Mathematics Training

Customizable Mathematics Workshops

Work with us on these powerful instructional practices and design a customized training program for your teachers and leaders.

Re-JOY-ning the Math Class!- Math Openers, Routines, and Experiences to Build MATH Positivity and Better Discourse in Your Classroom: Elementary School
This workshop is designed for grades 1-5 teachers who are excited to learn and discover how humanizing the math classroom with thoughtful openers, games, and experiences can bring positivity, joy, and life back to math classes. Teachers will discover how math-talk can better reveal students’ understandings as well as misunderstandings of mathematical concepts and ideas. This highly participatory workshop will provide many tasks that will be the building blocks of the development of a truly positive and discourse-rich classroom.

Teachers will engage in tasks, games, and problems that allow the opportunity to see how using effective questioning, collaborative learning, and deep discussions, can set up a supportive and safe learning environment that establishes positive class relationships based on good-discourse. Learn how to motivate your students, through thoughts, play, and discourse, to become enthusiastic math learners!

Participants will:
- Engage in new and robust activities, games, and tasks that will better promote cognitive, positive, and motivational discourse in the middle school math classroom.
- Be involved in tasks that allow for many types and styles of effective questions that allow to enter math problems.
- Participate in lively instructional routines and a new talk structure that will energize and deepen students’ understandings of mathematics.
- Come learn how you can support your students’ thinking and reasoning by building a discourse-rich classroom where lots of talking and questioning are encouraged and used to motivate your students to become enthusiastic math-learners.
Re-JOY-ning the Math Class!- Math Openers, Routines, and Experiences to Build MATH Positivity and Better Discourse in Your Classroom: Grades 5-9
This workshop is designed for middle school teachers of mathematics who are excited to learn and discover how humanizing the math classroom with thoughtful openers, games, and experiences can bring positivity, joy, and life back to math classes. Teachers will discover how math-talk can better reveal students’ understandings as well as misunderstandings of mathematical concepts and ideas. This highly participatory workshop will provide many tasks that will be the building blocks of the development of a truly positive and discourse-rich classroom.
Teachers will engage in tasks, games, and problems that allow the opportunity to see how using effective questioning, collaborative learning, and deep discussions, can set up a supportive and safe learning environment that establishes positive class relationships based on good-discourse. Learn how to motivate your students, through thoughts, play, and discourse, to become enthusiastic math learners!

Participants will:
- Engage in new and robust activities, games, and tasks that will better promote cognitive, positive, and motivational discourse in the middle school math classroom.
- Be involved in tasks that allow for many types and styles of effective questions that allow to enter math problems.
- Participate in lively instructional routines and a new talk structure that will energize and deepen students’ understandings of mathematics.
Come learn how you can support your students’ thinking and reasoning by building a discourse-rich classroom where lots of talking and questioning are encouraged and used to motivate your students to become enthusiastic math-learners.
Perseverance and Productive Struggle in Mathematics: Elementary & Middle School
This highly participatory workshop will engage teachers in non-routine and “struggle-worthy” problems and tasks that will excite, motivate and welcome all students (and teachers!) into the math classroom. Teachers will dive into tasks that blend the Mathematical Practices with the elements of perseverance and rigor to discover how to create an environment that nurtures productive struggle. Come learn how to build a classroom where struggle is valued and where ALL students build a deeper understanding and love of mathematics.

Participants’ will/Topics Include
- Discuss and participate in activities that help to define and realize the importance of productive struggle in the mathematics classroom
- Investigate various strategies that will help to build and provoke a culture of productive struggle.
- Discover the importance of recognizing and selecting high-quality problems and tasks.
- Discover strategies that take current-problems and infuse them with rigor.
- Learn how a classroom full of productive struggle builds rich discourse, better understandings, and more confidence in mathematics
Differentiated Instruction in the Math Classroom (Elementary, Middle, High School)

This highly participatory workshop will engage teachers in creative, real-world problems that allow the opportunity to differentiate in content, process, and product. Teachers will work on tasks that align with the Eight Standards of Mathematical Practice. The DI ideas and strategies included will be open questions, math discourse moves and structures, low floor-high ceiling tasks, and more! Discover new activities and strategies that will allow ALL students equal access to the math and the opportunity to enter and attack big problems.
Standards for Mathematical Content
Select the specific domains and standards and we will customize training aligned to the standard to suit your needs.

