Who’s Here? Introductions!

1. Strategies for Numeracy Coaching:School-based Coaching as Job-embedded Professional LearningJuly 4, 2007Mary Lou KestellSandie RowellThe Literacy and Numeracy SecretariatHamilton Wentworth DSB

2. What’s your name? What’s your school board? What’s your role? What’s the pattern? How many terms will there be when we are all standing? F F F F F M F and so on, … M M Who’s Here? Introductions!

3. Goals, Strategies, Tools, Contexts,… Are you a school-based numeracy coach who is looking for some planning and instructional strategies? During this session, participants will experience and share numerous planning and instructional strategies that will improve their numeracy coaching program. We will examine goals, strategies, materials, and tools that learners across the province are finding useful.

4. Agenda • What do we know now? • What are we doing? (goals, strategies, contexts) • What questions do you want answered?

5. 3 – 2 – 1 What does numeracy coaching mean to you? • List 3 goals of numeracy coaching. • List 2 strategies for numeracy coaching. • List 1 context/organizational format from your district that is being used to engage people in numeracy coaching.

6. Most Effective Professional Learning is Job-Embedded • grounded in inquiry and reflection, be participant-driven, and focus on improving planning and instruction • collaborative, involving the sharing of knowledge and focusing on communities of practice • ongoing, intensive, and supported by modeling, coaching, and the collective solving of specific problems so that teachers can implement their new learning and sustain changes in practice • connected to and derived from teachers’ work with students – teaching, assessing, observing, and reflecting on the processes of learning and development Breakthrough, 2006. Fullan, Hill, Crevola, 2006

7. Goals for Numeracy Coaching: Learning Mathematicsfor Teaching What do you think a teacher needs to know and be able to do, mathematically, to teach mathematics? Picture 1 Picture 2 Picture 3 Describe the pattern. Assuming the pattern continues in the same way, how many dots will there be in the 4th picture? The 100th picture? The nth picture?

8. HOW and WHY Should We Be Learning Mathematics for Teaching www.curriculum.org

9. Learning Goals: Learning Mathematicsfor Teaching • Understanding the sequence and relationship between math strands within textbook programs and materials within and across grade levels • Knowing the relationship between mathematical ideas, conceptual models, terms, and symbols • Generating and using strategic examples and different mathematical representations using manipulatives • Developing students’ mathematical communication – description, explanation, and justification • Understanding and evaluating the mathematical significance of students’ comments and coordinating discussion for mathematics learning

10. Goals: Tri-Level Alignment for School Improvement and Student Success • How should classroom, school, district, and Ministry goals align in terms of improving teacher instruction to improve student learning and achievement? • How does it actually happen? • How can school-based numeracy coaching ensure tri-level alignment?

11. Strategies for Numeracy Coaching: School organization • SCHEDULES for • in-class work – one to one • in-class work – co-teaching (same grade or cross-grade teachers, vice principal/principal, coach/facilitator/consultants, superintendents) • regular teacher planning and debriefing • COMMON ASSESSMENTS (term, monthly) through same grade and cross grade teacher moderation • COMMUNICATION between and among staff (daily, weekly) – newsletters, hallway and staffroom discussions, professional learning community meetings

12. Strategies for Numeracy Coaching: Work in the classroom • Observing and interviewing students to understand their mathematical thinking and doing in relation to the lesson learning goal and teaching strategies • Analyzing the design of lesson problems in relation to the curriculum, the cognitive flow of the unit of study, and characteristics of effective problems • Problem solving collaboratively the implementation of a lesson with the classroom teacher and group of classroom teachers • Learning high yield instructional strategies (i.e., bansho, math congress, gallery walk) • Researchingmathematics for teaching for units of study that teachers in the school are going to teach

13. Strategies / Materials:Preparing Yourself for Learning • A Guide to Effective Instruction in Mathematics, Kindergarten to Grade 6: Volumes One to Five(released December 2006) • Guide to Effective Instruction in Mathematics: Number Sense and Numeration, Grades 4 – 6: Volumes 1- 6(released April 2007)

