Introductory Math Seminar: Designing Math Lessons that Captivate Students

Many high school students experience math as dry, confusing, or discouraging. In this talk, I share findings from a design-based research project where teachers and researchers worked together to plan math lessons as stories—what we called Captivating Mathematical Lessons (CMLs).

Using a narrative approach to lesson planning, we aimed to create lessons that spark curiosity, build suspense, and invite surprise, while still keeping the mathematics challenging and coherent. I will describe how we designed these lessons, what they looked like in real classrooms, and how students responded. Compared to their regular lessons with the same teacher, students reported richer and more positive aesthetic experiences—such as feeling intrigued, engaged, and emotionally invested. I’ll close by discussing what it might mean, in practical terms, to design math lessons as stories and how this approach can help students experience mathematics more positively.