Program and Presentations 

Participate in face-to-face activities, network with peers from across the country, and pick a strand for the grade or content area that you’d like to focus on for an experience tailored to your needs. Take home strategies that will help you provide your students with the tools they need to apply math meaningfully.

Program Overview

Focus on Your Grade—Pick a Strand

The experience will be suited to your interests—you’ll take part in sessions and be grouped with educators according to the grade level you select for your strand of focus. Each strand will experience a progression of activities to address number and operations.

Strands 

• Grades Pre-K–2
• Grades 3–5
• PD Strand—NEW! If you are a professional development leader, this new strand is for you. PD Strand participants will attend sessions according to their grade band, and will participate in an additional three-hour session on Day 1. They will also attend a debriefing session at the end of each day. (Note: There is an additional cost for this strand).

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Who Should Attend

• Classroom teachers in Pre-K–grade 5
• Preservice teachers

Expanded audience for PD Strand:

• Math specialists and coaches
• Math supervisors
• Lead teachers
• Curriculum coordinators

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What You'll Accomplish—The Institute's Defined Outcomes

Activities are designed for you and your peers to achieve defined outcomes together. Participants will—

• understand the importance of number as a critical foundation for college and career readiness;
• learn about instructional strategies that provide all students with an opportunity to develop a sense of number;
• determine the role of the Standards for Mathematical Practice, outlined in the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics (CCSSM), as they relate to number-related content domains and topics;
• understand the impact and importance of CCSSM content domains that emphasize number: Counting and Cardinality, Operations and Algebraic Thinking, Number and Operations in Base 10, Number and Operations–Fractions, and Measurement and Data; and
• recognize the role of formative assessment in developing understanding and proficiency with number.

PD Strand Additional Outcome: Participants will—

• recognize the importance of developing professional learning communities, with particular emphasis on teachers as learners and teachers as reflective practitioners.

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Keynote Sessions

Well-known mathematics education leaders will address critical topics related to and supporting algebra readiness.

Opening Session: Developing Number Concepts through the Lens of Reasoning and Making Sense Linda Gojak, NCTM President/John Carroll University The content and practice standards must be integrated to support instruction that promotes a deep understanding of number. Focus on strategic thinking and reasoning with young children is core to effective instruction and student success.

Closing Session: Learning Trajectories in Number and Operations: Standards, Learning, and Teaching Doug Clements, University of Denver, Denver, CO Recent work, including the Common Core State Standards as well as research and development in learning, curriculum, and teaching have emphasized the notion of learning trajectories. Explore example learning trajectories for number and operations and how learning trajectories can bring coherence to standards, curricula, and approaches to teaching.

Formative Assessment: The Key to Improving Student Learning
Anne Collins, Lesley University, Cambridge, MA

Examine effective formative assessment strategies designed to enable you to meet your students where they are and how to move them forward in their learning progression. We will discuss questioning strategies, assessing prior knowledge, exit questions, and intervention strategies.

Ideas for Interventions and Assessment Strategies in the Mathematics Classroom: Teaching Students with Disabilities
Karen Karp, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY

Learn about foundational strategies and conceptual approaches, such as the research-based CSA (concrete–semiconcrete–abstract) model, for effective mathematics teaching for students with disabilities. Explore possible interventions and assessment strategies, including diagnostic interview.

PD Strand
Francis (Skip) Fennell, McDaniel College, Westminster, MD
Kay B. Sammons, Howard County Public Schools, Howard County, MD

This professional development session will engage you in the mathematical practices and develop teacher content and pedagogical knowledge around important number-related domains and standards. Activities will encompass the content domains and standards of the Common Core State Standards. We will focus on number and operations in base ten and fractions, with an emphasis on developing number sense. Leave with potential plans for developing mathematics learning communities at the school and district level.

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Breakout Workshops

Participants will attend a series of four workshops within their grade band groups. Workshop leaders will engage participants in hands-on activities focused on developing a sense of number.

Grades Pre–K–2 Strand 

Pre-K–K: Counting and Cardinality – The goal of this session is to explore tasks and instructional strategies to support students’ development of naming, counting, and comparing numbers. Guided by the CCSSM mathematical practices, the session will describe questioning techniques to promote students’ conceptual knowledge and procedural fluency with counting and beginning number concepts. During this session, participants will explore counting principles, examine the differences between rote and rational counters, develop a core understanding of the relationships between number and quantities, and examine common misconceptions related to counting and cardinality. CCSSM: K.CC, K.OA

Grades 1–2: Number in Context – In this session, participants will explore numbers in context emphasizing iterative units for measures such as length, time, and money. The CCSSM Standards for Mathematical Practice will ground this exploration as participants learn strategies to engage students in modeling, reasoning, and using appropriate tools to order, measure, and compare objects of varying lengths; read and write times for analog and digital clocks, and count and compare monetary amounts. The session will also focus on the importance of problem posing. CCSSM: 1. MD, 2.MD

Pre-K–Grade 2: Addition and Subtraction (Place Value) – The focus of this session will be on place value, addition and subtraction of whole numbers, and mental strategies to develop students’ computational proficiency in adding and subtracting numbers. Participants will examine the importance of the position of the digits in determining the value of two- and three-digit numbers and the role of composing and decomposing numbers in laying the foundations for students’ mathematical readiness to compute. Through problem-based tasks, teachers will explore addition and subtraction problems types, the commutative and associative properties for addition, and the use of mathematical symbols to represent and solve addition and subtraction problems. CCSSM: K.NBT, 1. NBT, 2.NBT, K.OA, 1.OA , 2.OA

Pre-K–Grade 2: Beginning Understanding Multiplication and Division – The goals of this session are to extend place-value concepts to examine multiple ways to model multiplication and division. During the session, participants will develop a deeper understanding of the relationships between and among the four operations and learn instructional strategies to improve students’ computational knowledge through skip-counting by 5s, 10s, 100s, and considering equal groups and sharing for both multiplication and division. A variety of problem-based contexts will be used to engage participants, connecting directly to the CCSSM Standards for Mathematical Practice. CCSSM: 2.NBT.

