About the Materials

Who might use these modules?

These modules could be used by teacher educators, professional development facilitators, teacher leaders, school or district leaders, family engagement coordinators, and other such roles in schools and communities. 

How might they be used?

We imagine the materials could be used on district professional development days, during family engagement events at schools, within an existing district community/family engagement format such as evening family engagement workshops. Teacher educators might use the materials in professional development settings, in mathematics methods classes, or for use in courses related to family and community engagement, for example. Most of the materials are intended to be implemented with caregivers and teachers together, and some activities are designed for just teachers. They could also be adapted for work with just caregivers or with pre-service teachers. The math tasks could even be used in classrooms with children. The materials are structured for you to select what is useful and compile in the way that makes sense for your purposes. We encourage you to adapt the materials for your own context and the needs of your community (for example, modifying math tasks based on a local, community context). 

Overview and Organization of Materials 

These materials were developed by a team of educators across different contexts, revised, and compiled for general use in school or community settings. 

In general, we designed each session to include the following sections: 

1. Ice Breaker and/or Math Routine/Warm-up

2. Module-Specific Activities

3. Math Tasks

4. Closure

Given that you may adapt the format to fit the unique time-frame, structure, or participants in your setting, we have created separate resources for each of the above sections so that you can pick and choose what works for you. 

Module-specific activities are included in each module slide deck (Introductory Module, Funds of Knowledge Module, Language Module), with the idea that you can pick and choose the activities that will work for your time-frame, structure, or participants. Module slide decks contain Facilitator Notes slides throughout, which are meant to collect module-specific notes for facilitators and can be removed or hidden before use with participants. We also include examples (when useful) of the activity product or images of the activity being implemented in order to support facilitation. Some activities are designed for a particular audience (indicated in the Facilitator Notes slides and module-specific notes), for example, some activities are most appropriate for just teachers, for caregivers and teachers to do together, or for just caregivers. Related handouts are linked in the facilitator notes slides and/or on the slide for the corresponding activity. 

In general, we included one joint, collaborative open-ended mathematics task in each session. While mathematics tasks may be connected to the Module Topic (such as Funds of Knowledge), we have organized them with the intention for you to select what works best for you, and to adapt to your context. These are found below, organized by task. They could be done with caregivers and teachers, just caregivers, just teachers or even in classrooms with children.