Summer 2019 has been busy! Here are some updates!
Standards Institute
I am very privileged to be facilitating at the Standards Institute for the 5th time. The conference focuses on the new Math Standards for United States, “why” these new standards are necessary and “why” attending to the precision of the language of the standards is important. It also focuses on the RIGOR of the new standards, and how it is interconnected by the 3 pillars of Conceptual Understanding, Procedural Fluency and Applications. This Summer, I facilitated a 5-day workshop on Grades 6-8 Math for this conference.
As always, it is a very humbling experience to facilitate this conference. This year, it is held at Los Angeles, where more than 2,500 teachers attendees around United States gather to learn not just the research behind the standards, but to build and sustain equitable instructional excellence through honest conversations about the roles that race, bias and prejudice play in our schools and classrooms.
Singapore Math In-depth Summit
This is the third year I am presenting at the Singapore Math In-depth Summit and the first time I am presenting to a 100-teacher crowd! It is always to joy to see school leaders, administrators and teachers using Singapore Math gather in Sunny Arizona once every year to reinforce teaching philosophies and review specific Singapore pedagogy! Many of the attendees are also returning from previous years, either to extend their learning or to share their challenges, hearing strategies from other teachers using the same curriculum in the area.
This conference, I presented for 2 days, sharing best practices in Singapore Math, how teachers prepare for lessons in Singapore and specific heuristics to scaffold our kids in problem solving.
Lexington Singapore School: Teachers Professional Development
In late August, our teachers gathered for professional development for the last time in 807 Massachusetts Ave. It was bittersweet as it would be the last time we are in the building that we called home for the past 5 years.
In our PD, we reminded ourselves of our NORMS and the basic MISSION of our program – to care for our students. Being math teachers, we also wasted no time in unpacking our curriculum, diving deep into Bar Modeling and exploring the work of Hungarian Mathematician, George Pólya. In his book, “How to solve it”, he explained that it is better to solve one problem five different ways, than to solve five problems one way. This is one of the basic essence of Singapore Math.
