Summary of Year-Long Learning

Last week, the Algebra and Geometry Teachers finished their exploration of high cognitive demand tasks.  The focus of the February session was to:

• Analyze and complete a data dialogue on the 1^st semester data.
• Utilize the Thinking Through a Lesson Protocol (TTLP) for developing lessons that promote rich mathematical thinking. 
• Describe the thinking behind the selection, support, and implementation of a task. 

This year we have been learning WHAT is a high-cognitive demand task.  We spent time reviewing Type II and Type III PARCC tasks, SMARTER Balanced items, and defining what makes a task a great task.  In November, teams created rich tasks to use with our current curriculum.

Last week, we focused on HOW we support implementing these rich tasks.  Teachers make hundreds of decisions daily, hourly and minute-by-minute on how the mathematical content is going to be developed via the mathematical practices.  To create effective mathematics student-to-student and whole class discourse that promotes a balance of conceptual understanding and procedural fluency, teacher teams collaborate BEFORE a lesson to develop a progression of how the students are going to develop the math content and the mathematical practices for each lesson. The teams last week utilized the TTLP process to identify specific thinking that they should consider when planning a lesson and each team created one lesson that incorporated this specificity of thinking. 

Thank you to all of the PUHSD teachers that have participated in the district-wide training this year and know that I appreciate the sacrifices (sub-planning and more) you make for your pursuit of continual learning!