This school year has been a whirlwind so far! But things feel like they are settling in now and I’m finding my groove. 🙂 Here are a few things that I have in the works:
- New position: I accepted a new position as the K-12 Math Curriculum Specialist for my district. Expanding into the elementary grades is new for me and I’m looking forward to it!
- Math adoption: I am facilitating our district’s 6-8 math adoption and have been reviewing instructional materials. In this first year of our 2-year adoption process, we are focused on reviewing current research and exploring materials that align with our vision of student learning.
- Desmos Fellows: I’m thrilled to be a Desmos Fellow this year! I spent Veteran’s Day weekend at Desmos headquarters with a fantastic group of math educators, exploring and learning about Desmos. Great weekend, and I got more Desmos socks. 🙂 Read the Des-blog for lots of Desmos Fellows info and updates.
- More Desmos: I have been collaborating with a math specialist in a neighboring district to create Desmos PD for our secondary math teachers and am also planning PD about Desmos Activity Builder for elementary teachers.
- 3-Act Math Tasks: I’m continuing to support our teachers as they implement 3-Act Math Tasks in their classrooms. Secondary math teachers began this work after working with Dan Meyer in August 2015, and now we are expanding this into the elementary grades. I am providing after-school PD this year and full-staff PD at some of our elementary schools.
- Model lessons: I’ve been getting into classrooms and using Desmos and 3-Act Math Tasks with students! So far this year I’ve been able to use Sugar Sugar and Pentomino Puzzles Desmos activities with some junior high students and worked with teachers to use the Classroom Conversation Toolset in the Desmos teacher dashboard. I’ve also taught several 3-Act lessons; I used Nana’s Chocolate Milk with 7th graders after Thanksgiving, taught Thick As A Brick to 6th graders on Wednesday this week, and will be teaching The Cookie Monster to first graders on Monday.
- WA Math Fellows: This is my 4th year as a WA State Math Fellow. This year I have adopted a 7th grade class to work with. I administered the baseline task via Desmos and based on our analysis of their work, the classroom teacher and I used the 3-Act Math Task Nana’s Chocolate Milk to address some misconceptions students had about ratios and proportional relationships. We are now deciding next steps with these students but may use Thick As A Brick along with this Desmos calculator animation.
- NSD Math Fellows: This is my 3rd year facilitating our district Math Fellows program. Our focus will be Jo Boaler’s book, Mathematical Mindsets. I am currently planning our book study which will begin in January 2017.
Whew! That’s quite a list and it’s only December. 🙂 Stay tuned for updates!
Patty Papers 