Grades PreK-5
- Counting and Cardinality
- Operations and Algebraic Thinking
- Number and Operations in Base Ten
- Number and Operations—Fractions
- Measurement and Data
- Geometry
Grades 6-8
- Ratios and Proportional Relationships
- The Number System
- Expressions and Equations
- Functions
- Geometry
- Statistics and Probability
High School - Conceptual Categories
- Number and Quantity
- Algebra
- Functions
- Modeling
- Geometry
- Statistics and Probability
Standards for Mathematical Practice
We will work with your staff to develop students as practitioners of mathematics, and foster their engagement with the subject matter, as they grow in mathematical maturity and expertise throughout their elementary, middle, and high school years.

MA Standards for Mathematical Practices
1. Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
2. Reason abstractly and quantitatively.
3. Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.
4. Model with mathematics.
5. Use appropriate tools strategically.
6. Attend to precision.
7. Look for and make use of structure.
8. Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.
Math Instructional Practices
We will work with your staff to identify and develop best instructional strategies for raising student achievement and enjoyment of mathematics.
- Formative & Summative Assessment
- Differentiating Instruction
- Literacy in Mathematics
- Maximizing Co-teaching
- Questioning Strategies
- Critical Thinking
- Increasing Engagement
- Using Manipulatives

Mathematics Program Reviews

We believe that knowledge is power.

Program reviews offer insight and recommendations around curriculum, instruction, special populations and personnel.

We work with you to examine your Mathematics program across multiple grade levels to better understand your unique strengths and areas for growth.

We believe in the benefits of a comprehensive & focused review.

Over the course of on-site visitations, we observe a number of classrooms and interview teachers, specialists and administrators, and district leaders as applicable. In addition, we gather curriculum documents, student work and performance data.

By examining various aspects of the Mathematics program, we identify strengths and gaps; based on our findings, we make recommendations to impact student achievement and growth.

Through Many Lenses

Focus Areas

Curriculum
Assessment
Pedagogy
Academic Rigor
Data collection and progress monitoring
Personnel
Scheduling
Culture & Climate
Belief Systems of Professional Staff
Professional Development

We believe it's essential to conduct a multi-faceted examination.

As part of the review, we collect information using five different methods.

Classroom observations.
Interviews of teachers, specialists, principals and program directors.
Examination of curriculum documents.
Examination of student work.
Analysis of performance data.

A Deep Dive

We then delve deeply into subtopics, asking questions such as:

Is the curriculum horizontally balanced and vertically progressive?
Is there a clearly articulated scope and sequence?
Does the curriculum emphasize deep goals: inferential thinking, critical thinking, evidence-based writing, positive habits of mind?
Is the curriculum sufficiently differentiated to meet the needs of diverse learners?
Are there alternative pathways to successful learning?

Mathematics Leadership

Sharpen your skills, dive deeper into key responsibilities, face new challenges, expand your toolkit, and grow your wisdom while working alongside other mathematics leaders around this critical part of your job.

Math Professional Learning Communities (PLCs)

Learn to maximize the systems and structures that provide collaborative opportunities in your grade level or department teams. Build the habits and skills to engage in lesson study, examine student work, analyze and make use of data, develop common assessments, participate in peer observations, and more.

Instructional Coaching Institute

Learn to improve student achievement by supporting teaching and learning. Instructional leaders and coaches play a crucial role in impacting the culture of the school and improving practice. This session will provide training in becoming an effective communicator as coach, strategies for building relationships with teachers and principals, and tools for lesson study to help teachers improve instruction. Participants will have ample opportunity to explore with peers the challenges and opportunities they face in their day-to-day work..

Mathematics Coaching

Everyone deserves a coach - someone who has been there, who understands, and is singularly focused on your goals. We work collaboratively with you to plan coaching experiences that increase capacity at both the instructional and leadership levels. Coaching plans are tailored to meet the needs of you and your staff. Whether it is implementing new initiatives, growing leaders or impacting pedagogy, we have trained coaches ready to guide you.