What the common core gets right is the 8 mathematical practices, and these competencies depend on instruction and curriculum that expose students to mathematics as a way of thinking and solving problems. That the real utility of mathematics lies in the habits of mind. Let’s engage in these tasks ourselves and have conversations about practical ways to embed problem-solving into students’ everyday interaction with mathematics.
In a student-centered classroom, students have frequent opportunities to wonder and make connections, share strategies, notice patterns, and justify their ideas. These opportunities support the development of student voice and choice, which are critical to learning and positive identity development. In this session, we will explore discussion structures and scaffolds to support discourse and agency in your classroom.
Instructional leadership matters. To help teachers create math moments that matter, we must prioritize creating systemic change. During this hands on workshop, coaches and leaders will consider the changes that could move the needle for student learning in math and formulate an action plan to lead the necessary changes.
Looking for an easy way to make math more meaningful in your class? Try using a rich mathematical warm-up. I will share my favorite math starters and share my slide deck so you can implement them in your classroom tomorrow.
As a former principal I would like to share my story and journey from not considering myself a math person to transforming my thinking to help support my teachers in changing the way we approach math instruction. I will also share tips for teachers on how they can help get their principals to buy into math mindset and pedagogy transformation. In addition, I will share tips with admin on how they can get on board with best practices in math pedagogy and keep the momentum going when times get tough.
I will be sharing my experience teaching Math 1030 with a flipped classroom model for the last 2 years with tips and tricks that I have found to be effective for engaging students.
Students come to school with valuable experiences and immense potential. To meet this potential, teachers need to attend to relationships with students and their mathematical thinking as a basis for instructional change to not only work with and from students’ thinking but support their growth and connections over time. In this session, we will unpack three core practices and ideas to create asset-based learning environments to support students’ mathematical brilliance. Specifically, we will discuss listening, centering, and building as foundational, high-leverage teaching practices. We will offer practical ways that teachers can enact these practices within both the whole class and small learning environments.
This session will be an exploration of the origins of pi and its derivations and methods of approximation. We will also discuss uses of pi and activities for Pi Day.
Spent 19 years teaching mathematics at South Fremont High School in Idaho. Worked for 3 years as Implementation Manager for PowerSchool(SIS). Spent 3 years teaching 7th grade math at Adele C. Young in Brigham City and 15 years teaching math for University of Phoenix (online and local... Read More →
Wednesday January 29, 2025 09:45 - 10:45 MST
Ballroom B
Join fellow educators from the CUES region for a dynamic networking session designed to foster collaboration, spark new ideas, and strengthen community ties. This informal gathering offers a unique opportunity to reconnect with old colleagues, meet new friends, and share insights with peers who understand the unique challenges and opportunities within our region.
Wednesday January 29, 2025 09:45 - 10:45 MST
Hobble Creek
Join fellow educators from the NUES region for a dynamic networking session designed to foster collaboration, spark new ideas, and strengthen community ties. This informal gathering offers a unique opportunity to reconnect with old colleagues, meet new friends, and share insights with peers who understand the unique challenges and opportunities within our region.
Wednesday January 29, 2025 09:45 - 10:45 MST
Soldier Creek
Join fellow educators from the SEDC region for a dynamic networking session designed to foster collaboration, spark new ideas, and strengthen community ties. This informal gathering offers a unique opportunity to reconnect with old colleagues, meet new friends, and share insights with peers who understand the unique challenges and opportunities within our region.
Wednesday January 29, 2025 09:45 - 10:45 MST
Silver Creek
Join fellow educators from the SESC region for a dynamic networking session designed to foster collaboration, spark new ideas, and strengthen community ties. This informal gathering offers a unique opportunity to reconnect with old colleagues, meet new friends, and share insights with peers who understand the unique challenges and opportunities within our region.
Wednesday January 29, 2025 09:45 - 10:45 MST
Battle Creek
This session is for all educators working with students with identified exceptionalities. Participants will develop strategies to broaden student access to problem solving and support productive struggle. Participants will also consider best practices around co-teaching math lessons and explore IEP goals as a way to become agents of change.
Supporting special education students in the mathematics classroom requires strategies that address diverse learning needs while fostering a positive, growth-oriented environment. This session will provide educators with evidence-based approaches to help students with disabilities build confidence and achieve success in mathematics. Educators will gain practical techniques to unlock the mathematical potential of their special education students, ensuring they have equitable opportunities to succeed and thrive in their learning journey. This session is perfect for teachers, special education coordinators, and instructional specialists seeking to enhance their practices and create more inclusive mathematics classrooms.
