2021 ITEST Solicitation Webinar: Solicitation Overview

Event

On June 30, STELAR hosted National Science Foundation Program Officers for a series of informative webinars on the Innovative Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers (ITEST) Program’s Solicitation (NSF 19-583).  During this webinar NSF Program Officers Bob Russell, Alicia Santiago, and Gavin Fulmer, reviewed the goals of the ITEST program, highlighted key aspects of the solicitation, and provided guidance on developing a competitive proposal.

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Launching a Discourse-Rich Mathematics Lesson

Publication

This article shares a mathematics discourse technique adapted from literacy instruction and designed to prepare students' engagement in a mathematics task by model mathematical thinking. The Math Think Aloud is used during the launch of a lesson to provide access to the mathematics and help students make sense of the task so they are able to work on the task and share their mathematical thinking. Successes, challenges, and tips for effective implementation are shared.

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Supporting Sense Making with Mathematical Bet Lines

Publication

This article presents a mathematics discourse technique adapted from literacy instruction to promote sense making when teachers are launching a lesson about story problems. Math Bet Lines helps all students engage with the meaning of the story problem and is particularly beneficial for emergent multilingual learners. In this article we discuss how teachers implemented the Math Bet Lines technique and share their successes, challenges, and tips for overcoming those challenges.

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Talk is the Ticket to Teaching Math to English Learners

Publication

This article describes a mathematics professional development program for elementary school teachers focused on improving mathematics discourse for all students, in particular emergent multilingual learners. Frameworks, such as the Math Discourse Matrix (Sztajn, Heck, & Malzahn, 2020) that characterizes four types of discourse (correcting, eliciting, probing, responsive) and other resources aimed at planning and implementing lessons that support emergent multilingual learners' engagement in productive mathematical discussions are shared.

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Decomposing Practice in Teacher Professional Development: Examining sequences of learning activities

Publication

In this paper, we engage in an analysis of professional development design, examining professional development activities and the sequencing of professional learning tasks. We use a theoretical framework typically used in pre-service teacher education to understand the design of one professional development program. Our overarching goal is to theorize about how to design professional development and sequence professional learning tasks for practicing teachers. Specifically, this study uses the concepts of decompositions of practice (Grossman et al., 2009), and levels of decomposition (Boerst

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Controlled Implementations: Teaching Practice to Practicing Mathematics Teachers

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In this chapter, we use the Framework for Teaching Practice (Grossman, Compton, Igra, Ronfeldt, Shahan, & Williamson, 2009) as a conceptual tool for analyzing the design of professional development. Although initially developed to examine the education of prospective teachers, we contend that this framework is appropriate for analyzing and supporting the design of professional development. The framework consists of three elements: decompositions, representations, and approximations of practice. We use these three elements to examine the literature on professional development and discuss how

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Activating Math Talk: 11 Purposeful Techniques for Your Elementary Students

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Many mathematics teachers agree that engaging students in high-quality discourse is important for their conceptual learning, but successfully promoting such discourse in elementary classrooms—with attention to the needs of every learner—can be a challenge. Activating Math Talk tackles this challenge by bringing practical, math-specific, productive discourse techniques that are applicable to any lesson or curriculum. Framed around 11 student-centered discourse techniques, this research-based book connects purposeful instructional techniques to specific lesson goals and includes a focus on

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REL Northeast & Islands Webinar: Evaluating Professional Learning: Introduction to a Tool for Schools and Districts

Event

This workshop will introduce state, district, and school leaders to a new tool to assist in evaluating their professional learning initiatives. The workshop will present Evaluating Professional Learning: A Tool for Schools and Districts and provide suggestions for getting started. A practitioner from Connecticut will also share about lessons learned using the tool. Following the workshop, office hours will be available for participants who need additional support in getting started.

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Uncharted WATERS: Sustaining a Meaningful Student Teaching Experience Amidst a Global Pandemic via an Online STEM Curriculum

Publication

Field experience is the culminating experience for pre-service teacher training. As COVID-19 closed schools across the country, pre-service teachers’ field experiences were disrupted. This case study examines how a student teacher, a team of mentor teachers, and a university supervisor at a regional public university adapted to remote learning. The findings suggest that there were gains and losses in terms of the pre-service teachers’ ability to develop essential skills; classroom management skills suffered while formative assessment practices, innovative lesson delivery, and reflection on

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