Professional development

Virtual Lecture Series! (and we’re back from a rocky end of year)

/ Ellen Whitesides / 1 Comment

Are you interested in engaging with national experts around mathematics education without the travel, hassle, and costs associated with attending a conference? Introducing Virtual Lecture Series, brought to you by Illustrative Mathematics. Virtual Lecture Series bring together top speakers from around the country for a series of talks, as well as time for questions and answers, giving you a chance to learn and interact with experts without leaving your classroom or office. Illustrative Mathematics will be offering a variety of Virtual Lecture Series on different themes.

Our first Virtual Lecture Series will meet around the theme: Preparing and Facilitating Engaging Professional Development for Teachers around the Common Core, on the last Wednesday of the month at 7pm Eastern/4pm Pacific from January through May. The intended audience for this series is district and state mathematics specialists as well as teacher leaders. The five hour long sessions will include 40 minutes of presentation from national experts on Adobe Connect, followed by 20 minutes of Q&A. The cost to virtually attend the entire series is $150 which includes access to the following presentations:

January 29th: Diane Briars, President Elect of NCTM, Topic: Effective Instructional Practices to ensure all your students are “Common Core Ready”
February 26th: Bill McCallum, Lead writer of the CCSSM, Topic: Preparing K-12 Teachers for the Pathway to Algebra
March 26th: Mary Knuck, Arizona Department of Education Retired, Topic: Math Talks
April 30th: Ashli Black, NBCT and Cal Armstrong, Math Teacher Leader, Topic: Involving Teacher Leaders in Preparing and Facilitating Professional Development
May 28th: James Tanton, Mathematician and Author of Thinking Mathematically! Topic: Instilling a Love of Mathematics

Also the blog is back from a rough time over the new year.  Sorry if you had trouble with any of the posts or forums, we were not as quick as we could be in renewing the domain.  Let us know if you continue to have trouble accessing anything.

Task Talks

/ Ellen Whitesides / 3 Comments

Are you interested in engaging with other educators about tasks for the mathematics classroom?  Illustrative Mathematics is starting a weekly conversation about tasks, called Task Talks.  Join the community on adobe connect every Monday night from 7pm Eastern to discuss the task identified on our Facebook and Google+ pages the previous Tuesday.  Use it in your classroom, use it with future teachers, or just ruminate on it throughout the week and join us for a discussion on Monday night.

This week we have chosen a fourth grade task about subtraction.  If you think you might join, please let us know here.

Hope to see you there!

Summer Professional Development

/ Ellen Whitesides / Leave a comment

Thinking about where to focus the Math Common Core PD for your school or district this summer?  Check out these two resources:

1. A report from Institute for Mathematics & Education suggesting places that might need some extra PD work.

2. Consider requesting trained teacher facilitators to deliver the Common Core Toolkit, a one-day add on to existing professional development, focused on the Common Core.  This is available for K-5th grade teachers, 6th-8th grade teachers, or high school teachers and is a project of an ad-hoc committee of the CBMS.

EDC course on the mathematical practices for high school teachers

/ Bill McCallum / Leave a comment

Here’s a note from Al Cuoco:

Friends,

For the past two years, we’ve been working with support from the MA department of education to create a course for high school teachers that helps them implement the Standards for Mathematical Practice. The approach of the design is to take examples suggested by the high school content standards—everyday, non-exotic content that is hard to teach and that causes students difficulty—and to develop that content in ways that are consistent with the practice of mathematics as it exists outside of high school, making the topics easier to teach, easier to learn, and more satisfying for everyone.

We field tested the course with over 100 teachers in two sessions over the past two summers at EDC. The a team of 10 colleagues (teachers who work with us) taught it in pairs in 5 sessions around the state at the end of last summer. All of this led to revisions, and we’re now publishing the course and offering it nationally. A sampler is at http://mpi.edc.org/dmp-hs-sampler

Toward Greater Focus and Coherence: an Illustrative Mathematics Common Core Conference

/ Ellen Whitesides / Leave a comment

Register today to reserve your spot for IM&E/Illustrative Mathematics’ next Common Core Conference!

Towards Greater Focus and Coherence May 26-28, 2013 at the University of Arizona This is a great way to start the summer, while you are still in the classroom flow!

