2013 Conference Proceedings - University of Nevada, Las Vegas

students to organize their reports “so the students can get into the habit of looking at the problemand devising their own questions in their thought process.”Student workWe identified lessons for teachers to collect and submit students’ work. Teachers were askedto select at least one student each at high, middle, and low levels of achievement. For example,while most students emphasize the answer and the steps taken to generate their answer withoutdescribing why the process was valid, Laile is primarily focusing on getting students tocommunicate what they are doing. She shared students’ work and how they were writing reportsand compared several examples of earlier work, where students wrote a few sentences, to theircurrent work, which filled a page or more and was organized neatly.Impact on RevisionsFrom the data collected through the professional development, observations, teacher reports,and examples of student work there are several changes being planned.Use of the modeling cycleOther teachers have embraced the use of the modeling cycle suggested by Laile for studentsto organize their work and write reports with similar success. The use of the modeling cycle willbe more prominent in the revised materials.More explicit guidance for teaching lessonsTeachers desire more direct information on conducting a lesson than has been provided. Thisis especially crucial due to the demands made on both the teacher and students related to theproblem solving approach used in AMAA. These changes will be reflected in both the StudentPages and in the Annotated Student Pages.More explicit discussion of the mathematics needed for teachingTeachers have requested more in-depth explanations of the bigger picture of the lessoncontent in the Teacher Notes. They desire more connections in the unit overviews between thecontent within the unit and the content across units. They also requested more answers withexplanations.More explicit guidance in how to use the digital componentsTeachers report not using the digital components very much, either because they have nottaken time to prepare for its use or that they are not sure how to use it. Now that they are seeingProceedings of the 40 th Annual Meeting of the Research Council on Mathematics Learning 2013 56