Erika Isomura’s 5th-grade students work in pairs to classify, sort, and glue down decimal representations in order. She challenges her students to explain and defend their thinking.
Almost all of the lessons that we do, like formal lessons, are embedded in a story. That means that because my students get attached to the story there's a character, there's a situation.
They remember stories. They don't say, "Do you remember the day we talked about these numbers?” When their thinking is attached to a story we’ve thought about before, it makes a lot more sense to them because it's nothing new. It really isn't. It's the same thing with this little twist.
Almost all of the lessons that we do, like formal lessons, are embedded in a story. That means that because my students get attached to the story there's a character, there's a situation.
They remember stories. They don't say, "Do you remember the day we talked about these numbers?” When their thinking is attached to a story we’ve thought about before, it makes a lot more sense to them because it's nothing new. It really isn't. It's the same thing with this little twist.