Sweet summer time!

Two weeks already gone.  Hope everyone is enjoying their time, whatever it is you are choosing to do. 

I know several of you are teaching summer school.  Thank you!  This year's summer school consists solely of Labs.  That means no math credit for all that effort.  What we are asking everyone to consider is that if a student passes their summer school lab that you change their failing mark to a passing mark.  Let’s keep those kiddos on track to graduate.

Several others are working very hard on the district level teams creating assessments for our courses and writing curriculum as well.  It can be a frustrating and tedious experience, hopefully a rewarding one as well.  This year we will be fully implementing the new curriculum in Algebra 1-2.  It will be a challenging year, but together we will be able to support each other and have a better go at it than if we were to tread the waters on our own.

It is exciting to see so many at North participating in all of the summer offerings.  Opening week will be here before we know it.  Be sure to schedule in some R&R.

We have had to say goodbye to some wonderful math teachers and teachers of math this year.  We wish them all well.  With the closing of their chapters at North new chapters will begin.  We will be welcoming four new math teachers to our community.  Welcome aboard to Lauren, Jeff, and Josh.  At this moment we are still waiting to fill our final position.

Okay, I’m a bit nervous.  Saturday morning I will begin my travel to Kansas City, MO to participate in the 2012 AP Statistics Reading.  For those of you on twitter I will be tweeting as I go.  If you are interested in such tomfoolery you can find me at @dochartaigh66.  I will also be posting on the blog about the experience.  

Have a great summer!  See you soon.

Some quotes from Common Core: Mathematics in a PLC at Work - High School

The Forward, Richard DuFour
...merely adopting a new curriculum, even a challenging curriculum, will not improve student learning.

...even a well-articulated rigorous curriculum will have little impact on student achievement unless attention is paid to the implementation of the curriculum and the quality of instruction with which it is taught.

Teachers must acquire a shared, deep understanding of the curriculum and its intended goals.  Even more importantly, they must be committed to teaching that curriculum.

The quality of the instruction students receive each day is the most important factor in their learning of mathematics.

On Professional Development:  It must be collective and team based rather than individualistic.  It must be focused directly and relentlessly on student achievement rather than adult activities.

On Culture Shift:  ...from a culture focused on covering mathematics curriculum to a culture fixated on each student's learning, from a culture of teacher isolation to a culture of purposeful collaborations and collective responsibility, from a culture where assessment is used as a tool to prove what students have learned to a culture where assessment is used to improve student learning, and from a culture where evidence of student learning is used primarily to assign grades to a culture where evidence of student learning is used to inform and improve professional practice.

We have an arduous task lying before us.  I am looking forward to new paradigms, and the challenge of meeting the demands and opportunities of this second-order change.

I'm Back...

Well, its amazing how things can get away from you.  

So, now all of the Math ILs are doing a book study on the book I previously introduced, 5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematics Discussions.

We are currently discussing the topic of my previous post.  The bottom line is that teachers must first establish a clear and specific goal with respect to the mathematics to be learned and then select a high-level mathematical task.  Read my previous post for more context.

The author argues that what the students learn depends largely on the nature of the task in which they engage.  In addition, the argument is made that those tasks should be high-level, cognitively demanding tasks. 


Please take some time to consider the following questions and posting your reply:  

•  Do you agree with this point of view?  Why or why not?
•  What do you see as the potential costs and benefits of utilizing high-level, cognitively demanding tasks as a basis of instruction?