Content Analysis of Tasks

We hope you are looking forward to this PD opportunity. As Stein and Smith suggest, we will strive to use the mathematical framework “as a lens for reflecting on [our] own instruction and as a shared language for discussing instruction with [our] colleagues.” (Stein & Smith, 1998, p. 271) The implications for our teaching are twofold. First, when we create a classroom of low cognitive demand tasks we are “robbing students of the opportunity to develop thinking and reasoning skills and meaningful mathematical understandings.” (Stein & Smith, 1998, p. 272) Second, we must approach the rewarding mission of creating a high cognitive demand classroom with caution. We need to assess where our students are cognitively and assess what their previous math experiences have been so we don’t move headlong into a mass of highly frustrated students. Metacognition needs to become the norm in our classrooms but we must take sensible planned steps to getting there. We must hold our students accountable for high-level thinking and be careful not to proceduralize our tasks because the students have worn us down with their frustration.