Seeing Our Students
Focal Students: An Approach to Learn from and Empower All Students
Grades 6-8
Focal Students: An Approach to Learn from and Empower All Students
Grades 6-8
Series Description
This self-guided professional learning series will help math teachers understand how concentrating on a few focal students will enable educators to identify effective pedagogical moves and help make improvements in practice that will benefit all the students in the mathematics classroom.
Note: to access these resources you will need to be logged in to your Google profile using your DOE credentials.
Series Overview
Session 1: Making Marginalized Students Visible
Session 2: Learning From and With Each Other
Session 3: Improving Learning Through Cycles of Inquiry
Session 4: Teaching For Robust Understanding of Math
Session 5: Empowering Students through Language
Session 6: Preparing Students To Thrive In A World Of Constant Change
After engaging with this module, participants will understand how...
focusing on a small number of students benefits all students in the class
identifying focal students and discovering the assets they bring with them upgrades teachers’ mindset
to maintain a dual focus of content and equity in their lesson designs
math and language are interconnected
Impact on students:
This enables participants to have the tools to develop students' understanding of
their own power to reason about math
their own way of thinking and learning
the progress they make across time
what grade-level understanding of key concepts looks like
how to use language as a thinking tool