We are looking forward to meeting people who care about math education and collaborating with math coaches, classroom teachers, mathematicians, district math specialists, and mathematics educators.

Highlights of the conference include:

1. Perspective from Bill McCallum, lead writer of the Common Core
2. Activities that can be immediately used in your classroom, and a plan for creating similar Common Core aligned activities for students in the future.
3. Breakout sessions from classroom teachers modeling the focus of the Common Core by digging into a particular standard or cluster.
4. Highlights of the focus and coherence of different grade bands and the mathematics behind the standards.
5. Online resources to support the Common Core.

You don’t want to miss this opportunity. Reserve your spot by March 31st for the best rates by registering online.

Mathematics Common Core in the Classroom: March 1-3, 2013 Syracuse, New York

/ Ellen Whitesides / 2 Comments

Save the date and register to reserve your spot now!

IM&E/Illustrative Mathematics’ next Common Core Math Conference is coming to the east coast; Syracuse, New York!

Mathematics Common Core in the Classroom March 1-3, 2013 at the Doubletree Hotel, Syracuse New York

We are looking forward to meeting people who care about math education from across the country and collaborating with math coaches, classroom teachers, mathematicians, district math specialists, and mathematics educators. Highlights of the weekend include:

1. Perspective from Bill McCallum, lead writer of the Common Core, on “What’s different about these standards?”
2. Activities that can be immediately used in your classroom, and a plan for creating similar Common Core aligned activities for students in the future.
3. Breakout sessions from classroom teachers modeling the focus of the Common Core by digging into a particular standard or cluster.
4. Mathematicians discussing the focus of different grade levels and the mathematics behind the standards.
5. Online resources to support the Common Core.

You don’t want to miss this opportunity. Save your spot today by registering online.  OCM-BOCES teachers register with your district office.  All others register on the IM&E website.

The Mathematical Education of Teachers II

/ Ellen Whitesides / Leave a comment

What mathematics do teachers need to know?

How can mathematicians aid teachers in learning this mathematics, in collaboration with others responsible for teacher education?

Current research and experience are synthesized to answer these questions in the new report The Mathematical Education of Teachers II (MET II) from the Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences. This report updates The Mathematical Education of Teachers (published in 2001) and extends its scope from preparation to professional development in the context of the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics.

The audience for the report includes all who teach mathematics to teachers—mathematicians, statisticians, and mathematics educators—and all who are responsible for the mathematical education of teachers—department chairs, educational administrators, and policy-makers at the national, state, school-district, and collegiate levels.

The report may be downloaded free at the Conference Board of Mathematical Sciences web site.  Printed copies may be ordered from the American Mathematical Society.

The Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences (CBMS) is an umbrella organization consisting of sixteen professional societies all of which have as one of their primary objectives the increase or diffusion of knowledge in one or more of the mathematical sciences. Its purpose is to promote understanding and cooperation among these national organizations so that they work together and support each other in their efforts to promote research, improve education, and expand the uses of mathematics.

For further information, contact CBMS director Ronald Rosier, 410-730-1426; 202-293-1170.

Conference Developed Materials on IM&E Website

/ Ellen Whitesides / Leave a comment

The IM&E website now links to the materials developed by participants at our last three Common Core related conferences:

October 2012 Berkeley Conference page Participants made classroom activities based on a particular task or set of 2-3 tasks

May 2012 New Orleans Conference page Participants made short PD units or classroom activities around a particular standard, group of standards, or cluster

February 2012 Tucson Conference page Participants made PD modules around a particular standard, cluster, or domain

Implementing the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics Workshop – October 12 -14, 2012

/ Ellen Whitesides / 8 Comments

Implementing the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics workshop is now taking registrations on the IM&E website. Don’t miss out on this unique opportunity to learn about the standards from lead author of the CCSSM, Bill McCallum, as well as break-out sessions developed and led by classroom teachers at all grade levels.  This workshop is intended for an audience of teachers, administrators, and district personnel. The workshop is from 3:30 on Friday October 12th – 1:30 on Sunday October 14th in Berkeley, California.  If you have been waiting for Bill’s Common Core team to make it to the west coast, this is your chance!

Please register quickly as our previous workshops have sold out!