Search

The implementation of the Common Core's Standards for Mathematical Practice can pose a challenge to all teachers of mathematics but especially to preservice teachers. These standards require teaching in a way that often differs from what preservice teachers have experienced as learners. Standard 1--"Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them"--and Standard 3--"Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others" (CCSI 2010, pp. 6-7)--can be particular sources of difficulty. In this article, the authors share the practice-centered approach taken in a secondary school math program in a large, urban, public university in the northeastern United States. In their methods course, the preservice teachers in this program conduct problem- and student-centered "mini-lessons" based on tasks chosen from two required texts. Preservice teachers model how they would support students' meeting the Standards for Mathematical Practice 1 and 3 while their peers role-play as grade-level students. Thus, the preservice teachers have the opportunity to teach one lesson incorporating these practices and to role-play as a "student" using these practices several times. Three teachers who had implemented mini-lesson tasks during student teaching were invited to coauthor this article to describe their lessons and share the strategies that were successful with their students. Coauthor Fox taught linear relationships to his eighth-grade class using an interesting approach and shares specific mathematical interactions. His account is augmented by descriptions of Nikolina Dabovic's eleventh-grade lesson on the effects of constants on sine curves and Arielle Eager Leavitt's ninth-grade lesson on the correlation coefficient for linear relationships.