eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has invested in the development and dissemination of instructional tools to support teachers’ incorporation of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) into their classroom instruction. Math experts have developed formative assessment lessons (FALs) that teachers can incorporate throughout the year’s curriculum. The Foundation has asked RFA to study teachers’ early adoption of the FALs, focusing particularly on their response to and use of the lessons. The lessons were piloted in urban, rural, and suburban school districts in four states and two national networks of schools during the 2010-11 school year, which is referred to as Year 1 in this booklet. This booklet is a synthesis of what the authors learned from practitioners over the course of the pilot year, 2010-11. It… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The plane problem is a real-world problem, presented without any suggestion as to how it might be solved. It arose unexpectedly as the author was messing around on the internet, not thinking about maths at all. She did not encounter the problem in a maths lesson, nor as homework in the middle of a unit on a particular topic, and so she had no clues about what method was going to be useful, or even if she would be able to solve it. All she had–initially at least–was the image of the plane and a mystery: at what altitude is it flying? There is something satisfying about seeing how mathematics can solve a mystery that may appear, at first sight, to be intractable. Students need the opportunity… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: This module assumes that the information presented in previous modules is well known to the learner. Module 6 is the third of three modules (4, 5, and 6) designed to provide an in-depth look at the Standards of Mathematical Practice which are part of the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics. Module 6 focuses on strategies for implementing the practices in the classroom, determining the degree of students’ progress towards meeting the practices, and using an observation tool to ensure that practices are evident in a classroom. Course Objectives: By the end of the module, the learner will be able to: (1) understand how to determine the progress that a student is making in meeting a practice; (2) state how specific instructional strategies are used to promote… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Lack of researcher consensus on how to measure disadvantaged students’ access to effective teaching has made it challenging for practitioners to draw lessons from the data. This brief aims to help policymakers understand the emerging evidence by synthesizing findings from three peer-reviewed studies that collectively span 17 states. The studies provide two lessons: (1) on average, disadvantaged students received less effective teaching than other students, equivalent to about four weeks of learning for reading and two weeks for math, or about 2 to 4 percent of the student achievement gap between these groups; and (2) access to effective teaching for disadvantaged students varied across districts, with a statistically significant difference between more and less disadvantaged students’ access in some districts and no statistically significant difference in access… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: This book is an outgrowth of a 2-year study of 284 children discovered during preschool or kindergarten to be advanced in mathematics. In addition to psychometric and cognitive testing conducted at the beginning, middle, and end of the study, half of the children attended biweekly interventions designed to enrich their experience with mathematics. Results found the children remained advanced in math over the 2-year period, their spatial reasoning related more closely to their math reasoning than did their verbal reasoning, and the math scores of the boys started and remained higher than those of the girls. The intervention proved effective in enhancing mathematical reasoning. The book discusses ways of identifying very young math-advanced children as well as a variety of educational strategies to meet their needs. Its… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The report, “The Ready to Teach Program: A Federal Initiative in Support of Online Courses for Teachers”, describes the history of the Ready to Teach Program and its role as one of the solutions to the national need to increase the performance of teachers through professional development. The report describes selected findings from the Eisenhower Professional Development Program and through it, the evolution of findings on effective professional development for teachers. These major efforts to improve teacher professional development by the U.S. Department of Education were supplemented by smaller efforts like the optional use of up to 10% of Title I monies for professional development, as determined by the principal of a Title I school or by the District, depending on the State Plan at that time.… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Can increasing student perception and engagement though alternative teaching methods, such as introducing math in an everyday context improve student test scores? Literature on this subject suggests improving student engagement and introduction of math in everyday applications can improve student comprehension. This study looks at a second grade classroom in rural Michigan. Nine different data sources were utilized including a pre and post study parent survey, a daily classroom observational chart, conference interviews, comparison of pre and post-test of lessons taught traditionally and using everyday math, a teacher journal of observations made during lessons, an evaluation of student report cards, and comparisons of state standardized test and district objective scores. The study found student improvement regardless of lesson delivery, and improved engagement with introduction of everyday math.… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: This study documents and describes efforts to develop robust forms of pre-service teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge through a culturally responsive mathematics teaching approach. Embedded in a university K-8 mathematics methods course emphasising the connections among mathematics, children’s mathematical thinking, and children’s cultural/linguistic funds of knowledge, pre-service teachers (N = 40) were given an assignment to analyse their own mathematics lessons utilizing a rubric tool with categories about children’s mathematical thinking, academic language supports, cultural funds of knowledge, and critical math/social justice. Utilizing a mixed methods approach to analyse the pre-service teachers’ (PST) work, we found the highest average self-ratings across the categories associated with children’s mathematical thinking and high variability in the categories related to language, culture, and social justice. To understand the variation within the latter… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The aim of this study is to identify whether high school students encounter any difficulties in mathematics and reveal the reasons for such difficulties. The participants of the study, which was a descriptive case study based on qualitative understanding, were a total of 164 students, including 85 students from Anatolian High Schools and 79 students from Science High Schools. Approximately 11% of the participants said they had no difficulties in math, whereas 99% of the students from Anatolian High Schools and 78% of the students from Science High Schools said they had difficulties in mathematic. Their thoughts about the reasons for such difficulties were analyzed by content analysis method considering the type of high school they attended. The findings obtained revealed that the difficulties encountered by the… Continue Reading →
eric.ed.gov har udgivet: A design experiment with 18 students in a regular seventh grade math class was conducted to investigate how to differentiate instruction for students’ diverse ways of thinking during a 26-day unit on proportional reasoning. The class included students operating with three different multiplicative concepts that have been found to influence rational number knowledge and algebraic reasoning. The researchers and classroom teacher tiered instruction during a 5-day segment of the unit in which students worked on problems involving speed. Students were grouped relatively homogenously by multiplicative concept and experienced different number choices. Students operating at each multiplicative concept demonstrated evidence of learning, but all did not learn the same thing. We view this study as a step in supporting equitable approaches to students’ diverse ways of thinking, an… Continue Reading →