Upcoming Presentations

Has it been a challenge to implement class discussions into your lessons? When you send students to work at vertical whiteboards, is it more of a disaster than a delight? Are small group activities in your classroom a stressful struggle or a teacher triumph? If you are struggling to implement some of these pedagogical moves into your teaching, establishing effective norms with your students may be helpful. Small group activities, class discussions, and working at whiteboards can be successful learning tools when we have established classroom norms that support our pedagogical goals. Join us as we share new research about how to establish norms in a mathematics classroom. Learn how to introduce norms, refine them, and reinforce them throughout the school year.

While students often begin school with a single, operational meaning for the equal sign, they need to develop an additional three meanings to be successful in creating and using equations in school mathematics. In this presentation, we provide a model for expert understanding of the equal sign and describe how to help students in each of the grade bands PK-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12 move along the path to expert understanding. We illustrate this progression with tasks in each grade band that you can use to help your students improve their understanding of the equal sign.

As teachers make curricular decisions they must often choose between different instructional options each with their own advantages and disadvantages. Such choices may cause tension as teachers consider how such options will align with instructional goals as well as outside factors.

The Curricular Reasoning Model explains how teachers reason about the role of the four classroom elements: mathematics, curriculum, teacher, and students. Data collected from secondary mathematics student teachers gives insight into how the Curricular Reasoning Model and accompanying self -assessment survey assist them in making intentional decisions during planning. Novice and pre-service teachers benefit from reflecting on which curricular reasoning aspects they engage with and which ones they overlook during planning. The Curricular Reasoning Model also provides teachers with an organizing structure to prioritize their decisions during planning.