Understanding Mathematics

A service offered by the VI Math Initiative

VI's Mathematical Content series is designed for teachers from Kindergarten through eighth grade. Courses 1-5 are designed around two major goals. The first is to deepen teachers' understanding of the sense students make of the mathematics they experience, and the second is to create a learning environment which teachers can continue growing in mathematical understanding on their own after the course.

Using curriculum materials developed over the last six years by the Educational Development Center, five two-credit hour courses in Number Sense, Geometry and Data Analysis support teachers as they:

The courses provide a variety of activities designed to promote these goals. Ultimately, teachers use their own classroom experiences in these same activities.

Case Studies

In these discussions, written by teachers about their own classrooms and students, participants have the opportunity to follow student thinking, work on mathematical ideas, reflect on their own learning, and consider the types of classroom settings and teaching strategies that support the development of student understanding.

Viewing Videotapes

On the videotapes, teachers see episodes that capture both classroom atmosphere and student affect. These tapes provide participants invaluable glimpses of students' mathematical thinking in process.

Math Activities

Through extension activities similar to those faced by students in the print and video cases, the teachers develop, share, analyze and refine their own mathematical thinking.

Exploring Curricular Materials Aligned With National Standards

By studying selected materials from Mathland, Everyday Math, Math Trailblazers and Investigations in Number, Data and Space, teachers work to connect their seminar learnings with the mathematical tasks they set for their students.

Discussing Related Research

This concluding activity in each seminar creates an integrated picture of the mathematical themes under consideration, connecting the events observed in the cases and in participants own classrooms to the work of the research community.

The first course is Building a System of Tens in which participants explore the base-ten structure of the number system, consider how that structure is exploited in multidigit computational procedures, and examine how basic concepts of whole numbers reappear when working with decimals.

This is typically followed by Making Meaning of Operations. In this second course, participants examine the actions and situations modeled by the four basic operations. The course begins with a view of young children's counting strategies as they encounter word problems, moves to an examination of the four basic operations on whole numbers, and revisits the operations in the context of rational numbers.

It is recommended that faculties interesting in any of the five Courses begin the series with Course 1: Building a System of Tens in order to establish and practice both the procedures and group norms under which Courses 2 through 5 will operate. After the first course, there is flexibility in both the content to be used and the total time commitment. Participants, using consensus procedures they have established, can select from: Course 2: Making Meaning of Operations, Course 3: Examining Features of Shape, Course 4: Measuring Space in One, Two and Three Dimensions and Course 5: Working with Data.

VI's Mathematics Program will also offer the option of exploring 14 other content areas, with the emphasis on using visual models, from the Math and the Mind's Eye materials developed by the Math Learning Center. These courses may also may be taken for graduate credit at an equivalent of 12.5 classroom hours for each one hour of graduate credit.

FAQ's (Frequently Asked Questions) About the Mathematical Content Series