Professional Learning - Maintaining Cognitive Demand
A workgroup of middle school math educators was convening to translate lessons from our books onto google slides to increase engagement. Before they began their work, we provided this training to focus their efforts.
I'm sharing the resources that we created and presented for the professional learning. Our goal was to make visible to our teachers the impacts of various teacher moves on the rigor of a task as it progresses from the original task in the curriculum to the set-up and ultimately to the implementation stage (III.vi). We also did a task sort to determine the intended level of cognitive demand of the lessons that we were copying onto Google slides (II.b.vii).
Mathematics Specialist Standards
II. Pedagogical Knowledge for Teaching Mathematics.
b. Teaching. MS professionals must know and be able to:
vii. Use various instructional applications of technology, judiciously, in ways that are mathematically and pedagogically grounded;
ix. Develop skillful and flexible use of different instructional formats—whole group, small group, partner, and individual—in support of learning goals;
x. Manage diversities of the classroom and school—cultural, disability, linguistic, gender, socio- economic, developmental—and use appropriate strategies to support mathematical learning of all students.
III. Leadership Knowledge and Skills. MS professionals must be able to:
iv.a. Evaluate educational structures and policies that affect students' equitable access to high quality mathematics instruction, and act professionally to assure that all students have appropriate opportunities to learn important mathematics;
v.a. Use mathematics-focused instructional leadership skills to improve mathematics programs at the school and district levels;
vi. Select from a repertoire of methods to communicate professionally about students, curriculum, instruction, and assessment to educational constituents—parents and other caregivers, school administrators, and school boards.
link to full list of Standards for Mathematics Specialists (MS) (AMTE, 2013) and descriptions.