Thanksgiving.

From Professional Development Resources
used with permission of author

This introductory lesson asks students to find the cost of buying a 24 pound turkey. My teachers start by selecting a Standard for Mathematical Practice (SMP) as a goal for the lesson. (We could also look at content goals, but these teachers need more practice with the SMPs.) Having chosen a goal, the teachers begin applying the First Practice: anticipating possible student responses associated with the goal. The students in this scenario are third graders who are unlikely to use the standard algorithm for multiplying decimals.

Many of the teachers anticipate that the students will break the $1.25 into dollars and cents. For the teachers who identify "Look for and make use of structure" as their SMP goal, this prediction seems reasonable. Some of the teachers consider the models and tools (SMP 4 and 5) students will use to solve the problem. Other teachers, who are attending to precision (SMP 6), wonder where students might make mistakes in their computation. Nearly all the teachers are interested in the different strategies the students will use to solve the problem.

Before we move on to the Second Practice, monitoring students' work, I want to give you an opportunity to add the SMP you would choose to focus on for this problem and possible student responses you might anticipate. As always, please add your contributions to the comments.

In the next post, I will explain how preservice teachers can carry out the remain Practices of Orchestrating Discussions even though they are not actually in an elementary school classroom.