The Mathematical Practices
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Mathematical Practices: Grade Progressions 7-12
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1. Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
Mathematically proficient students:
- explain to themselves the meaning of a problem and looking for entry points to its solution.
- analyze givens, constraints, relationships, and goals.
- make conjectures about the form and meaning of the solution attempt.
- consider analogous problems, and try special cases and simpler forms of the original problem.
- monitor and evaluate their progress and change course if necessary.
- transform algebraic expressions or change the viewing window on their graphing calculator to get information.
- explain correspondences between equations, verbal descriptions, tables, and graphs.
- draw diagrams of important features and relationships, graph data, and search for regularity or trends.
- use concrete objects or pictures to help conceptualize and solve a problem.
- check their answers to problems using a different method.
- ask themselves, “Does this make sense?”
- understand the approaches of others to solving complex problems.
2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively.
Mathematically proficient students:
- make sense of quantities and their relationships in problem situations.
- decontextualize (abstract a given situation and represent it symbolically and manipulate the representing symbols as if they have a life of their own, without necessarily attending to their referents and contextualize (pause as needed during the manipulation process in order to probe into the referents for the symbols involved).
- use quantitative reasoning that entails creating a coherent representation of quantities, not just how to compute them.
- know and flexibly use different properties of operations and objects.
3. Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.
Mathematically proficient students:
- understand and use stated assumptions, definitions, and previously established results in constructing arguments.
- make conjectures and build a logical progression of statements to explore the truth of their conjectures.
- analyze situations by breaking them into cases
- recognize and use counterexamples.
- justify their conclusions, communicate them to others, and respond to the arguments of others.
- reason inductively about data, making plausible arguments that take into account the context
- compare the effectiveness of plausible arguments
- distinguish correct logic or reasoning from that which is flawed
- elementary students construct arguments using objects, drawings, diagrams, and actions..
- later students learn to determine domains to which an argument applies.
- listen or read the arguments of others, decide whether they make sense, and ask useful questions
4. Model with mathematics.
Mathematically proficient students:
- apply the mathematics they know to solve problems arising in everyday life, society, and the workplace.
- In early grades, this might be as simple as writing an addition equation to describe a situation.
- In middle grades, a student might apply proportional reasoning to plan a school event or analyze a problem in the community.
- By high school, a student might use geometry to solve a design problem or use a function to describe how one quantity of interest depends on another.
- simplify a complicated situation, realizing that these may need revision later.
- identify important quantities in a practical situation
- map their relationships using such tools as diagrams, two-way tables, graphs, flowcharts and formulas.
- analyze those relationships mathematically to draw conclusions.
- interpret their mathematical results in the context of the situation.
- reflect on whether the results make sense, possibly improving the model if it has not served its purpose.
5. Use appropriate tools strategically.
Mathematically proficient students
- consider available tools when solving a mathematical problem.
- are familiar with tools appropriate for their grade or course to make sound decisions about when each of these tools
- detect possible errors by using estimations and other mathematical knowledge.
- know that technology can enable them to visualize the results of varying assumptions, and explore consequences.
- identify relevant mathematical resources and use them to pose or solve problems.
- use technological tools to explore and deepen their understanding of concepts.
6. Attend to precision.
Mathematically proficient students:
- try to communicate precisely to others.
- use clear definitions in discussion with others and in their own reasoning.
- state the meaning of the symbols they choose, including using the equal sign consistently and appropriately.
- specify units of measure and label axes to clarify the correspondence with quantities in a problem.
- calculate accurately and efficiently, express numerical answers with a degree of precision appropriate for the context.
- In the elementary grades, students give carefully formulated explanations to each other.
- In high school, students have learned to examine claims and make explicit use of definitions.
7. Look for and make use of structure.
Mathematically proficient students:
- look closely to discern a pattern or structure.
- Young students might notice that three and seven more is the same amount as seven and three more.
- Later, students will see 7 x 8 equals the well-remembered 7 x 5 + 7 x 3, in preparation for the distributive property.
- In the expression x2 + 9x + 14, older students can see the 14 as 2 x 7 and the 9 as 2 + 7.
- step back for an overview and can shift perspective.
- see complicated things, such as some algebraic expressions, as single objects or composed of several objects.
8. Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.
Mathematically proficient students:
- notice if calculations are repeated
- look both for general methods and for shortcuts.
- maintain oversight of the process, while attending to the details.
- continually evaluate the reasonableness of intermediate results.