There are four types of formative assignments for the course. These assignments are designed as “low stakes” ways for you to develop ideas and practices with support from me, your peers, and your own self-reflection. You will receive informal feedback (i.e., not using a rubric) from me and your peers that is designed to help you reflect on your own development and continue to grow in relation to the learning standards for the course. You should reflect on this feedback and your own experiences with these assignments and identify areas of continued growth for your mathematics teaching.
An active learning environment is only successful if you come to class prepared to engage. Thus, it is essential that you complete weekly readings and reflect on them critically before class. Each week, there are 2-3 required readings, and I will recommend 1-2 additional readings that will help you explore ideas more deeply. (PDF files of readings not in the textbooks can be found in the class Google Folder). Two or three readings is less than what is typically expected in graduate-level courses, but I prefer to emphasize thinking deeply about ideas (versus exposing you to a breadth of ideas).
At times, I will assign specific homework tasks to help you reflect critically on certain ideas prior to class. These may include reflecting on an aspect of readings, completing a mathematics task, or watching videos or analyzing children’s work. All homework tasks are due (through google forms) by 11:59pm on Saturday before class to give me time to review these before we meet.
There are six research readings throughout the semester. Everyone is required to read these in addition to the 2-3 required readings that are written for a teacher audience. These readings are intended to help you think about the ideas in the course more deeply and to give you experience with making sense of the research-base for mathematics teaching and learning directly. You will select one research reading to co-facilitate.
**See the exact due dates on the sign up sheet.**
You will receive formative feedback from me as you plan for the discussion, and your peers and I will provide you with feedback following the discussion, which you will use to complete a self-reflection in relation to the learning objective. Rubric
At least once during the semester, you will enact a “slice” of teaching in your field placement classroom. These slices of teaching are designed to give you an opportunity to use some of the teaching practices you are learning about in this course in an actual classroom context that you are familiar with.
To help you enact some of the practices from the course in your internship classroom, the slices of teaching assignment is:
Due dates for this assignment will vary. You will reflect and report on your slice of teaching to the whole class to get feedback from me and your classmates.
Each week you will engage with in-class activities to help you extend and explore ideas from the readings. In-class activities will focus on both mathematics content you will teach and pedagogical practices specific to teaching mathematics. Each in-class activity will have its own learning objectives, which I will link to the learning standards for the course. I take the time to develop objectives and relate them to learning standards for in-class activities to make it easier for you to identify which in-class activities might support your learning and completion of other assignments. Feedback on in-class activities will be given in the moment, to individuals, to small groups, and to the whole class as appropriate. You should expect to revisit your work and any notes based on feedback from in-class activities throughout the course to support your learning and your completion of assignments. In-class activities will be included with weekly materials and slides found on the course website. At times, materials will also be included in the class google folder.