Math Hui Notes

April 2014 This was our last meeting of the Math Hui for this school year. We spent time gathering feedback from the grade level math representatives on: - Math Hui - DreamBox Learning - Summer Math workshops and other Professional Development possibilities This newsletter shares the thoughts and insights gathered at this meeting. Present at the meeting: Becca Kesler, Christine Tanimoto, Alice Kimura, Denise Wong, Jan Furuta, Jim Smart, Connie Carroll, Angie Church, Todd Choy-Hoy, JoAnn Wong-Kam, John Nagel, and Julie Crane-Cory. Punahou School

DreamBox Learning
DreamBox Learning is an intelligent adaptive learning system for Mathematics. Cathy Fosnot, is the senior research consultant for DreamBox, so the models and concepts align well with the project-based lessons from the Contexts for Learning Mathematics units. This year we started a pilot in November 2013, then purchase a pilot subscription available to all students in K-5 for the remainder of the school year. Access to DreamBox is available until the end of June. We will need to renew our subscription if we wish to continue after that point. DreamBox is an online learning environment that students can access at school and at home using desktops, laptop computers, or iPads. The student, class and school reports provide with information on students progress. Comments: Kids love it, see it as fun DreamBox is more conceptual and adapts to each child Like that it corresponds to the Cathy Fosnot units and landscape of learning The more kids work in the program, the more they appreciate it Some kids prefer it over ALEKS; top-top kids prefer ALEKS Summary reports are very helpful We needed to hear and observe the kids on DreamBox; watching the kids helped us to get information on where they were on the landscape

Math Hui
The Math Hui consists of grade level representatives from K-5 who meet to share and discuss the teaching of mathematics. They serve to disseminate information to the grade levels and serve as teacher leaders in this curricular area. Comments noted about Math Hui meetings: - helpful - meaningful - informative - progressive thinking Questions about Math Hui meetings: - busy afternoons make it hard to attend meetings at times - how do we put more resources, energy to support math (like we do technology)? - How do we share our conversations with the rest of the K-8 faculty? - Can we combine meetings so this is not another meeting? Summary: We will continue our Math Hui next year and look for ways to extend our conversation to more K-8 faculty. Box activities and the Context for Math

DreamBox Learning (Continued)

Questions & Comments: How are teachers using DreamBox? Would love more training on how to use the information from the reports. What do we do when kids are stuck in certain levels?

Summer Math Workshops with Cathy Fosnot, Aug. 2014

Cathy Fosnot first came to Punahou in August 2013 and presented a three-day workshop on the Landscape of learning for number sense, addition and subtraction. With the support of the Professional Programs at Punahou and through a Learning Fellowship proposed by K-5 Supervisors, we are able to provide two 2-day workshops this August. Comments & questions: Where are we as a school? o There is a paradigm shift. Are we on board? o How do we nurture a culture of problem-solving rather than procedural teaching? o Math coaches? Will there be units focused on geometry? Units are open-ended and we hit some snags, second time around will be better See how CF does intro to math congress Q&A time for clarification now that we have tried some units

Summary: We want to continue another year with DreamBox and get training so that we are able to use it more effectively and understand how the program works. We will communicate with DreamBox to share the glitches we are having. Parent education may be helpful as more students work on DreamBox units at home. What kind of communication, reporting is available to parents?

Other professional development opportunities: We look forward to working with Cathy Fosnot again this summer. You can still register for her workshops. Mathematics in the City, summer PD in New York, offers many good courses Math conferences to attend, NCTM Can we work with PFA to bring in someone like Jo Boaler* to provide parent education? How do we do more schoolwide PD around the things that Jo Boaler* talks about?

*Jo Boaler is a professor of mathematics at Stanford University, who teaches an online course called How to Learn Math.