What Will I Learn?
- What "Math is Figure-Out-Able" means, what is real math, and what it means to mathematize
- What it means to be a mentor to young mathematicians
- A sequence of Tasks to introduce linear functions to students
- The three big ideas of linear functions
- Steps to take action in your classroom
Why Is This Important?
This is the why, the background, and the context that sets the stage for the rest of the workshop, so that you can implement lessons that draw back on student experience and support sense making.
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Module 2: Connecting to Prior Knowledge: Recursion
What Will I Learn?
- A simple model for recursion
- Three student tasks to connect recursion to functions
- Models for building the connection of recursion to relation
- How to use technology to support connecting recursion to functions
- Steps to take action in your classroom
Why Is This Important?
Students need to connect recursive situations to tables, graphs, and equations, deeply making sense of individual data points, rates of change, and contexts.
It's not about multiple representations, but the connections between the representations that develop robust learning and deep understanding. Students need to be fluid with individual data points in their various representations in order to generalize and reason about the entire context, to reason about the function.
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Module 3: Building Relation and Function
What Will I Learn?
- How to represent real world data by writing equations of a line from graphs and tables
- Additional contexts to help students solidify the big ideas in linear functions
- How to use Problem Strings to further the learning
- How to get students using technology to support understanding
- Steps to take action in your classroom
Why Is This Important?
Students need to be able to not only think about individual data points discretely, but also reason about them in a continuous function. They need to be able to use the available data to find the relations and model it for all data points.
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Module 4: Preparing to Generalize
What Will I Learn?
- Three strategies for writing the equation of a line
- Contexts to continue to expand student understanding
- A Problem String to further the understanding of rate
- Steps to take action in your classroom
Why Is This Important?
As students get ready to generalize, they need to explore more contexts as they decide what always works and what works only sometimes.
Students need to understand rate in a broader way than just slope in order to deeply make sense of how functions behave over time.
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Module 5: Generalizing: The Equation of a Line
What Will I Learn?
- What it means to teach with a function-based approach to algebra
- Specific student tasks that support generalizing the equation of a line
- Problem Strings to further the understanding of rate
- Steps to take action in your classroom
Why Is This Important?
This is the cincher module. All the linear ideas students have been messing around with need to become clear in their minds. We draw back on student experiences and newly developed intuition to connect with what has been traditionally taught as formulas and step-by-step procedures.
Students emerge from these tasks reasoning about linear functions, connecting multiple representations, and making sense of rates of change, starting point, and direction.
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Module 6: Sequencing Tasks for Student Success
What Will I Learn?
- Rich tasks to develop concepts
- How to structure and facilitate a Math Congress to further the math
- Problem Strings to introduce and solidify strategies, models, and concepts
- How sequences of lessons can maximize learning
- Steps to take action in your classroom
Why Is This Important?
This workshop explores a carefully crafted sequence of tasks that support all students, allowing entry and access to the learning, while simultaneously upping the ante for continued growth.
It is not reasonable to expect teachers to be expert curriculum writers. Instead, your job is to be discerning when choosing instructional tasks that support all learners.
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Module 7: High-leverage Teacher Moves
What Will I Learn?
- High-leverage teacher moves to encourage student sense making
- Teacher moves that support equity and access
- Teacher moves to differentiate — to support and challenge all learners
- How to support meaningful discourse to facilitate learning
- Steps to take action in your classroom
Why Is This Important?
Teaching in a way that allows all students to learn and grow is not a trivial task. There are purposeful moves teachers can make that promote class discussion and mathematical dialogue, position all students as sense makers, and build a culture of curiosity and empowerment.
In this module, you’ll learn the high-level teacher moves that make the learning happen like a pro.
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Live Q&A Sessions With Pam
During the workshop you will have the opportunity to submit questions to Pam for her to answer during two live Q&A sessions. The sessions will be recorded and you will have access to them.
As a Participant
You will experience instructional tasks so that you can build intuition in your students.
You will follow a sequence of tasks designed to give all students access so that you can help students build reasoning about functions based on their experiences and what they are naturally thinking.
You will extend the learning to more complicated contexts so that you can strengthen students' reasoning.
You will engage in problem solving so that you can parse out the thinking needed to solve problems while reasoning about functions.
You will learn actionable strategies while engaging in the instructional routine called Problem Strings so that you can develop students' sense of linear functions and build specific mathematical strategies.
You will study three lesson types so that you can to learn to introduce, construct, and solidify reasoning about functions.
You will analyze expert teacher moves so that you can energize your classroom and keep students engaged in sense making.
How Does The Workshop Compare?
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