A Middle Grade Teacher’s Guide to Model Eliciting Activities

Abstract

This Teacher’s Guide of implementation strategies for Model Eliciting Activities (MEAs) was developed through a collaboration between an 8th grade mathematics teacher and a university partner who served as one of the “clients” during four week-long MEAs in the 2006–2007 school year. The guide provides principles which may be useful to teachers and researchers who wish to conduct investigations of students’ or teachers’ actions during modeling activities in middle grades or other contexts. Neither the mathematics teacher nor this Guide’s collaborator had had prior experience with MEAs. Thirty-two 8th grade students from a magnet school in an urban U.S. district took part in these activities. They were combined from two classes: one regular mathematics class and one special education class. The heart of this Guide comes from reflections by the regular mathematics teacher explored during a May, 2007 interview with the first author who was also one of the university partners. From these experiences, four strategic categories emerged: (1) Group composition, (2) Relevant MEA selection, (3) Teachers’ roles during group work, and, (4) Culminating group presentations and individual written work. During the activities, both the regular and special education teacher observed active engagement by several students who previously rarely participated in mathematics class.