ICTM Conference 2019

Number Talks in the K-5 Elementary Classroom - short discussions among a teacher and students about how to solve a particular mental math problem. The focus is not on the correct answer, but on all the possible methods of finding the answer. Each student has a chance to explain their method, and everyone else will learn from other people's methods! This is just a Place Holder

Through a hands-on learning opportunity, participants will experience the benefits of teaching through a gradual, systematic approach known as Concrete - Representational - Abstract. Aligned with the NCTM Standards, this approach makes learning accessible to all learners, helps students make connections when moving through levels of understanding, and helps students learn concepts before they learn rules. Not only does this approach enhance the academic understanding of your students, but you will see students exhibit more motivation and on-task behavior. Who doesn’t want that?!? Come join me as I help you experience how to bring this instructional approach to your own classroom! 

Recent brain research proves that when you believe you CAN do math, you will learn more from your mistakes than if you believe you aren’t good at math. How do you have students persist in their practice to develop and maintain fluency without drills that kill confidence so as to preserve a math mindset? We’ll examine a number of ways including fun games, playing with numbers & patterns, student agency, providing multiple entry points, many different ways of practicing, goal setting and tracking, rewarding fruitful effort over skill,  friendly competition, integrating practice with short instruction videos, procedural fluency and more. See how students enjoy deliberate practice while building mental math and Computational Thinking with First in Math. FREE whole schools of attendees - through July!

Join us in a demonstration of an instructional routine that will elevate the math discourse in your classroom. Participants will experience a math lesson and learn strategies for discourse facilitation from Dr. Gladis Kersaint’s white paper.

Come learn new ways to help students learn their facts. Ideas and resources will be provided to help students think more flexibly about numbers, as well as ways to assess their fact fluency.

Experience pattern sensing, problem-solving, higher-level thinking and even procedural fluency in a challenge rather than drills with the 24® game. We'll compete like the students to do multi-step mental math, from basic addition through Algebra and discuss ways to get your students excited about doing math in their heads!  Free 30th anniversary 24® game for attendees! 

Our team has teachers from multiple elementary schools in Bettendorf from multiple grades (K-5) and each will be sharing the ways in which they structure their math block. Our focus will be on differentiating math centers, number talks, 3 act tasks, hands on activities/games, and the inclusion of technology.

How is “subitizing” connected to algebra? Join us to investigate the coherence in the K-HS progression that links decomposition of number with area models and algebraic expressions. Participants will use a variety of manipulatives and tools (including algebra tiles), and receive math lessons showcasing the connections.

Multiplication fluency is a critical area of focus for third grade and often continues to need work throughout upper elementary. This session will focus on the latest research in developing conceptual understanding and achieving fluency. We will examine the recommended progression for learning facts, think about how to engage students throughout the year rather than in one or two chapters in the textbook, discuss the importance of understanding the role of the distributive property in instruction, explore activities and games that support achieving fluency, and discuss the difference between memorization and automaticity.  

Description: Students should feel safe to take risks in participating or engaging in mathematics in classroom environments where it is socially acceptable for all students to do so. Students need access to a variety of tools, strategies, equity minded classroom norms, routines, and a mathematical growth mindset learning culture, so students see themselves as doers of mathematics.
In this session, participants will have an opportunity to discuss students’ interview responses to the same questions asked in 2016 and 2019. Additional discussions will center on noticing responses about agency, identity and mathematical thinking. Participants will identify ways to leverage their own strengths/resources as student identity builders to improve classroom, school/building, and district culture to support sustainable high impact engagement, increase student agency and identity, and to frame equitable mathematics teaching. Take away after watching student videos: Think about the students in your school, will they say these things or will they say something different?

To see quick results in interventions used in RTI and MTSS models, it's too easy to resort to teaching isolated strategies to solve problems. Gains may be seen on fact tests, but long-term goals of understanding can be sabotaged. This session will describe interventions that empower struggling learners to engage in reasoning and sense making.

This session will focus on helping students visualize sequences, demonstrate strategies, and develop numbers flexibility through the use of number lines.

Over the past several years fractions, as a topic in school mathematics, have received a great deal of attention.  Growing research evidence indicates that the majority of students enter middle school with a limited understanding of fractions and, as a result, struggle with much of the mathematics content in middle school and beyond.  There is a strong positive correlation between students' understanding of fractions and their overall success in mathematics.  According to the final report of the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, understanding fractions is a "foundation skill essential to success in algebra."
In this session, we will investigate the essential understandings of fractions as numbers - partitioning, comparing, ordering, equivalence.  Because understanding fractions as numbers are central to help students calculate with accuracy, efficiency, and understanding, we will also investigate flexible and meaningful strategies for fraction computation.