Project Background

FGT Professional Development Curriculum

Vignette 1: Exploring Similarity through Paper Folding

Vignette 2: Reasoning about Properties & Area with Tangrams

Project Staff

 

Design of Professional Development Curriculum

The design of the FGT professional development curriculum for teachers will be rooted in a model adapted for use in previously published materials such as the Fostering Algebraic Thinking Toolkit.  The model uses challenging mathematics activities and artifacts of student thinking to prompt teachers to reflect on the nature of mathematical thinking from different perspectives.  The stages of this cyclical model are, in brief:

Stage 1: Doing mathematics.

Teachers work together in a study group to explore and solve mathematics problems they will later use with their students.

Stage 2: Reflecting on the mathematics. 

Using an explicit conceptual framework (such as “habits of mind”), teachers discuss the mathematical ideas and their thinking about the problem. 

Stage 3: Teaching the mathematics.

Teachers use the problems in their own classes and collect artifacts (e.g., student work).

Stage 4: Analyzing artifacts.

Teachers bring selected artifacts back to the study group to analyze and discuss with colleagues.

Stage 5: Reflecting on students’ thinking.

Once again using an explicit conceptual framework, teachers discuss students’ mathematical thinking, as revealed in the artifacts, and ways to elicit more productive thinking in future classes.

This model gives teachers opportunities to become more effective teachers of mathematics by paying attention to their own mathematical thinking, their students’ mathematical thinking, and connections between their learning and their classroom practice.  To provide a concrete example of how the model may play out through the FGT materials, we offer a vignette.  It is based on recent work with our 12 Collaborating Teachers, who have been helping us in the design of the materials in various ways, in particular, in exploring answers to the question: Which geometric habits of mind are important to foster in middle grades students?  The vignette assumes that, like our Collaborating Teachers, the group of teachers comprises grades 5 through 9.

Kelemanik, G., Janssen, S., Miller, B., and Ransick, K. (1997).  Structured Exploration:  New Perspectives on Mathematics Professional Development.  Newton, MA:  Education Development Center, Inc.