Teaching Fellows’ Meetings

2006 Mathematics Cohort Fellows' Meetings

Photo: Yischon Liaw, 1000 Views Studios 

October 24- 25, 2008

The 2006 and 2007 Mathematics Cohorts met together for their fall meeting in Manhattan Beach, CA. Throughout the meeting, fellows analyzed video cases as well as segments of their own teaching to examine the role of questioning as a means to assess and advance students’ understanding.  The fellows also explored how different mathematics tasks provide students with different opportunities to learn mathematical concepts and teachers different opportunities to assess student thinking and reasoning.
The fellows continued to work on their reflective portfolios by working in small groups to clarify their goal for the year and identify steps that could be taken to learn about and improve on that goal. Each lesson study group also met to discuss progress.

April 4-5, 2008

The spring meeting for the 2006 Mathematics Cohort was held in Columbus, OH.  The fellows participated in a workshop led by Dr. Azita Manouchehri, a professor at Ohio State University. The fellows began by solving a series of challenging problems in multiple ways.  Dr. Manouchehri then facilitated discussions about the underlying mathematical concepts of each problems, how/where the concepts appear in the high school curriculum, and how the concepts are developed in elementary school and extended in graduate school.  Throughout the meeting, the fellows were given opportunities to examine and expanding their own views regarding the teaching and learning of mathematics.  

The fellows also continued to work on their reflective portfolios, focusing on making a clear link between claims and evidence. Each fellow then made a poster with the standard, personalized goal, and collected or potential evidence and then participated in a gallery walk, writing comments on others’ posters.  The lesson study groups also met to discuss progress.

October 19-20, 2007

Additionally, fellows worked on reflective portfolios and their modified lesson study units. The portfolio work consisted of small group discussions regarding the appropriateness of each fellow’s goal and how the fellow may collect evidence to document growth surrounding that goal during the school year. Work on the modified lesson study focused on continuing to plan the unit and discussing what evidence to collect, as each person will teach at least part of the unit during the course of the year.

March 16-17, 2007

The spring meeting for the 2006 Mathematics Cohort was held in St. Louis, MO. During this meeting, the fellows participated in a workshop led by Dr. Fran Arbaugh from the University of Missouri. Dr. Arbaugh was joined by Patty Avery, a high school mathematics teacher. The workshop engaged the fellows in exploring the cognitive demands of mathematical tasks and factors that support or inhibit students' learning in the classroom. The fellows analyzed two different classroom episodes - one written case study and one video segment from Ms. Avery's classroom. The fellows also continued to work on their portfolios, focusing during this meeting on effectively using evidence to support claims. The Modified Lesson Study work built on Dr. Arbaugh's workshop: selecting cognitively demanding tasks that provide opportunities to develop a conceptual understanding of the desired mathematical idea.

October 13-14, 2006

The 2006 Mathematics Cohort's meeting was held in San Diego, California. The primary focus of this meeting was to explore the mathematical knowledge needed for teaching. The fellows observed the classrooms of two teachers at the Multimedia and Visual Arts School at Crawford Educational Complex. The teachers are using the Interactive Mathematics Program curriculum (IMP), a reform-oriented curriculum, and are striving to teach mathematics in a way that promotes student discourse and understanding of mathematical concepts. As an extension of the classroom visit, the fellows engaged in a workshop with Dr. Michael Steele from Michigan State University. Dr. Steele's workshop provided the fellows with opportunities to reflect on the different facets of mathematical knowledge that teachers need to be effective in facilitating student learning.