Double Duty: Program Committee and Presenting

By Andrew Stadel, Christina Tondevold, and Carl Oliver
March 17, 2017

Three 2017 Annual Meeting Program Committee members give insight about the sessions they are presenting in San Antonio.

Andrew Stadel

Imagine meeting your students at the beginning of the year. On one hand, you know there is a long list of grade level content standards and procedural skills you are supposed to teach your students. On the other hand, the more you get to know your students, you realize there’s an equally long list of things your students need to learn. Mathematically, this could include conceptual understanding, number sense, critical thinking, and problem-solving. Often these two lists appear like two different things and therein lies our challenge: how do we teach students grade-level content such as procedural fluency and the things they really need like conceptual understanding at the same time?

In my session at NCTM’s Annual in San Antonio, Texas, we will recognize that these are not two separate lists. Instead we will focus on activities that meet grade level content standards and allow students opportunities to improve their number sense and critical thinking.

My session, titled Boost Conceptual Understanding and Procedural Fluency with Rich Number Sense Tasks, will go deep into using Estimation 180 challenges to lay a foundation of conceptual understanding in math as a bridge to teaching procedural fluency from student thinking. Recently, a teacher told me, “I never realized how much math I could teach from Estimation 180 tasks.” Come experience what she experienced.

Additionally, we will explore one of the greatest tools ever used in a math classroom, the clothesline. The clothesline is a dynamic number line for students to interact with and gain a better understanding of number relationships as a means to improving their procedural fluency connected to grade level content standards.

I’m proud to share these free resources and classroom experiences with you. They are ready to use the day you return to your students. Come learn how to boost conceptual understanding and procedural fluency with rich number sense tasks connected to the grade level content you teach.

Boost Conceptual Understanding and Procedural Fluency with Rich Number Sense Tasks

Thursday, April 6, 2017  |  11:00 a.m. in Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, Room 301

Christina Tondevold

As Andrew mentioned in his part of this blog post, the struggle to balance Conceptual and Procedural understandings in the math classroom is real.  It seems to be even more of a struggle during math intervention time.  All too often the intervention time for our struggling students is focused on building their procedural understandings because the student is SO far behind that we feel we can’t take the time to build their conceptual understandings.

The conceptual understandings are the pieces those kiddos need the most.  They have such big gaps because they haven’t developed the “why” behind the mathematics.  The resources and research for math intervention programs are lacking, however, the IES and WWC created a Practice Guide that gives eight recommendations for elementary and middle school interventions:

These recommendations are based on the research that has been done around math interventions. Even though there are eight, only four of them pertain to instructional practices and have Strong or Moderate evidence to back up their effectiveness.

So, in my session (with co-speaker Donna Wommack), we will focus on those four recommendations and how three instructional activities can be implemented in a way that meets these four research-based recommendations.

This session is great not only for interventionists but classroom teachers as well.  Join us and learn how to use number talks, story problems, and games to create an intervention program for your students that is based on the research and develops mathematical thinking & fluency while encouraging exploration, communication, reasoning, and rigor. You will come away with specific activities you can implement immediately and knowledge of how research from the IES Practice Guide on RTI supports your practice.

3 Parts to a K–5 Student-Centered Intervention Program 

Friday, April 7, 2017  |  12:30 p.m. in Grand Hyatt San Antonio, Republic ABC

Carl Oliver

In Beyond Linear: Relatable Problems That Lead to a Deep Understanding of Quadratic Functions I hope participants come away with some new ideas about quadratic functions, and how to bring them to life in the classroom. Quadratic equations are often only viewed as an interesting way to review factoring and distributive property. Quadratics have interesting properties, and studying them helps to prepare students for more interesting branches of math.

When Quadratic functions arise in typical textbooks, the problems used are particularly detached from the real world. In these situations, students have to use an equation that is given by the text. Students will be given equations and parameters for parabolic motion or acceleration or a supply curve, assuming that students understand those contexts. During the 30 minute burst, there will be a discussion of novel scenarios that don’t require students to blindly follow a lot of random equations.

When students are exposed to functions for the first time, linear equations are the typical choice for exposing students to functions. Quadratics can also be an interesting choice for students to introduce a long side linear equations and can lead to meaningful connections for learners. Exposing students to quadratics functions earlier can provide a broader picture of functions beyond linear, help build number sense while still having many connections to linear functions.

For teachers who teach looking to have more interesting quadratics, this burst will be an interesting look at an open-ended project that will ask students to create a quadratic equation that would fit a realistic business scenario. This project should provide students a chance to utilize quadratic equations, and also reflect and write about their work. This is a modular project that can be modified to work in most classes.

 Beyond Linear: Relatable Problems That Lead to a Deep Understanding of Quadratic Functions

Thursday, April 6, 2017  |  12:30 p.m. in Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center, Room 006B