/ / EDCI327 Elementary Mathematics Education
Fall 2012
3 Credits
Class Meetings: Wednesday, 9:30 to 12:20 pm in Education 408
Final Exam: Wednesday, May 8, 10-12 am
55478EDCI 327-01Elementary Math EducationMon. May 6th, 10:00 a.m. - Noon
Instructor: Dr. David Yopp
Office Location: 506D Education
Phone:208-885-6220
Email:
Office Hours:Wed 1-3 PM, or by appointment

Required Texts:

Elementary and Middle School Mathematics: Teaching Developmentally, 8th Edition, by

John A. Van de Walle (2013). ISBN-13: 978-0-13-261226-5

Classroom Discussions: Using Math Talk to Help Students Learn, by Suzanne H. Chapin et al.

Additional Resources are available on Blackboard, inthe Instructional Materials and Technology

Center (IMTC), and on the internet.

It is also highly recommended that you use your texts from Math 235 and 236 for reference.

Reasonable accommodations are available for students who have documented temporary or permanent disabilities. All accommodations must be approved through Disability Support Services located in the Idaho Commons Building, Room 306 in order to notify your instructor(s) as soon as possible regarding accommodation(s) needed for the course.

  • 885-6307
  • email at <>
  • website at <

College Vision

Idaho's Leader in Lifelong Learning and Healthy Lifestyles.

We seek teaching, learning, and living that transforms, invigorates, and nurtures. We expand lasting knowledge centered in local and global communities.

College Mission

The University of Idaho’s College of Education is the state’s flagship and land-grant research college focused on the preparation of professionals for schools, the movement sciences, and workforce counselors and educators. From our commitment to develop leaders in these fields emerges our responsibility to enhance the scientific, social, economic, and cultural assets of the state and develop solutions for complex problems.

We deliver on our commitment through focused, interdisciplinary excellence in teaching, research, outreach, and engagement in a collaborative environment at our residential main campus and our regional centers. Consistent with the land-grant ideal, our outreach activities serve the state and at the same time strengthen our teaching, scholarly, and creative capacities.

Our teaching and learning include undergraduate, graduate and professional education offered through both resident instruction and extended delivery. Our scholarly and creative activities promote K-12 academic achievement, human development and wellness, global awareness, and progress in professional practice.

Conceptual Framework

University of Idaho educators CARE. Together we develop as scholar practitioners who value and professionally apply and advance:

Cultural Proficiency;
Assessment, Teaching, and Learning;
Reflective Scholarship & Practice; and,
Engagementin Community Building Partnerships.

Course Description:

This course is part of planned program of studies in the College of Education at the University of Idaho. The course is designed to provide you with an in-depth exposure to specific methods, research, curricula, and technology in teaching elementary school mathematics for diverse populations. It facilitates understanding content, curriculum, methods and assessment in an integrated setting.

Prerequisite: EDCI 302; Math 235 and 236 or Math 301

Co requisites: This course is part of a block of methods courses. Students are required to take EDCI 327, 328, 329, 408, and PEP 350 at the same time.

EDCI 408 – requires 30 hours in practicum placement classroom. (This course is not required for early childhood students in catalogs prior to 2009, but is recommended for all).

Individual Responsibility for Learning:

The College of Education model for teacher education is inquiry based, meaning that the preparation of quality teachers includes numerous opportunities for choice, problem solving, reflection, and revision. Consequently, it is expected that as a teacher in preparation, you assume full responsibility for your own learning. This includes completing and reflecting on the assigned readings, exploring additional information sources on your own, and submitting assignments that always represent your best efforts. Reflection and revision are an integral part of the learning process. As a result, you should also expect to reflect on and revise your work. Students are expected to read assignment descriptions carefully and promptly and ask for clarification and support when needed. Please also note that you should email or phone with any questions well before the due date of an assignment. I will usually be unable to answer email over the weekend.

