– Workshop #1
– Workshop #2
– Workshop #3
– Workshop #4
Workshops 6 and 7
Pre-Workshop Assignment for Workshop #1
- Please bring a set of math or science standards
with you to the first workshop. These may be standards that you
currently use, or they may have been used to help shape the
curriculum that you use. They may have been developed by your school,
your district, or your state,
or they may be from one of the national standards groups.
Groups in the United States who have developed standards include:
- · The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM)
- · The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)
- · The National Science Teachers' Association (NSTA)
- · The American Association for the Advancement of Science
- · The New Standards Project
You will be using your standards throughout Workshop #1, as well as
for some of
the subsequent workshops, so we recommend that you bring them with you to
- Please bring to Workshop #1 a project or open-ended
task that you use in your class that requires students to use math or
science content that they have learned in your class.
There are no requirements for the project or task that you choose. It
could be anything from a
one-day assignment to a three-week long project. The idea is that you
bring to this workshop
a lesson from your own curriculum that will have meaning to you.
- Please answer the following question:
What science or math standards are most closely related to the project
task that I have chosen?
Pre-Workshop Assignment for Workshop #2
- Using the approach presented in Workshop #1, revise the performance
task that you designed in preparation for that workshop, or design a new
- Please bring with you to Workshop #2, a sample of student work on a
project or open-ended performance task that you assigned this year.
Pre-Workshop Assignment for Workshop #3
- "Embedded Assessment" and "integrated assessment" are phrases you
have probably read about in assessment literature or heard about in
teacher circles. What do you understand embedded assessment to mean?
- Please bring with you to Workshop #3 some examples of embedded
assessment that you practice in your classroom. Also bring some examples
that are not embedded assessment (these can be in written or oral
form). Share your examples and non-examples with others at your site,
and find out how your concept of embedded assessment is similar to, or
different from those of your colleagues.
- Please read the enclosed articles from the Mathematics
Teacher and Arithmetic Teacher journals and be sure to bring the
articles with you to Workshop #3.
Pre-Workshop Assignment for Workshop #4
- New strategies for curriculum and assessment design must include
ways to link mathematics and science problems to issues students care
about. These can include projects in schools, in the community, or in
society; they can also include educational, environmental, social,
cultural, or artistic dilemmas students might have to face, in which
mathematical and scientific reasoning play an important part.
After questioning your class for a topic of high priority and concern to
them, take the topic to one or two other teachers (if in secondary
school, to teachers who teacher other subjects.) Spend some time
brainstorming a performance task that would take the students to the
heart of the matter of concern. The following questions should guide
- What is (are) big idea(s) we wish to address?
- What "school subjects" are these ideas connected to?
- What "real-life subjects" are these ideas connected to?
- How can we make these connections explicit?
- Is this task though provoking?
- Will this task answer some questions and raise others?
- Will this task expand students' knowledge and awareness?
- Is this task feasible?
- Is this task open-ended?
- Are mathematics and science necessary to answer some questions?
- Will this task enhance student perceptions of mathematics and
After designing this special performance task, assign it to your class,
organized in groups.
Bring your comments about the process to Workshop #4 and share your
learning with your colleagues.
Please read the article from Mathematics Teaching in the Middle
Pre-Workshop Assignment for Workshop #5
- Please bring a sample of math or science items from a standardized
test that is used in your school. If possible, include multiple choice
items and open-ended items which require students to construct a
response. (If you cannot get copies of your school's standardized test,
or if your school doesn't have a standardized test, we have provided
several math and science test items from a variety of grade levels in the
worksheets. Select from these pages the item(s) that you will work with
during this workshop.)
- Make a list of special test-taking skills that you need to teach
your students for them to be more successful on the test items you've
chosen above. These test-taking skills should be related to the format
of the questions on the test rather than to the content of those items.