Does CPM inspire and require student thinking?
- The emphasis in CPM on active student participation in the lessons (study teams and team roles) fosters student thinking and perseverance. This process also helps students to see concepts concretely and in context first, then build to abstract reasoning and procedural fluency.
- The structure of the developmental problems gives students regular opportunities to share information, knowledge, and understanding of ideas in their study teams. During this process students often use higher order thinking skills, such as: providing clarification, building on each other’s ideas, analyzing and coming to consensus, and productively criticizing.
- Justifying one’s work and critiquing that of others happens every day. Students model contextual situations throughout the courses, using tables, graphs, equations, written descriptions and diagrams. They make assumptions, form predictions, then check to see if they make sense in the context of the problem. Students learn to communicate clearly and to be precise when communicating their understanding of ideas and solutions to problems.