In today’s podcast, we are going to talk about the Cognitively Guided Instruction Model or CGI. This model was discussed and unpacked in a 1996 research paper by

Carpenter, Fennema, and Franke. The authors’ main purpose in this paper was to use the CGI model to help teachers interpret, transform, and reframe their informal or spontaneous knowledge about their students’ mathematical thinking. Simply, children come to school with some real, present mathematical knowledge and teachers may need to adjust their teaching to tap into this for each child before learning more math from a set curriculum. This notion is called pedagogical content knowledge (Marks, 1990) and it’s worth unpacking.

So, by the end of this episode, I promise you will have a better understanding of the Cognitively Guided Instruction Model (CGI) and 5 tips to help you, as the teacher, understand and break down the pedagogical content knowledge in your math classes to make your teaching and your students’ learning more robust. A real understanding of pedagogical content knowledge will help decrease any math fears and increase math confidence in both you and your students. And, stay tuned for the “Cut That Out!” section of this podcast, where I’ll give you access to a handout so you can remember the topics we talked about and use them right away!