Pre-K–Grade 2: Beginning Fractions – This session focuses on fractions as numbers that expand the number systems beyond whole numbers while building on students’ informal understanding of sharing to introduce fraction concepts. During the session, participants explore instructional strategies to engage student in equal-share activities to introduce the concept of fraction, examine a range of representations and how to use them to illustrate fraction concepts, and gain an awareness of common misconceptions that students have about fractions and difficulties that might arise when they develop fraction concepts with concrete and pictorial representations. The CCSSM Standards for Mathematical Practice will be an important consideration for participants as they approach the content focus of this session and discuss how they will engage their students in using the practices to develop conceptual understanding of fractions. CCSSM: 1G, 2.G.

Grades 3–5 Strand 

Multiplication and Division (1) – This session will focus on the conceptual development of multiplication and division, with a particular emphasis on developing understandings related to a variety of representations of these operations. These representations include equal-sized groups, rectangular arrays and area models, use of open number lines, expanded form, and equations. Participants will also discuss strategies for acquiring automaticity with the related multiplication and division facts, and apply the commutative, associative, and distributive properties as strategies for multiplication and division. A variety of problem-based contexts will be used to engage participants, connecting directly to the CCSSM Standards for Mathematical Practice. The practices and their use in planning and teaching will be an important consideration for participants as they discuss how they will engage students in grades 3–5 in foundational experiences related to these important operations. CCSSM: 3.OA.1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7; 4.OA.1, 2

Multiplication and Division (2) – This session will extend the previous session related to multiplication and division and focus on the use of strategies based on place value, the properties of operations, and varied representations that lead to access to and fluency with a standard algorithm. Additional number sense topics that will receive emphasis are the importance of place value in mental mathematics and estimation strategies in multiplying and dividing whole numbers. In addition, participants will consider multiplication as scaling when comparing a product to one factor on the basis of the size of the other factor. A variety of problem-based contexts will be used to engage participants, with a particular emphasis on the CCSSM Standards for Mathematical Practice The practices and their use in planning and teaching will be important considerations for participants as they discuss how they will engage students in grades 3–5 in these important operations. CCSSM: 4.NBT.1,5,6; 5.NBT.2, 5, 6; 6.NS.2

Fractions as Numbers (1) – The focus of this session will be on fractions as numbers, emphasizing their magnitude and equivalence. Participants will engage in problem-based tasks that involve a variety of representations, sharing and proportionality, comparing and ordering equivalent fractions and decimals, and ratio and rate reasoning. The Standards for Mathematical Practice will be an important consideration for participants as they approach the content focus of this session and discuss how they will engage students in using the practices to develop fraction sense. CCSSM: 3.G.2; 4.NF.1, 2, 5, 6, 7; 6.RP.1

Fraction Operations (2) – This session will emphasize understandings critical to operations with fractions and decimals, with particular attention to building fractions from unit fractions, joining and separating parts of the same whole, applying and extending prior knowledge of multiplication and division of whole numbers to fractions and decimals. Participants will engage in problem-based tasks involving a variety of representations for fractions, decimals, and common percents. The Standards for Mathematical Practice will be an important consideration for participants as they approach the content focus of this session and discuss how they will engage their students in using the practices to develop conceptual understanding and computational proficiency with fractions and decimals. CCSSM: 4.NF.3, 4; 5.NF.3, 4, 5, 6, 7; 6.RP.3

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Extend Your Learning

Reinforce, expand, and apply what you learn at this Interactive Institute through our new online course, Connecting Number and Operations in the Classroom: Extended Online Professional Development—Grades Pre-K–5.

This course will feature workshops, readings, online keynote addresses, as well as a vibrant and active online community to help teachers deepen their own knowledge of the mathematics that supports number and operations. The content is based on books from our Essential Understanding series that focus on grade bands Pre-K–2 and 3–5.

This 12-week course can be taken independently or as a supplement to the Interactive Institute. The course is available both Fall 2013 and Spring 2014 semesters for your convenience. Choose the option that best fits your schedule:

• The Fall 2013 online course begins the week of August 19, 2013 and ends by November 17, 2013. Live online sessions will be on Mondays at 5:00 p.m. ET. All online sessions last approximately 75 minutes. 
• The Spring 2014 online course begins the week of January 20, 2014 and ends by April 20, 2014. Live online sessions will be on Tuesdays at 7:00 p.m. ET. All online sessions last approximately 75 minutes. 

Throughout the course, students will be expected to attend and participate weekly. Participants will join live online sessions, engage in online discussion forums, read the assigned text and additional articles, and analyze student work, emphasizing the critical understandings that support number and operations. On registering, students will have the option to take this course for two college credits. Additional fees for the credit option will apply. Learn more about this online course.

The online course is just $25 when you add it to your Interactive Institute registration. To only register for the online course, the cost is $200 for NCTM members, $250 for nonmembers. Visit our Institute Registration page and click the "Register Now" button to register.

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