The Math Pact Middle School

A school-wide solution for students’ mathematics success! Do you sometimes start to teach a mathematics concept and feel like you’re staring at a sea of bewildered faces? What happens when you discover students previously learned a calculation trick or a mnemonic that has muddied their long-term understanding? When "rules" seem to change from year to year, teacher to teacher, or school to school, mathematics can seem like a disconnected mystery for students. Clear up the confusion with a Mathematics Whole-School Agreement! Expanded from the highly popular "Rules that Expire" series of NCTM articles, this essential guide leads educators through the collaborative step-by-step process of establishing a coherent and consistent learner-centered and equitable approach to mathematics instruction. Through this work, you will identify, streamline, and become passionate about using clear and consistent mathematical language, notations, representations, rules, and generalizations within and across classrooms and grades. Importantly, you’ll learn to avoid "rules that expire"—tricks that may seem to help students in one grade but hurt in the long run. Features of this book include · Abundant grade-specific examples · Effective working plans for sustainability · Barrier-busting tips, to-dos, and try-it-outs · Practical templates and checklists · PLC prompts and discussion points When teachers unite across grades, students hit the ground running every year. Take the next step together as a team and help all your students build on existing understanding to find new success and most importantly, love learning and doing mathematics!

A schoolwide solution for students’ mathematics success! Do you sometimes start to teach a mathematics concept and feel like you’re staring at a sea of bewildered faces? What happens when you discover students previously learned a calculation trick or a mnemonic that has muddied their long-term understanding? When "rules" seem to change from year to year, teacher to teacher, or school to school, mathematics can seem like a disconnected mystery for students. Clear up the confusion with a Mathematics Whole-School Agreement! Expanded from the highly popular "Rules that Expire" series of NCTM articles, this essential guide leads educators through the collaborative step-by-step process of establishing a coherent and consistent learner-centered and equitable approach to mathematics instruction. Through this work, you will identify, streamline, and become passionate about using clear and consistent mathematical language, notations, representations, rules, and generalizations within and across classrooms and grades. Importantly, you’ll learn to avoid "rules that expire"—tricks that may seem to help students in one grade but hurt in the long run. Features of this book include · Abundant grade-specific examples · Effective working plans for sustainability · Barrier-busting tips, to-dos, and try-it-outs · Practical templates and checklists · PLC prompts and discussion points When teachers unite across grades, students hit the ground running every year. Take the next step together as a team and help all your students build on existing understanding to find new success and most importantly, love learning and doing mathematics!

Kickstart your class with five daily 5–10 minute routines, all of which include content-specific examples, extensions, and variations for high school mathematics. This resource offers a year’s worth of daily instructional material that you can use to begin each class period, and will help students Frequently revisit essential mathematical concepts Foster and shore up conceptual understanding Engage in mental mathematics, leading to efficiency and fluency Engage in mathematical discourse by constructing viable arguments and critiquing the reasoning of others Reason mathematically, and prepare for high stakes assessments Move learning beyond “correctness” by valuing mistakes and discourse and encouraging a growth mindset

A schoolwide solution for mathematics success! When "rules" seem to change from year to year, mathematics can seem like a disconnected mystery for students. Clear up the confusion with a Mathematics Whole-School Agreement! Expanded from the highly popular "Rules that Expire" series of NCTM articles, this essential guide leads educators through the collaborative step-by-step process of establishing a coherent and consistent learner-centered and equitable approach to mathematics instruction. You’ll learn to avoid "rules that expire"—tricks that may seem to help students in one grade but hurt in the long run. Features include · Abundant grade-specific examples · Effective working plans for sustainability · Barrier-busting tips, to-dos, and try-it-outs · PLC prompts and discussion points

