Director: Chris Mars, Wareham High School
Contact: cmars@wareham.k12.ma.us

Co-Director/Higher Ed Partner: Stephen Hegedus, Mathematics Department, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
Contact: shegedus@umassd.edu

This is a Title IIB Mathematics and Science Partnership grant funded by the US Department of Education adn MA DOE

Program Features

• Solution, presentation, and discussion of mathematical problems
• Examing errors and misconceptions with assoicated pedagogical strategies
• Building mathematical reasoning and argumentation, e.g., a triangle cannot have two right angles because it will have two parallel lines
• Teacher as facilitator of a child developing an argument
• Help our students support conjectures and openly test them
• Making connections between algebra and geometry
• Deepening content knowledge by revisiting concepts in different representational fields and contexts, e.g., 2x3=3x2 in elementary becomes more challenging with 4567x3425 or 1/2x1/3 in middle school
• Constructing, exploring, reasoning, discovering, and then reflecting
• Examining past MCAS questions analyzing common mistakes
• Analyze and prepare for MTEL content test

Project Aims

• Build partnerships between teachers, administrators and higher education faculty to support and sustain long-term teacher capacity growth
• Develop a good teaching practice to maximize effective learning grades 4-8 with particular reference to MCAS
• Develop content skills necessary to pass the teacher content test in mathematics (MTEL)
• Deepen our understanding of how we solve mathematical problemsand how this informs our teaching through a daily reflective journal
• Deepen our content knowledge
• Begin the start of a long-term mission to improve our content knowledge and teaching through regular classroom visits, and e-mentoring through UMass Dartmouth