14. Strategies / Materials: Preparing Yourself for Learning LNS Professional Learning Series Modules to use with: • Guide to Effective Instruction in Mathematics, K to 6 • Guide to Effective Instruction in Mathematics: Number Sense and Numeration, Grades 4 - 6

15. Strategies / Materials: Preparing Yourself for Learning LNS Web casts with Viewing Guides and Facilitator Handbooks (at CSC – www.curriculum.org) • Learning Mathematics for Teaching – archived featuring Dr. Deborah Loewenberg Ball • Making Mathematics Accessible for all Students – archived featuring Dr. Marian Small and 4 Ontario classrooms (gr 1, combined 2/3, 4, combined 5/6) • Coaching for Student Success – posted June 28 featuring the work of 6 Ontario school boards, students and classroom teachers

16. Contexts for Numeracy Coaching: Different Frameworks Coaching • Chris Confer • Lucy West • Cathy Fosnot • Ontario contexts Co-Teaching (videos available 2007-2008) Teacher Inquiry/Study (videos available 2007-2008)

17. Contexts for Numeracy Coaching: Content is still Mathematics for Teaching Teachers must be able to • work backward from mature and compressed understanding of the content, unpack its constituent parts • deconstruct their own knowledge into a less polished form where critical components are accessible and visible • make mathematical ideas accessible to others and understand the mathematical thinking of others • work with content for students in its growing, unfinished state

18. Contexts: Coaching • “Coaching is a formal relationship that is established by a third party organizer (e.g., principal, curriculum leader or supervisory officer) or between two parties (e.g., an inviting teacher and a coach) to meet a particular learning goal.” • “Because the coach is assigned a formal role, it is that role which defines the relationship.” • “Coaching involves teachers in processes in which they collaborate, refine, reflect, conduct research, expand on ideas, build skills and knowledge and problem solve in order to improve student learning and achievement.” • “Yet coaching needs to be non-evaluative and build upon a foundation of mutual respect.”

19. Contexts: Co-Teaching • “Co-teaching is an informal professional learning arrangement in which teachers with different knowledge, skills and talents have agreed to share responsibility for designing, implementing, monitoring and/or assessing a curriculum program for a class of students on a regular basis (e.g., biweekly, monthly, or per term).” • “The purpose of co-teaching is to enable groups of teachers to improve their instruction and their understanding of students’ thinking and learning through shared observation, and analysis of student work.” • “Co-teaching makes it possible for teachers to engage in teaching as collaborative problem-solving.”

20. Contexts: Teacher Inquiry/Study • “Inquiry engages teachers in working on dilemmas and difficult situations that will appear in every teacher’s practice. Participants learn that solutions depend on contextual information and that there is never only one answer to any one problem.” • “They re-examine their strategies and are supported and stimulated to try fresh ways of dealing with dilemmas in practice.’ • “Instead of an expert or theoretician telling teachers what works and should be carried out in practice, case participants are able to revisit scenarios in their own classrooms, draw on their experiences of success or failure and share expertise from a variety of perspectives.”

21. Embodied Embedded Extended … arising from our actions and interactions … in our collective activity and contexts … as we use and produce culture/cultural artefacts Knowing is … Elaine Simmt (U of Alberta)

22. Next Steps for Numeracy Coaching:for your own learning • Be precise and consistent with the use of oral and written mathematical language – drawings, symbols, terms • Figure out why procedures work, not just how to do them • Try to solve problems in more than one way, using different representations • Listen to and probe others’ thinking, especially when struggling • Study students’ thinking and work • Analyze which manipulatives are/are not appropriate for students’ modelling their mathematical thinking and problem solving • Learn to listen and make sense of student thinking • Coordinate students sharing their mathematical solutions for learning

23. GREAT to WORK with YOU! • Let us know how it goes with your work in numeracy coaching. • Use our web cast, Making Math Accessible for All Students, to develop a shared vision about effective math teaching and learning • Use our web cast, Coaching for Student Success in Mathematics, to develop a shared vision about effective math coaching frameworks

24. The Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat (K to 6 numeracy) • Mary Lou Kestell (marylou.kestell@ontario.ca) • Kathy Kubota-Zarivnij (kathryn.kubota-zarivnij@ontario.ca) • Joyce Tonner (joyce.tonner@ontario.ca)