Course Goals and Expectations:

By the end of this course, students will …

  • Understand and demonstrate how to utilize a model, incorporate language, and provide the symbolic representation for mathematics concepts developed in the K -8 math curriculum.
  • Develop the ability to plan, conduct, and learn from lessons with a focus on students learning and understanding meaningful mathematics.
  • Develop a broader perspective of current trends in mathematics education including views from the NCTM, results from international and national assessments of math achievement among K-12 students, the Common Core Mathematics Standards, and the views and influences of the Idaho State Board of Education and the Idaho Mathematics Initiative.
  • Understand the progression of mathematical understanding from grades K-8.
  • Understand and use the state standards and Common Care Mathematics Standards to develop grade appropriate lessons.
  • Develop the ability to intelligently evaluate the usefulness, appropriateness, and value of materials, methods, and strategies for elementary mathematics education.
  • Be familiar with many of the math resources available.
  • Understand common difficulties in learning math.
  • Understand and be able to use strategies to help students develop mathematical understanding and to overcome mathematics computation difficulties.

Course Objectives

Students will demonstrate the following Teacher Preparation Standards:

  1. Standard 1– Knowledge of Subject Matter
  2. Assignment– Select Standards, Plan Problem, Multiple Approaches, and Prior Knowledge.
  3. Standard 2 – Knowledge of Human Development and Learning
  4. Assignment– Plan Problem, Multiple Approaches, Prior Knowledge
  5. Standard 3 – Adapting Instruction for Individual Needs
  6. Assignment – Plan Differentiated Instruction
  7. Standard 4 – Multiple Instructional Strategies
  8. Assignment – Multiple approaches
  9. Standard 5 –– Classroom Motivation and Management
  10. Assignment – Plan Differentiated Introduction
  11. Standard 6 – Communication Skills
  12. Not assessed.
  13. Standard 7 – Instructional Planning Skills
  14. Signature Assignment– Plan Lesson
  15. Assignment– Plan Differentiated Instruction
  16. Standard 8 – Assessment of Student Learning
  17. Signature Assignment– Student Thinking Interview
  18. Assignment – Assessment
  19. Standard 9 – Professional Commitment and Responsibility
  20. Assignment– Not Assessed
  21. Standard 10 – Partnerships
  22. Assignment –Select Standards and Plan Problem

Teacher PreparationStandards

  1. Knowledge of Subject Matter: The teacher understands the central concepts, tools of inquiry, and structures of the discipline(s) he or she teaches and can create learning experiences that make these aspects of subject matter meaningful for students.
  2. Knowledge of Human Development and Learning:The teacher understands how children learn and develop, and can provide learning opportunities that support their intellectual, social and personal development.
  3. Adapting Instruction for Individual Needs: The teacher understands how students differ in their approaches to learning and creates instructional opportunities that are adapted to diverse learners.
  4. Multiple Instructional Strategies: The teacher understands and uses a variety of instructional strategies to encourage students’ development of critical thinking, problem solving, and performance skills.
  5. Classroom Motivation and Management: The teacher uses an understanding of individual and group motivation and behavior to create a learning environment that encourages positive social interaction, active engagement in learning, and self-motivation.
  6. Communication Skills: The teacher uses knowledge of effective verbal, nonverbal, and media communication techniques to foster active inquiry, collaboration, and supportive interaction in the classroom.
  7. Instructional Planning Skills: The teacher plans instruction based upon knowledge of subject matter, students, and curriculum goals.
  8. Assessment of Student Learning: The teacher understands and uses formal and informal assessment strategies to evaluate and ensure the continuous intellectual, social, and physical development of the learner.
  9. Professional Commitment and Responsibility: The teacher is a reflective practitioner who continually evaluates the effects of his/her choices and actions on others (students, parents, and other professionals in the learning community) and who actively seeks out opportunities to grow professionally.
  10. Partnerships: The teacher fosters relationships with school colleagues, parents, and agencies in the larger community to support students’ learning and well-being.

Teacher Education Dispositions

  • Attends regularly.
  • Meets timeline commitments.
  • Dress/Appearance is appropriate and professional.
  • Maintains appropriate relationships with peers.
  • Scholar-practitioner demonstrates adequate content knowledge that is current.
  • Engaged, full participation and takes initiative.
  • Maintains confidentiality and is ethical.
  • Maintains appropriate relationships with students.
  • Committed to and facilitates student's learning in a safe climate.
  • Maintains appropriate relationships with teachers, administration, parents, and community members
  • Respects and advocates for diversity.
  • Responds appropriately to feedback and is flexible.
  • Written work communicates clearly and accurately, and is in standard English.
  • Verbal communication is clear, accurate, appropriate to the situation, and conventions used are standard for speaking situations.