"Includes a large number of user-friendly examples that integrate mathematics content and process standards. The step-by-step guidance and explanations in each chapter are beneficial."-Melissa Miller, TeacherRandall G. Lynch Middle School, Farmington, AR "Great activities that are exploratory in nature. A valuable resource."-Carol Amos, Teacher Leader and Mathematics CoordinatorTwinfield Union School, Plainfield, VT Increase students' mathematics achievement with rich problem-solving lessons and activities that are aligned with NCTM standards! Helping teachers envision how math standards can be integrated into the secondary classroom, Key Concepts in Mathematics, Second Edition presents engaging activities and ready-to-use lessons aligned with NCTM content and process standards. This user-friendly book by mathematics educator Timothy J. McNamara is filled with a generous collection of lessons for each of the ten NCTM standards, with many activities that address multiple standards, and numerous practical suggestions for extending the lessons beyond the curriculum. In addition, this updated resource combines standards-based mathematics and technology by incorporating TI-73 Explorer(tm) and TI-83 Plus graphing calculator applications and programs. Each chapter offers: Ready-to-use lessons, hands-on activities, practical suggestions, and an abundance of "good problems" Suggestions for integrating multiple topics and concepts in each lesson Strategies to strengthen student engagement, understanding, and retention by building connections among mathematics topics This exciting guide delivers exactly what is needed for today's standards-based math classroom!

"This book is a game changer! Strengths-Based Teaching and Learning in Mathematics: 5 Teaching Turnarounds for Grades K- 6 goes beyond simply providing information by sharing a pathway for changing practice. . . Focusing on our students’ strengths should be routine and can be lost in the day-to-day teaching demands. A teacher using these approaches can change the trajectory of students’ lives forever. All teachers need this resource! Connie S. Schrock Emporia State University National Council of Supervisors of Mathematics President, 2017-2019 NEW COVID RESOURCES ADDED: A Parent’s Toolkit to Strengths-Based Learning in Math is now available on the book’s companion website to support families engaged in math learning at home. This toolkit provides a variety of home-based activities and games for families to engage in together. Your game plan for unlocking mathematics by focusing on students’ strengths. We often evaluate student thinking and their work from a deficit point of view, particularly in mathematics, where many teachers have been taught that their role is to diagnose and eradicate students’ misconceptions. But what if instead of focusing on what students don’t know or haven’t mastered, we identify their mathematical strengths and build next instructional steps on students’ points of power? Beth McCord Kobett and Karen S. Karp answer this question and others by highlighting five key teaching turnarounds for improving students’ mathematics learning: identify teaching strengths, discover and leverage students’ strengths, design instruction from a strengths-based perspective, help students identify their points of power, and promote strengths in the school community and at home. Each chapter provides opportunities to stop and consider current practice, reflect, and transfer practice while also sharing · Downloadable resources, activities, and tools · Examples of student work within Grades K–6 · Real teachers’ notes and reflections for discussion It’s time to turn around our approach to mathematics instruction, end deficit thinking, and nurture each student’s mathematical strengths by emphasizing what makes them each unique and powerful.

Ever feel burdened by mathematics lesson planning? Your blueprint for designing Grades 6-8 math lessons that enhance state standards and address the learning needs of students is here. This indispensable handbook guides you step-by-step to plan math lessons that are purposeful, rigorous, and coherent. The effective planning process helps you Clarify learning intentions and connect goals to success criteria Structure lessons to fit traditional or block schedules Select the formats and tasks that facilitate questioning and encourage productive struggle Includes a lesson-planning template and examples from Grades 6-8 classrooms. Empower yourself to plan strategically, teach with intention, and build an individualized and manageable set of mathematics lesson plans.

During the past two decades, Chris Confer and Marco Ramirez have worked to deepen and improve mathematics instruction at schools around the country. Wherever they go, they find the raw ingredients for success already present: The potential for positive change lies within each school. Abundance is present in the form of capable children, teachers, coaches, and principals. Potential energy -- what can be -- transforms into kinetic energywhat will beonly when a force is accurately applied to move a school in the right direction. In' Small Steps, Big Changes: Eight Essential Practices for Transforming Schools Through Mathematics, the authors identify eight tested principles that transform what can be an overwhelming process into a set of comprehensible and concrete steps. Each phase of the change process is brought to life through the stories and perspectives of teachers, coaches, and principalsstories that will strike familiar chords for every educator. When teachers make sense of math, students learn to make sense of math, and that can profoundly change the entire culture of a school. In one vivid illustration, the authors tell the story of Pueblo Gardens Elementary School in Tucson, Arizona, where Marco, as principal, and Chris, as instructional coach, worked alongside a group of dedicated teachers. A few years into the change process, Pueblo Gardens -- a school with 96 percent of its students at the poverty level and a high percentage of English language learners -- had 94 percent of students meeting or exceeding state standards in third-grade mathematics. Over time, other grades achieved similarly high scores. And once the test scores rose, they were sustained at high levels.