June 24

June 24

Assessment

TIMSS item review

TIMSS performance expectations

IL Learning Standards

Principles

Learning Principle: Mathematics instructional programs should enable all students to understand and use mathematics.

In many classrooms, learning is conceived of as a process in which students passively absorb information, storing it in easily retrievable fragments as a result of repeated practice and reinforcement. Research findings from psychology indicate that learning does not occur by passive absorption alone (Resnick 1987). Instead, in many situations individuals approach a new task with prior knowledge, assimilate new information, and construct their own meanings. For example, before young children are taught addition and subtraction, they can already solve most addition and subtraction problems using such routines as "counting on" and "counting back" (Romberg and Carpenter 1986). As instruction proceeds, children often continue to use these routines in spite of being taught more formal problem-solving procedures. They will accept new ideas only when their old ideas do not work or are inefficient. Furthermore, ideas are not isolated in memory but are organized and associated with the natural language that one uses and the situations one has encountered in the past.

Teaching Principle: Mathematics instructional programs depend on competent and caring teachers who teach all students to understand and use mathematics.

This constructive, active view of the learning process must be reflected in the way much of mathematics is taught. Thus, instruction should vary and include opportunities for--

appropriate project work;
group and individual assignments;
discussion between teacher and students and among students;
practice on mathematical methods;
exposition by the teacher. (NCTM Standards, 1989)

…..we see classrooms as places where interesting problems are regularly explored using important mathematical ideas. Our premise is that what a student learns depends to a great degree on how he or she has learned it. For example, one could expect to see students recording measurements of real objects, collecting information and describing their properties using statistics, and exploring the properties of a function by examining its graph. This vision sees students studying much of the same mathematics currently taught but with quite a different emphasis; it also sees some mathematics being taught that in the past has received little emphasis in schools. (NCTM Standards, 1989)

Open lab

Caterpillar Trip

Schedule for Friday, June 25

Submit electronically journal entries on the three field trips
Finalize projects
Dress rehearsal for June 30.