Making Thinking Visible Across Grade Levels
Our team is committed to continuing to produce Anchor Pages for foundational standards that help teachers design instruction for transferable mathematical skills and knowledge. We’ve recently released 3 new Anchor Pages in grades 4, 6, and High School that explicitly engage students in mathematical problem solving using concrete and visual modeling.
The high school example above shows how we’ve incorporated strategies within the quarterly objectives that scaffold problem solving by engaging students in the use of manipulatives. For the foundational algebraic skill of solving quadratic equations, it is important for students to have a concrete understanding of integers and variables, the algebra tiles strategy helps with that. We believe using concrete modeling is the key to giving students the tools to help them process their thinking and serve as alternatives for demonstrating what they know.
The grade four example above demonstrates how there are visual strategies that students use to demonstrate their learning when they reach the annual target. The fraction number line strategy is one that is strategically introduced and scaffolded throughout all of the quarterly objectives. It serves to concretely represent the concept that fractions are parts of a whole.
As always, these Anchor Pages are grade level and standard aligned. They have incremental learning targets that are supported by learning objectives that scaffold towards mastery and assessments and instructional resources that teachers can use to help them deliver rigorous instruction.
