This course addresses four equally important and interrelated standards to guide your learning in our brief time together. These standards are aligned with widely accepted standards that describe the knowledge, skills, and dispositions that well-prepared beginning teachers of elementary and middle grade mathematics need by the end of their initial teacher preparation program.
I do not expect that you will fully “master” each of these learning standards by the end of our 5 week mini-course. Instead, my hope is that working towards these learning standards will help you feel more confident about your ability to teach mathematics and also help you to recognize understandings, knowledge, and practices for mathematics teaching that you will continue to develop throughout your teacher preparation.
Learning Standard 1: Demonstrate knowledge of mathematics concepts and practices.
You will work with mathematics tasks in order to understand their mathematical purposes and identify ways to enact tasks during instruction to maintain their cognitive demand. Deepening your own understanding of central mathematical concepts, tools of inquiry, and mathematical structures that you will teach will enable you to create learning experiences that make mathematics accessible and meaningful for learners to assure mastery of mathematics content. You will use your understanding of mathematics tasks to create appropriate learning goals for student understanding, aligned with a specific task, and anticipate various ways that students may solve the task and justify their mathematical reasoning. Using your understanding of how to connect mathematical concepts and to use differing perspectives (e.g., solutions, strategies) you will be able to engage learners in critical thinking, creativity, and collaborative problem solving related to authentic mathematical situations.
Indicators: Lesson plan
Learning Standard 2: Demonstrate pedagogical knowledge and practices for planning and implementing student-centered, problem-based mathematics lessons.
Throughout our five weeks together, your lesson planning will become more consistent pedagogically with research-based practices that leverage multiple mathematical competencies and challenge spaces of marginality in mathematics. You will learn to plan for three-part mathematics lessons that support every student in meeting rigorous learning goals by drawing on your knowledge of mathematics, mathematics curricular tasks, and pedagogy, as well as knowledge of learners and the community context. You will develop plans for launching complex tasks, supporting collaborative exploration, and orchestrating whole class discussions that are appropriately sequenced and draw on multiple resources for mathematical knowledge to achieve ambitious goals for students’ learning. Through creating such plans, you will build an understanding of and ability to use various instructional strategies to encourage learners to develop deep understandings of mathematics and mathematical connections, and to build skills to apply mathematics knowledge in meaningful ways.
Critical Performances: Lesson plan
Learning Standard 3: Demonstrate awareness of social contexts of mathematics teaching and learning.
Supporting every student to learn mathematics also means recognizing that differences in mathematics achievement reflect historical and systematic differences in students’ opportunities to learn and acknowledging biases that influence students’ experiences and learning in your class. Understanding individual differences and diverse culture and communities will help you ensure inclusive learning environments that enable each learner to meet high standards. You will begin developing this awareness by reflecting on your own personal experiences with mathematics and how those were shaped by various social contexts for mathematics teaching and learning.
Critical Performances: Mathography
Learning Standard 4: Demonstrate a work ethic worthy of a noble profession.
This objective is here because teaching is complex, and your engagement in this mini-course provides some indication of how you will approach teaching and collaborating with other colleagues in your future teaching career. The dynamic endeavor of teaching requires that you are always looking to improve and that you recognize none of us have all the answers. It acknowledges that collaboration is the key to successfully doing this job and continuing to learn from teaching. Throughout this mini-course, you will continue to develop a sense professional responsibility and a propensity to engage in ongoing professional development learning, to use evidence to continually evaluate your practice, particularly the effects of your choices and actions on learners, families, other professionals and the community, and to adapt your practice to meet the needs of each learner.
Critical Performances: Class attendance and participation; active engagement with weekly readings; Self reflection