Math Curse Case Study

1. According to the author, what were the five strands of mathematical proficiency that her “math stars” exhibited? Briefly describe each of the five strands.
• The five strands of mathematical proficiency that the author’s “math stars” exhibited were conceptual understanding, procedural fluency, strategic competence, adaptive reasoning, and productive disposition. Conceptual understanding is the connection of math concepts, operations, and relations to concepts and ideas that the students already know whereas, procedural fluency is the ability to use the procedures the way they are supposed to be used. Strategic competence is the ability to create, present, and solve math problems. Adaptive reasoning requires the use of logic to reflect and justify the use of a procedure on a specific problem, and productive disposition is the attitude of believing that
She began the school year by reading Jon Scieszka’s Math Curse (a story about a boy who wakes up to find every situation in his life is a math problem) to her class and telling them that they were under the “math curse”. The author also had the students bring in math problems that they came across over the next day to class. She typed and illustrated each problem, creating a book full of everyday math problems by the end of the year. This linked the students’ knowledge so they would be able to adequately engage in the “Math Happenings”, which are real-life problems that can be solved with math. Every Monday, the author would enter the classroom and have a real-life scenario that required math to solve the problem. As the year went on, her students began to notice “Math Happenings” of their own. The author expressed that the benefit of the “Math Happenings” was that the students became familiar with both problem posing, as well as problem