Teaching Math to Spark Creative Thinking

The Wall Street Journal highlighted the Harlem Success Academy, running a short piece and video on December 14, 2010.  The piece focused on the Cognitively Guided Instruction or CGI method of teaching math that HSA implemented this year.  

CGI is not a traditional primary school mathematics program.  Children in CGI classrooms spend most of their time solving problems, usually problems that are related to a book the teacher has to read to them, a unit they may be studying outside of mathematics class, or something going on in their lives.  Various physical materials are available to children to assist them in solving the problems.  Each child decides how and when to use the materials, fingers, paper and pencil; or to solve the problem mentally.  Children are not shown how to solve the problems.  Instead each child solves them in any way that they can, sometimes in more than one way, and reports how the problem was solved to peers and teacher.  The teacher and peers listen and question until they understand the problem solutions, and then the entire process is repeated.  Using information from each child’s reporting of problem solutions, teachers make decisions about what each child knows and how instruction should be structured to enable that particular child to learn.

A math class being taught by Ms. Jenny Cloncs at HSA4 was featured in the WSJ video.  HSA4 scholars, Ms. Cloncs, and CGI are definitely going Beyond Z!      

One Harlem charter school gets creative with problem solving. WSJ's Christina Tsuei sees how the school is developing ingenuity and reasoning in their students at a time when research shows Americans are less creative.