Effective teacher training critical to success in Common Core math
The quality of teacher training will be crucial to the success of the new Common Cadre State Standards in math, educators say, and the pressure is on districts to give elementary school teachers the skills they'll need to provide students with a firm foundation in early arithmetic.
"My big worry is that we're not going support (teachers) and then we're going to say, 'Run across, the Common Cadre doesn't work,'" said UCLA education professor Megan Franke, who focuses on mathematics instruction.
Franke said the teachers she's met in her trainings are unevenly prepared to take on the challenge of instructing students in the dramatically unlike mode needed to accomplish the more comprehensive standards.
Teacher preparation programs in the state vary widely in quality, according to Greatness past Pattern, a 2012 report issued by a blue-ribbon chore force appointed by State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson. And once teachers are hired, the availability of professional development opportunities to improve their skills varies widely beyond the state, too. Five districts contacted past EdSource said several were offer betwixt three to 10 days of grooming in math instruction aligned to the Common Core for elementary teachers; others were non offer any additional training.
'Revolutionary' change
The new standards, adopted by California and 44 other states, call for students to demonstrate a deeper agreement of math concepts in the early uncomplicated grades than was required past California's previous land standards.
For teachers long urged to set up students to respond questions quickly on tests, moving to an exploratory, in-depth educational activity model volition be a challenge, said Kevin Trick, a math teacher at Shasta College who helps train elementary teachers in math instruction.
Nigh teachers accept been trained to instruct students to solve math problems by using formulas,Play tricks said. To find the expanse of a rectangle, for example, students would be given the appropriate formula – multiply the width of the effigy by the height – and then expected to exercise similar problems on worksheets or homework. To teach children math under the new standards, teachers need to think virtually math every bit a gear up of concepts students can discover, if they are given the right puzzles, Fox said. Rather than providing a formula to calculate the area of a shape, students might be given a set of issues or activities that help them notice how to go far at the formula on their own.
"It's revolutionary," Fox said of the new instruction methods required by Common Core.
Whether uncomplicated school teachers will be given the support they need to facilitate that revolution is unclear. The state provided $1.25 billion this twelvemonth to help districts implement Mutual Core, simply the funds can be spent on items from textbooks to computers – anything districts need to make the new standards a reality and prepare for new, computerized tests aligned to the standards. The coin tin can be spent on teacher grooming, but information technology is not required that districts do so.
In the districts contacted by EdSource, simple school teachers were expected to receive anywhere from three days to two weeks' worth of grooming in the new math standards over the form of the 2013-2014 schoolhouse year. Some districts, such every bit Sunnyvale, Oakland, Elk Grove and Fresno, are also providing ongoing back up through lead teachers who receive additional training and then help other teachers in their schools. Other districts, like Orange Unified School District, south of Los Angeles are still developing their teacher education plans and will begin Common Cadre preparation in earnest later on this spring.
"I don't call up (kindergarten and first form teachers) are going to have a hard time with Mutual Cadre math," said Elsie Briseno Simonovski, administrator of academic content blueprint in Orange. "In a lot of the classrooms, we've seen it'south been very hands-on already."
Franke reported an increased involvement from districts in having her UCLA-based squad railroad train their teachers to teach Mutual Core math. Her team, part of UCLA's Mathematics Project, tailors its offerings depending on each school's needs and budget. They piece of work with some schools for several years years and deliver stand-alone sessions that final for a few hours at others. Franke hopes the pressure of new Common Core-aligned standardized tests – which students will begin taking practice tests on in the spring – combined with the significant changes in what students are required to know will inspire districts to invest in more intensive and higher quality instructor education.
"We have a great opportunity to tie together the assessments, the standards and the piece of work of teaching," Franke said. "If we take advantage of this opportunity, we could really back up (teachers) to go along getting better and amend."
Focused program
In the northern California counties of Shasta, Siskiyou and Trinity, educators have placed their bet on a longer, more than in-depth teacher preparation model that attempts to educate teachers in math content as well as in math teaching, every bit opposed to spending a few days or weeks focused on the Mutual Core.
With the help of federal funding for math and science education, the counties have developedan intensive, three-year program on pedagogy Common Core math for 84 iiird through 9th grade teachers. In improver to several weeks of summer training, teachers in the tri-canton plan are given three days out of the classroom each year to attend boosted training. In the interim, teachers are assigned mentors who visit their classrooms to help improve their mathematics instruction.
"I thought I was doing a good job teaching (math), only I wasn't going to the depth that I needed to," said training plan participant Marilyn Cox, a threerd grade teacher at Weaverville Elementary in Trinity County'due south Trinity Alps Unified School Commune.
Cox, who has taught 3rd and 4th class for 13 years, said she has fundamentally changed the way she teaches math since enrolling in the program.
"It'southward awesome, considering kids have to sympathise why they're doing it (now), non simply that they got the correct reply," Cox said. "I have seen kids get excited virtually math. They experience smart."
Her students' newfound enthusiasm for math has translated into improved examination scores, Cox said. Near 75 percent of her students accomplished scores on last year's state standardized exam that put them in the skillful or advanced categories, she said.
Theory into practice
At a contempo session of the tri-canton program, held in the Shasta County Role of Pedagogy in Redding, teachers sat at tables based on the course level they taught and worked together on a geometry problem.
At the 3rd grade table, teachers Jaime Button of Redding and Mark McKinley of Shingletown, both of Shasta County, said the problem had begun simply plenty. Using a filigree of ane-inch squares, they'd been asked to estimate the number of squares that fell inside an oddly shaped polygon. Piece of cake, the teachers said, they just counted.
Next, the teachers were handed progressively smaller grids of squares and asked to refine their estimate with each new filigree. Counting each square quickly became impractical and they wereforced to invent a faster way to find the respond. Past looking for patterns in how the grids coveredthe polygon, the teachers were able to write a formula to make up one's mind the shape's surface area.
When the teachers first understanding difficult concepts in mathematics, it will improve their power to aid students brand their ain discoveries, said Trick, the Shasta College professor who likewise works with the tri-county plan and led the polygon lesson.
Push said working on similar math problems had increased her confidence and made her experience more prepared to guide her students through explorations of mathematical concepts, albeit with simpler material. Her previous training hadn't required much advanced mathematical thinking on her part, Button said. And though she had previously been introduced to the idea of leading hands-on, or more exploratory, math lessons for students, she said the direction she'd received from district leaders for the by decade was to move quickly through new topics and focus on preparing children for standardized tests.
But the intensive and long-term follow-up that Cox, Push button and McKinley are receiving is non something most teachers have access to, since few districts can afford the $ii.4 million program offered by the three northern counties.
For districts that can't offer such a program, Phil Tucher, who oversees math education in the Oakland Unified Schoolhouse District, chosen for patience. It volition take several cycles of testing and curriculum adjustments before Common Core-based didactics and learning practices become widespread, Tucher said.
What teachers need most at present, he said, is time.
"The success of Common Core depends on the fourth dimension we give teachers to collaborate and make sense of the new materials, to learn from one another and really ratchet up the rigor" of their lessons, Tucher said. "We still take a long way to go to get our teaching force fix."
This story appears courtesy Ed Source. Reproduction is non permitted.
dennishaustrand1938.blogspot.com
Source: https://hechingerreport.org/effective-teacher-training-critical-success-common-core-math/
0 Response to "Effective teacher training critical to success in Common Core math"
Post a Comment