Virginia Mathematics Teacher Fall 2016

These products then went through two to three rounds of blinded peer-review with external reviewers, and are currently available for use by teachers across the Commonwealth. The products implement best practices for teaching mathematics, and feature hands-on, interactive activities with various STEM applications. In this paper we will share two example products including a unit plan and a performance-based assessment. Our first example is a performance-based learning and assessment task that was designed by teachers Dee Baker, Jamey Lovin and Robert Thien 20Building%20a%20Recreation%20Center.pdf ). In this task, learners were prompted to explore constructions of triangle centers to determine the best location for a recreation center with respect to three communities in a geographic area (Figure 1). To solve the task, students used applications such as GeoGebra, Google Maps, as well as standard construction tools. The task included two assessment components and rubrics which assess students’ understanding of the content (Figure 2). Students were expected to select a site and justify their selection using credible research, geometric principles, and constructing triangles (Figure 3). Our next example is a unit plan by Christine Belcher and Stephanie Brady ( http:// www.radford.edu/rumath-smpdc/Units/src/A% 20Change%20in%20the%20Weather.pdf ). This unit, “A change in the weather”, guides students through data analysis, finding equations of the curve of best fit, mathematical modeling that includes polynomial, exponential, and logarithmic functions, and making predictions, as well as teaching them about climate as one of the real world applications of mathematics. Students create charts and models using provided data of 17 different locations across the world (Figure 4, Figure 5), and make scatterplots and trend lines of the data (Figure 5), as well as other indicators of climate change such as global mean sea level and temperature. We also have samples of classroom videos of our participants implementing different approaches to teaching mathematics. These approaches include the Structuralist, Integrated- Environmentalist, and Formative approaches. They also feature the teachers’ educational knowledge and insights gained from the program. They can be watched at the SMPDC website http:// www.radford.edu/rumath-smpdc/ VideoCourse.html (see Figure 6). Our project ( http://www.radford.edu/rumath-smpdc/ Performance/src/Dee%20Baker%20-%

Figure 5 . Provided temperature data

AFDA; multiple classroom observations of selected participating teachers using Instructional Quality Assessment (IQA) rubrics (Junker et al., 2006); teacher surveys addressing content or pedagogical content knowledge; assessments of gains in high school students’ understanding and knowledge of Algebra I, Algebra II, and AFDA; surveys of participating school administrators; participating teacher surveys to evaluate the strengths and to offer suggestions for the SMPDC; and course fidelity assessments to evaluate whether courses are designed and taught in ways that correspond with identified needs of partnering school divisions. Based on the SMPDC project evaluation reports from the past six years, teachers have shown a significant gain in their knowledge of algebra, geometry, and probability and statistics as well their ability to implement new educational technologies in their classrooms. Readers who wish to engage with the data and analysis portions of the projects can find full evaluation reports for each of the six projects at the SMPDC website. ( http:// www.radford.edu/~amanizade/projects.html ) One of the main outcomes of the MSP projects are the hundreds of products generated and shared by the participating teachers. These include lesson plans, unit plans, and performance-based assessments and have been made available in the Teacher Resources section of our project’s website, http://www.radford.edu/rumath-smpdc/ . Products Generated

Virginia Mathematics Teacher vol. 43, no. 1

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