Core Principals that Guide EDCI 327:

Children are sense-makers. Children are not empty vessels that are filled with knowledge in school. Rather, children actively make sense of their worlds and of what they find in school. Instruction should build on this as a fundamental theory for learning.

Teachers must know their students as individuals and as learners. Teachers must know their students’ individual strengths, pleasures, habits, and troubles, as well as who students are as learners—what they know and hope to know, how they best work, and how they see themselves.

Teachers must design instruction for all children to do rigorous academic work in school and to have equitable access to learning. Teachers must know and appreciate the cultural, social, ethnic, and religious backgrounds of students and consider the social, cultural and political nature of schools to create inclusive classrooms and provide rich opportunities for learning for diverse children. While teaching often happens in groups, the student as an individual matters. Managing both groups of children and individual learners is an important aspect of high quality teaching. Teachers must be of a disposition that assumes that all students, no matter their current skill or competency, are capable of ambitious learning. They must seek to differentiate instruction in ways that enable all students with different learning trajectories to make progress.

Ambitious instruction requires clear instructional goals. Instructional activities must be planned and carried out with clear learning goals in mind. These learning goals are often linked to ‘big ideas’ in academic disciplines and designed with specific goals in mind. Importantly, teachers need to know subject matter thoroughly and in different ways than the average adult to help students learn it.

Teachers must be responsive to the requirements of the school environment. This includes standardized testing, report cards, benchmarks for achievement, textbook adoptions. They must also strive to minimize any negatives effects of such features and propose more effective alternatives when appropriate.

The measure of good teaching is student learning. Teachers are responsible for helping children learn content in substantive, useful, and meaningful ways. In mathematics, for examples, students need to learn both skills and the bigger conceptual ideas of the discipline.

Required Readings and Learning Resources

Students are expected to complete weekly reading assignments and post a reflection (at most 400 words) on each reading on Blackboard. You are expected to reflect on and respond professionally to each weekly reading. A tentative schedule of readings is presented below.

