Powerful Mathematics:

Strategies for Engaging and Empowering ALL Math Learners

Grounded in the book Principles to Actions, Ensuring Math Success for All, (NCTM, 2014) teachers in grades 6-12 will explore math strategies that engage all learners. Through a combination of workshops and utilizing a math lab approach, teachers will learn and implement strategies that successfully engage all learners. This year long professional learning opportunity is designed for secondary math teachers and will focus on Principles to Action such as:

• An excellent mathematics program requires effective teaching that engages students in meaningful learning through individual and collaborative experiences that promote their ability to make sense of mathematical ideas and reason mathematically.

• An excellent mathematics program requires that all students have access to a high-quality mathematics curriculum, effective teaching and learning, high expectations, and the support and resources needed to maximize their learning potential.

Book Studies

Shifting the Balance: 6 Ways to Bring the Science of Reading into the Balanced Literacy Classroom

In Shifting the Balance, authors Jan Burkins and Kari Yates address the ongoing disagreements about how to teach reading as a critical opportunity to look closely at the research, reevaluate current practices, and embrace new possibilities for an even stronger enactment of balanced literacy. By pinpointing gaps and overlaps as well as common misunderstandings and missed opportunities between competing lines of thought, Jan and Kari offer busy educators direction and clarification for integrating science and balance into their daily instruction, while keeping meaningful experiences with the text a priority.

Paraprofessional Specific Training

Paraeducators are critical to special education. Many in the special education field are already using the High-Leverage Practices (HLPs) to address the most critical issues in special education which are organized around four main topics:

• Collaboration

• Assessment

• Social/Emotional/Behavioral/Wellness

• Instruction

Paraeducators need these practices too! In collaboration with the Paraprofessional Resource & Research Center and the CEEDAR Center, the Council for Exceptional Children is excited to provide paraeducators with a learning program focused on your unique role as a paraeducator and how that aligns with specific HLPs. In this on-demand, eLearning program designed for paraeducators, you will be introduced to the four areas of high-leverage practice.

From these four aspects of practice, there are 22 practices intended to address the most critical practices that every PK–12 special education staff person should master and be able to demonstrate. The selected practices are used frequently in classrooms and have been shown to improve student outcomes if successfully implemented.