Teacher resources and professional development across the curriculum

Teacher professional development and classroom resources across the curriculum

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Reasoning and ProofSession 04 Overviewtab atab btab cTab dtab eReference
Part D

Applying Reasoning and Proof
  Introduction | Classroom Practice | Reasoning and Proof in Action | Classroom Checklist | Your Journal


You have just seen one application of reasoning in a high school classroom. Students participated as an entire class and then broke off into groups to explore a challenging problem. Technology, in the form of the graphing calculator, helped them explore conjectures. Reflect on the following questions, and answer one or two in light of the students and content you teach:

Questions to write and reflect about:
  • Students are used to explaining and justifying their answers to teachers or in the context of a written test. How can you teach in such a way to make this explaining and justification part of the student-to-student communication in group work?
  • In part, improving reasoning means gaining the ability to recognize when error occurs and how to fix it. This is a sensitive issue for students, as for anyone, how can you as a teacher help students learn from errors in reasoning? Are there additional considerations when errors occur in the group context?
  • When you are planning mathematics instruction, how do you determine when to explicitly address questions of reasoning and proof, and when not to? Do you have criteria for including it? What are they?
  • Can you relate reasoning and proof instruction to the history of mathematics? Do you believe this would be helpful in your class, why or why not?
Three ways to write and reflect:
  • Use pen and paper.
  • Use a word processor.
  • Use the form below.




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