An effective lesson that focuses on reasoning and proof should include several stages. In the lessons you viewed, you saw the teacher introduce a rich task, by relating it to students' everyday-life experiences and to already-understood mathematics. Once the task was presented to the class, the students went to work -- with a partner, in groups, or individually. Students were encouraged to make observations, develop conjectures, and share their reasoning, both for specific solutions and for their choice of a solution method. The teacher's coaching and support through carefully constructed questions helped move the students forward without telling them what to do.

Use the information you learned in this session to plan a lesson for one of your classes. Remember, students have most success with tasks that build on a known concept and that involve patterns that may be seen through numbers as well as geometric diagrams. Choose carefully what you ask students to justify -- the solution, the choice of method, or both. As you work, think ahead to questions and statements that you might use with students who have difficulty beginning the assignment.

After you have created your lesson plan, use the Classroom Checklist (an Adobe PDF document) to evaluate it.

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