Reading Assignment / Due Date
Determined for Each Semester
1.
a.Van de Walle, Chapters 1 and 2
b.Common Core Standards for Mathematic (found online) / January 16
2.
a.Van de Walle, Chapter 11 Place Value
b.Chapin, Chapters 1
c.Meyer & Diopoulos, Anchored Learning in Context Find new article about place value and context. / January 23
3.
a.Van de Walle, Chapter 3 Teaching Through Problem solving
b.Chapin, Chapter 2
c.Jacobs & Phillips, Supporting Children’s Problem Solving / January 30
4.
a.Van de Walle, Chapter 4 Planning
b.Chapin, Chapters 3
c.Cady, Supporting Language Learners
d.Kersaint & Chappell, Capturing Students’ Interests / February 6
5.
a.Van de Walle, Chapters 5 and 6 Assessment; Equity
b.Chapin, Chapter 4
c.Edwards, Managing a Standards-Based Classroom / February 13
6.
a.Van de Walle, Chapters 7 and 8 Technology; Early Number Concepts
b.Carter, Disequilibrium and Questioning / February 20
7.
a.Van de Walle, Chapters 9 Operations
b.Piel & Green, Jump Right In: Skip the Review / February 27
8.
a.Van de Walle, Chapters 10 and 12 Basic Facts; Computation
b.Chapin, Chapter 5
c.Alsopp et al., Special Needs Students / March 6
9.
a.Van de Walle, Chapters 13 and 14 Estimation; Algebraic Thinking
b.Fraivillig, Strategies for Advancing Children’s Mathematical Thinking
c.Chapin, Chapter 6 / March 20
10.Focus on Student Thinking about Math:
a. Van de Walle, Chapters 15 and 16 Fraction Concepts and Computation
b.Taber, Capitalizing on the Unexpected
c.Chapin Chapter 7 / March 27
11.
a.Van de Walle, Chapters 17 and 18 Decimals, Per Cents; Proportional Reasoning B.
b.Chapin, Case Study #1 / April 3
12.Teaching Math through Problem Solving:
a.Van de Walle, Chapters 19 and 20 Measurement; Geometry
b.Chapin, Case Study #2 / April 10
13.
a.Van de Walle, Chapter 23 Exponents, Integers, Real Numbers
b.Chapin, Case Study # 3 / April 17
14.Representing Mathematical Ideas
a.Van de Walle, Chapters 21 and 22 Data Analysis; Probability / April 24
15.
a.Herbel-Eisenmann, Breyfogle Questioning our Patterns of Questions / May 1
(at least a day prior in honor of dead week)
Assignment / Purpose / Idaho TP Standard Attended to / Timeframe
(Due) / Course Assessed in / Signature Assignment
1. Select Standards
With corporation from supervising teacher, candidate chooses a date in November or April when you will teach a lesson and one CCSS-M content standard and one CCSS-M mathematical practice in addition to problem solving that will be developed in students. / Set expectations early with candidate and teacher and give student a target for subsequent assignments. / Knowledge of Subject Matter
Partnerships / Due Jan. 23 / 327 / No
2. Plan Problem
With corporation from supervision teacher, candidate develops a problem solving activity (consider incorporating a social studies or science secondary context and learning objective) of high cognitive demand such that the successful complete on the problem will provide evidence that the students have learned the content standard identified in assignment 1 and the practice identified in assignment 1 are exemplified. This problem will be the center of the mathematics lesson given in November under the perspective of “teaching content through problem solving.” / Ensure that the mathematics lesson with exemplify teaching through problem solving. / Knowledge of Subject Matter
Knowledge of Human Development and Learning
Partnerships / Due Jan 30 / 327 / No
3. Multiple Approaches
Candidate will develop 3 approaches** to the problem identified in assignment 2 anticipated by the student, each approach being unique in terms of approach, meaning either mathematics operations, representations, or strategies used. Candidate will be explicit about what makes the approaches unique. / Ensure the stage is set for anticipating alternative strategies and adapting instruction to individual needs without reducing cognitive demand. / Knowledge of Subject Matter
Knowledge of Human Development and Learning
Multiple Instructional Strategies / Due Feb 6 / 327 / No
4. Prior Knowledge
Candidate will list all the prior knowledge students would need for the 4 approaches in assignment 3 to complete the task without teacher “pre-teaching” or scaffolding. Justify the relationship between the prior knowledge and your content objectives and explain why the prior knowledge is needed. / Ensure candidate bases instructional decision on student prior knowledge. / Knowledge of Subject Matter
Knowledge of Human Development and Learning / Due Feb 13 / 327 / No
5. Student Thinking Interview***
Candidate will chose one of the essential prior knowledges listed in assignment 4, chose a student supervising teacher believes is weak in this knowledge, and perform the Student Thinking Interview task. / Ensure candidate has experience accurately assessing student knowledge and experience with how students come to know during interaction with teacher. / Assessment of Student Learning / Due Feb 27 / 327 / Yes
6. Plan Differentiated Introduction****
Candidate will develop an introduction for the task and anticipated differentiation and scaffolding in the introduction for individual students based on individual students’ prior knowledge and IEPs. / Ensure planning is based on student need, not “teacher lust.” Teacher lust is a research-based term in mathematics education. / Instructional Planning Skills
Adapting Instruction for Individual Needs / Due Mar. 6 / 327 / No
7. Assessment
Candidate will develop a formative assessment and summative assessment plan for a lesson centered on the problem solving experience develop in assignments 1-6. Rubrics and anticipated student understanding and misunderstanding and how they will be attended to will be included. / Ensure teacher has a plan achieving goals through scaffolding and question that is based in student thinking and responses. / Assessment of Student Learning / Due Mar. 13 / 327 / No
8. Plan Lesson
Using the University of Idaho Lesson Plan and corresponding TPA rubric for 408 or a lesson plan and rubric of the instructor’s choosing, develop a lesson plan that uses the products from assignments 1 through 6. / Obvious / Instructional Planning Skills / Due Mar. 27 / 327 / Yes
9. Teach the Lesson.
Candidate make audio recording of the lesson. / Obvious / Assessment of Student Learning / InApril / Not assessed
10. Reflection
Complete the after teaching reflection form and after-teaching-question-tracking form. Upload the mathematics lesson plan augmented with the after teaching reflection and question tracking form into 408 taskstream
The teaching reflection will address whether or not you met your objectives and next steps, which can be either addressing content not met or moving to next, connected content. Include a rationale for why you are making these next step decisions.
Teaching reflection must be based on student data collected using the rubrics develop in 7. / Obvious / Instructional Planning Skills
Assessment of Student Learning
Professional Commitment and Responsibility / Before dead week. / 408 / Yes

Learning Activities and Assignments: