DMI Discussion

Building a System of Tens

Making Meaning For Operations

 

**************************************************

Greetings and welcome to an archived discussion based on the Developing Mathematical Ideas modules, Building a System of Ten and Making Meaning for Operations.

In these folders you will find conversations of several different educators who were facilitating seminars based on BST and MMO shortly after they were published. Often one facilitator raised a question based on preparation for a session or an experience in leading a particular session and other facilitators responded with their reactions. For the purposes of the archive, facilitators’ names have been replaced with have been pseudonyms. The only exceptions are that, Virginia Bastable and Deborah Schifter, two of the authors of DMI who are also included in the conversations, signed their comments.

The conversations were genuine in that they occurred as the facilitators were working and even though these conversations are closed (that is, you cannot add to them now), you can use these discussions to stimulate your own thinking about issues and questions that come up as you lead your own DMI seminar.
Reading the on-line dialogs that took place, you can consider, for example, the advice one facilitator, Frederick, received about handling the tension between expecting teachers to do homework to prepare for sessions and wanting to encourage teachers to sign up for the BST seminar.

You might read about what happened in Liam's BST session 3 after he expresses a concern about being able to sustain a focused discussion but commits to do just that in the session.

In session 5 of BST, you can read what Dannon wrote to her participants as they responded to this question, “What math issue or issues are you working on for yourself right now? If you feel stuck and can identify what’s blocking you, please do...”

You can investigate the discussions between Boris and Natasha as they describe the experience of “living vicariously through each other’s sessions” during their conversations of Session 3 of MMO.

These are just a few of the ideas you can explore by clicking on various message threads in the archived DMI discussions. We trust you will find this a stimulating and informative experience.

Virginia Bastable and Deborah Schifter

 

---

 

Site hosted by Education Development Center, Inc.© Copyright 2005-2008. All Rights Reserved.