An integration of algebraic habits of mind into classroom practice

Bringing students habits of mind specific to each discipline can be seen as an anchor that will lead them to solve the problems in their daily lives. Starting from this premise, a new subject, featuring habits of mind and how to use and improve them in educational environment seems to worth thinking on. This article describes an activity designed to integrate the components of algebraic habits of mind into the classroom practice. In this study, data were collected in three weeks and analyzed descriptive way within the analytic framework for algebraic habits of mind. As a result of classroom practice, various ways of algebraic thinking have been appeared among students, students used multiple representations, generate their solution, abstract operations and transform their relational and generalized thoughts, which have been expressed verbally at the beginning, to symbolic arguments and mathematical statements, which allow the development of the algebra. Students could acquire algebraic habits of minds by long-term classroom practices as exemplified in the activity shared in this article