Reflect on the progress we are making and CELEBRATE!

As we are going through our first year of implementation of the CCSS within the ACT Framework, I plan on sharing some of the “great news” as teams of teachers focus on rigorous expectations of student learning.  PUHSD has amazing mathematics teachers and I want to “shout from the rooftop” and share some of the exciting stories.  Below are just a few examples from the first few weeks of school. 

Story from a Pre-Calculus teacher at Maryvale High School:

“I just wanted to take a moment to share some good news from Phoenix College.  I recently took my 3 pre-calculus classes to the computer lab and a representative from PC came to administer the accuplacer which is the college entrance exam.  I was able to get 79 students cleared to take the test and just received the official results yesterday.  Of the 79 students that took the test, 20 of them actually tested into Calculus (MAT220, which also allows them to take my class), 51 tested into the appropriate Pre-calculus class (MAT187) and just 8 didn’t make the cut.  Of the 8 that did not make it, the largest margin was missing it by only 3 points!

These results make me very happy that we, as a department, are moving in the right direction.  An interesting note is that these students came through our math program where we implement the use of the calculator daily.  The reason this is interesting is because no calculators are allowed on this test.  I feel we are doing a much better job implementing higher reasoning skills that can only be accomplished by using the technology we all have available to us and appreciate all the hard work that has gone into increasing our students’ level of understanding.”

Story from an Algebra Team: 

“We used the data from the Pre-test exam on D2SC to modify our pacing calendar.  We found that the students had specific strengths and weaknesses so we readjusted the calendar to spend more time on concepts that students didn’t understand”   

Thank you to the teams/teachers that are sharing their stories.  If you have a success story, take a moment to respond to this post.  Sometimes, great ideas stem from hearing what other teams are implementing on other campuses.