Chapter 7 starts off talking about the same type of teaching methods as the other subjects. He says again that we need to take a look at our standards for math. We need to figure out if the standards we have are preparing students for their futures, and not just their educational futures, but their lives in the workforce. It seems our current system prepares kids for more math classes, but not necessarily for the way they will be using math in the "real world". Thought the chapter he reinforces the idea that most people do not sue more than basic math skills in complex situations. Most people don't use algebra in their jobs or lives. With that in mind, does it make sense for students to take certain classes if there is no connection to the real world? Schmoker also went right along with what one of our speakers at the conference said also; we need to teach fewer concepts, but teach them deeper.
From my experience I can agree that students need to take the basic math skills and learn to apply them in many different situations. Unfortunately students continue to struggle with word problems, even when it is an addition problem.
Schmoker also made the point that we need to make math more "real world". To do this, we need more reading, thinking, and writing in math. Math has two fundamental aspects: calculation and interpretation. Students need opportunities to express their "quantitative interpretations in arguments and proposals". We can do this with text books and real world documents. Schmoker had the idea of collections several really good newspaper articles that allowed student to read, think, write, and argue about while using numbers. I really like this idea. He suggested doing it weekly. He also stated that raw data is a great way to get kids talking.
Along with other chapters, he mentioned again that we need to teach kids to read the text book. He says that math problems can come down to understanding one word and if a kid isn't reading the book correctly they could be getting it all wrong. He says that we need to teach them to read the texts slowly and deliberately and make sure they understand every word and sentence. I liked the writing prompts on p. 213, I thought these would be a great way to get kids to write out what they are thinking and then they will be understanding math more deeply. I like these prompts better than the "explain" that is in our texts. Theses give a little more guidance.
The best thing I took from this chapter is having kids read articles and using those to get them to work out some problems using basic math skills. I am sure we have done this some, but doing it consistently could help a lot of our students.
