How To Teach The Standards for Mathematical Practice

When the Common Core Standards first came out, like everybody else, I went directly to my grade level standards to see what I needed to teach. That’s common because we have to figure out what has changed and what we’re responsible for helping our kids understand. When I did that, I missed three pages that I feel are some of the most important information that is in the standards. Whether you use Common Core or not, almost every state is using the Math Practice Standards. Officially it’s the Standards for Mathematical Practice, but I always mix that around and call them the Math Practice Standards or The Practice Standards.

In this vlog, I’ll investigate how to teach the Math Practice Standards, in our quest to build our math minds so that we can build the math minds of our students.

You can watch the video below or read through the transcript.

You Don’t Teach Them!

The first thing I really want to hit home is that you can’t teach them. I know it sounds kind of weird, because this video is all about how to teach them, but technically you can’t teach them.
These aren’t standards that are for us, as teachers. They are the standards of how our students should engage with the mathematics. It’s how the kids should be interacting. Your Content Standards tell you what you need to teach. However, the Practice Standards, in my eyes, are how we engage the students when we are doing the content.

You can only provide experiences for your students that help them engage in the Math Practice Standards. You cannot directly teach them. Here’s a perfect example of how we try to teach them, but sometimes it goes wrong. Math Practice Standard number one, is all about helping kids be able to solve rich problems and persevere when solving problems. Our attempt to kind of teach that Math Practice Standard ends up looking something like this.

Have you seen ones like this? You may even have them up on your wall. These are the good intentioned type of anchor charts to help kids really grapple with solving story problems. However, it becomes a prescribed procedure that kids don’t really have to struggle with.

One of the points of Math Practice number one is to get kids to really struggle with problems and learn what to do when they don’t instantly know what to do. We try to help them by giving them steps, but that’s not what the Math Practice Standard number one is really about. We’ve got to just provide kids opportunities to help them explore and interact with the mathematics. But sometimes that can be prescribed step-by-step-by-step. So, the first thing I really want you to understand is that when it comes to the practice standards, we can’t teach them to kids. We can only provide experiences.

You Can’t Be Doing Them All, All The Time

The second thing that I wanted to talk about when trying to teach the Math Practice Standards because we can’t teach them, we can just provide experiences, is that we can’t do all the practice standards at once. It’s impossible, to try to focus on all eight of those practice standards because some of them work well together, but some don’t work well together. You’ve got to know about all of them, keep them in the back of your mind, and be able to enhance the experiences you’re providing for the students when you see the opportunities arise.

You can also have one or two that you’re really wanting to focus on, that you’re hoping the lesson will bring out that opportunity. You can plan your lessons with one or two of them in mind, but always have the others in the back of your head, and if the opportunity comes up, say, “oh man, that’s a great way that we could do this practice standard”. You don’t say that out loud to the kids just say in in your head.

If you try to focus on all of them, it’s just gonna fall flat. So, know them all but focus on one or two in a lesson. It’s not to say that every lesson needs to be bringing this out. There are times when kids just need to be practicing. But that gets at the math practice that is all about attending to precision. That you’re practicing them getting accurate answers. I believe that everything you do in your math lesson can somehow relate back to one of those eight practice standards. So be looking at those.

Spend Time Investigating Them And Watch For Opportunities To Allow Kids To Engage In Them

My last takeaway that I want you to know about when “teaching” the Math Practice Standards, is to really spend some time investigating them. If your district has spent time doing that, then that’s awesome. However, if you haven’t spent time, I want to encourage you to really dig into those. Now here’s the actual three pages of the Common Core State Standards.

If you download the PDF, these are pages six through eight, and you can get those at corestandards.org. Or you can get the download that I’ve created here. It’s basically a cheat sheet that summarizes each one of the practice standards. It explains what it is, why it’s important, and how to use it in your classroom.

It’s not about directly teaching, but it’s about how you can provide experiences that would allow kids to engage in these practice standards. Really spend time investigating it, because your curriculum will state it does a particular practice standard. But, does it really? Often times, I have seen ones that claim do one practice standard or another, but then I look at it and I don’t really see it. For example, when it says that we’re working on math practice that is all about modeling with mathematics, and then step-by-step-by-step in the lesson, it tells them how to use the model. That’s not modeling with mathematics. Modeling with mathematics is really getting to delve into it and decide what model I should use to model this problem. When we are giving the model directly to the kids and telling them exactly how to use it, that’s not truly what modeling with mathematics is.

So, I want you to dive into those eight practice standards, if you have not already, and really get to know them. In my cheat sheet I also recommend two books that are fabulous. Susan O’Connell, and John SanGiovanni have a great book called, Putting the Practices Into Action. And Mike Flynn has a great one called, Beyond Answers, that looks at how those practice standards relate to the early grades, for PreK-2 . So those are two great resources as well.

It’s not just about looking to see what Math Practice your textbook says the activity is. When you’re doing an activity, sometimes the activity in your book can be fabulous. So here’s my word of caution. As teachers, we get in the way of the practice standards actually happening. We’ll give kids this fabulous open-ended problem, but the moment that they struggle, we jump in. Maybe you don’t, but I sure did.

As soon as I saw one of them struggling, I wanted to help. It’s just our nature, right? We want them to be able to be successful, so it’s really hard for us to let the kids really engage and struggle with the mathematics. However, that’s really what the practice standards are about, letting kids dig into the math, without us getting in the way of that learning. That’s not to say that we can’t help them along the way, but sometimes we’ve got to take a step back and pause for a while before we jump in. So, look for great activities, but also be cautious of yourself, because sometimes we get in the way. Also, be cautious of what your textbook says. It may say that it’s doing a great job of hitting these practice standards, but are they really?

So, get the cheat sheet that goes along with this vlog because it’s all about each of the practice standards: what they are, why they are important, and the things that you can be doing in your classroom to help develop these practice standards in your kids. Because it’s all about what the kids are doing with the mathematics, not about what we do in the classroom. Hope this helps you build your math minds so you can go build the math minds of your students.

Enter your name and email address below to download the math practices cheat sheet.