Wisconsin Guiding Principles for Teaching and Learning: What Do They Look Like in Mathematics Classrooms?

Wisconsin Guiding Principles for Teaching and Learning:
What Do They Look Like in Mathematics Classrooms?
Wisconsin’s Guiding Principles for Teaching and Learning provide important guidance for Wisconsin classrooms. Each of
the guiding principles has implications for teaching and learning in mathematics classrooms. Wisconsin educators and
mathematics leaders have identified some of the characteristics that should be present in mathematics classrooms at all
levels.
1. Every student has the right to learn significant mathematics.
Mathematical proficiency is essential for every student in Wisconsin. Students need to be able to
formulate, represent, and solve problems; explain and justify solutions and solution paths; and see
mathematics as sensible, useful, and worthwhile. In order to achieve this vision, all students must have
access to challenging, rigorous, and meaningful mathematics. Schools and classrooms need to be
organized to convey the message that all students can learn mathematics and should be expected to
achieve.
What does this look like in a mathematics classroom?
 All students are engaged in meaningful and challenging mathematics tailored to their needs.
 All students have the opportunity to develop both conceptual understanding and procedural
fluency.
 All students are given opportunities to see connections between mathematical concepts.
 All teachers intentionally orchestrate classroom discourse to scaffold student learning and build
understanding.
 All students collaborate on purposeful tasks.
 All students show evidence of developing proficiency in the Standards for Mathematical Practice.
2. Mathematics instruction must be rigorous and relevant.
Teachers focus on engaging students in using mathematical reasoning, making mathematical connections,
and modeling and representing mathematical ideas in a variety of ways. The mathematics curriculum
needs to integrate and sequence important mathematical ideas so that mathematics makes sense.
Teachers use rich tasks to engage students in the development of conceptual understanding and
procedural skills. An emphasis on connections within mathematics helps students see mathematics as a
coherent and integrated whole rather than as a set of isolated and disconnected skills and procedures.
Through mathematical applications, students recognize the usefulness of mathematics and appreciate the
need to study and understand mathematical skills and concepts.
What does this look like in a mathematics classroom?
 Curriculum is organized within and across grade levels and be integrated within and across strands.
 Students see how various mathematics topics are related, not only within mathematics, but to
other disciplines, the real world, and their daily lives.
 Students and teachers strategically use precision and the vocabulary of mathematics to
communicate orally and in writing in order to represent mathematical thinking, solution paths, and
solutions.2
 Representational models are created and defended to enhance depth of understanding and to
reinforce the connections to mathematics and to students’ lives.
 Lessons are structured to focus on specific learning goals and organized in a format to facilitate
student understanding and include a summary of the important mathematics.
 Teachers and students us