These sessions are designed to be used by School Teacher Leaders as a school-based professional development activity.
Module |
Purpose |
Differentiated Instruction I |
Participants will be engaged in thinking about how they can better meet the needs of all students through differentiation of instruction.
Note: There should be a follow-up session one week later; see following. |
Follow-Up to Differentiated Instruction I |
After attending Differentiated Instruction I, participants should keep a journal for one week describing classroom successes and challenges. Also, participants should make copies of students’ different solutions to problems used during their instruction showing a wide range of students’ abilities. Finally, participants should prepare to discuss their journals and students’ solutions during the next faculty meeting or school-based workshop. |
Differentiated Instruction, Part II |
Participants will become more aware of resources that provide multiple entry level tasks to aid them with differentiation of instruction. |
Routinizing Mathematics in the Classroom |
Participants will explore activities that will enable them to make mathematical critical thinking activities daily routines. |
Exploring State NAEP for Alabama |
Participants will explore how the results for Alabama from the State NAEP can help us think about prevailing classroom practice and how to improve mathematics teaching and learning. |
Inquiry into Teaching and Learning Mathematics: Focus on Discourse |
This session is designed to engage teachers in thinking about their instructional practices with a special emphasis on discourse.
Note: There should be a follow-up session one or more weeks later. |
| Inquiry into Teaching and Learning Mathematics: Focus on Mathematical Understanding |
This session is designed to engage teachers in thinking about their instructional practices with a special emphasis on mathematical understanding.
Note: There should be a follow-up session one or more weeks later. |
| “Is Chance Fair? One Student’s Thoughts on Probability”: Using a Journal Article as a Professional Development Experience |
This session is designed to engage teachers in thinking about the type of tasks that they use to help students understand probability. Do the tasks engage student in probabilistic thinking in meaningful ways? Do the tasks help dispel misconceptions that students have related to chance?
Note: It is recommended that this professional development experience take place in a multi-day format with time in between sessions |
Book Study
Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics: Teachers’ Understanding of Fundamental Mathematics in China and the United States
By Liping Ma |
This session is designed to engage teachers in an activity that helps them think about their mathematical knowledge and their pedagogical content knowledge and how these different types of knowledge impact how and what mathematics they teach their students.
Note: This module is set up by chapters to allow flexibility in how the book study is run. |
| Teacher Practices That Support Motivation and Achievement |
This session is designed to engage teachers in thinking about the type of tasks they use to help motivate their students. Do they promote adaptive student motivation? What concrete steps can they take in their lesson planning to further support adaptive student motivation? |
| Using Case Studies for Professional Development |
The purpose of this module is to engage teachers in thinking about their instructional practices and the impact of those practices on students’ learning through examining cases of other teachers’ instructional practices. |
