A Week of Training and Building Excitement

This past week I was involved in 4 days of Middle School Math training, hosted at my school and facilitated by The Alabama Math, Science, and Technology Initiative, or AMSTI.

From AMSTI's website: "The Alabama Math, Science, and Technology Initiative is the Alabama Department of Education's initiative to improve math and science teaching statewide. Its mission is to provide all students in Grades K-12 with the knowledge and skills needed for success in the workforce and/or postsecondary studies (college and career ready)."

I was probably way more excited than I should have been about attending a 4-day workshop during the summer. But, for one, it has been 7 months since I have been able to "talk math," and I have missed that. And also, we get a cool kit of supplies and manipulatives to use in our classrooms. Pretty exciting, huh?

The focus of this "Year 1" training (I believe there are 3 years) was ratio and proportions. We deepened our content knowledge (who says math teachers don't have math left to learn?). We learned how to select and analyze tasks that utilize the 8 Effective Mathematics Teaching Practices and the 8 Standards for Mathematical Practices. We learned how to sort student work and use the sorts to inform our next instructional steps.

I got to make new math teacher friends and will get to see them several times this school year.

I was SO happy to see lots of tasks that I can use in my 8th-grade classroom! A lot of work with ratios and proportions focuses on 6th and 7th graders because that's where the foundation of ratio and proportion is. But I was able to see tasks that took that foundation and built on it with 8th-grade standards involving slope and comparing proportional relationships.

I learned some classroom management techniques like using "Fist to Five" to see how much more time groups need to finish a task and a non-verbal cue to get students' attention.

I loved how everything was modeled for us. We were not simply told, "Do this or that. And good luck." "This" or "that" was demonstrated to us, plus we got to practice different techniques each day.

I saw how to incorporate "scary" (to students, sometimes to me) numbers into tasks so that students get experiences with all the types of problems and levels of difficulty they might see in various situations.

I also left there with a better understanding of the types of tasks I want in my classroom and how to find them. When a standard references "real-world" situations, I often feel stuck with textbook-type word problems. I haaaaaaaate textbook word problems (and students aren't crazy about them, either). But I saw examples of worthwhile tasks and was given resources containing such tasks.

At the end of the week, I was still excited. My excitement about returning to my classroom in the fall had increased exponentially. I can't wait to implement what I learned and see how it benefits my students.

Oh, and by the way, our trainers will be in our classrooms with us throughout the year. So when I've forgotten something they showed us or am having difficulties with implementation, someone will be there to help me out.

How exciting!