Interested in stem, but haven’t found the right program that highlights the math? Join us to discover how to access and leverage texas instruments’ stem solutions to reach your goals, while learning with and from others doing the same work. Our simple approach will help beginners learn the foundations of all computer languages! Create color and sound on a microcontroller, learn how to program a math-oriented ev, and experience how these concepts scale up to a broader variety of engaging stem activities, steeped in math, science and computer science concepts. With ready-to-implement resources, the connection from learning in a classroom to stem careers is made possible! Free resources using familiar technology will help you and your students find where learning and fun collide!
Combine exciting activities with captivating multimedia content to dramatically increase participation and student achievement in your classroom. In this session, teachers will explore reimagined nearpod features designed to enhance math instruction and student engagement. This session will include workshop time for teachers to build relevant tasks for their lessons. a basic working knowledge of the platform is required.
Discover how to transform your math classroom into a personalized learning environment with Canvas. In this session, we will explore strategies for implementing self-paced learning, empowering students to take control of their learning journey. Learn how to effectively organize and manage your math curriculum using Canvas tools, create mastery-based checkpoints, and provide individualized support to ensure every student can progress at their own pace. Perfect for educators looking to enhance student engagement and autonomy in math!
In this interactive session we'll dive into a Desmos activity while implementing many of the BTC practices. Focus will be placed on activity(task) selection and when it makes sense for students to work on VNPS's vs. utilizing the benefits of technology.
This interactive workshop is tailored for current and future math educators keen on exploring and demonstrating the creative aspects of the mathematical modeling process to students. Participants will delve into building scale models using diverse found objects in small groups, aligning with the 2016 Guidelines for Assessment and Instruction in Mathematical Modeling Education (GAIMME). Drawing from the facilitator's experience, the workshop guides attendees through each modeling stage, incorporating hands-on learning. The innovative approach reimagines scale models to exemplify mathematical modeling, offering adaptability across educational settings, from K-12 classrooms to teacher education. Multimedia facilities and crafting materials will be provided.
Want to engage your students in Geometry? Then get them building, discovering, making conjectures, connecting concepts and skills and much, much, more! This session will incorporate 2D Shapes and Exploragons activities that are proven to get students engage and learning at a deeper level.
Are your young learners able to demonstrate growth and proficiency on the Acadience Math assessment without having to be “taught” the test? This session will address how to align the teaching and learning of the Utah Core State Standards to Acadience Math while continuing to meet the recommendations for teaching math to young children.
I will discuss best practices for critical thinking classrooms, involving family in a student's learning, the article "Never Say Anything a Kid Can Say" and the importance of mathematical discourse between students in the classroom.
“When are we ever going to use this?!” As math teachers, you have likely heard this familiar refrain. In this presentation, we will talk about how real people use math for making the world a better place. We will discuss how a focus on helping others (and the environment) might allow more students to connect with math, and we will share cases we have created based on interviews with real people about how they use math to make the world a better place. Cases are designed to be used in classrooms, beginning with artifacts and a notice/wonder structure to engage students and then digging deeper into the uses of math and how they benefit the world. We’ll solicit your feedback on the cases, and you’ll have the option to try them out in your classrooms this spring! Let’s work together to help more students see how math can be used to make the world a better place.
Want your students engaged and talking about math the moment they enter the classroom? Use Function of the Day for bell work! Function of the Day is fun, interactive bell work that fosters verbalization and collaboration as it builds students' confidence in math, their vocabulary, math fluency, retention, and test scores. This bell work teaches concepts and vocabulary related to functions and can be used in pre-algebra, algebra, all high school math classes, and even college. Learn how Function of the Day can be used in your classroom, how it will benefit students, and ways to make it fun and engaging for students. The session will provide free resources to implement Function of the Day.
Participants will engage with a variety of manipulatives that students would use in a math classroom using structures and routines that support learning. Ideas for how to set up routines and manage math manipulatives will be shared.
Are you passionate about academic discourse? Join us for a chance to collaborate with educators across the state in sharing great strategies to get our mathematicians talking! We will dive into video examples of student talk structures in the classroom and reflect on opportunities to deepen our practice through microteaching.
Has it been a challenge to implement class discussions into your lessons? When you send students to work at vertical whiteboards, is it more of a disaster than a delight? Are small group activities in your classroom a stressful struggle or a teacher triumph? If you are struggling to implement some of these pedagogical moves into your teaching, establishing effective norms with your students may be helpful. Small group activities, class discussions, and working at whiteboards can be successful learning tools when we have established classroom norms that support our pedagogical goals. Join us as we share new research about how to establish norms in a mathematics classroom. Learn how to introduce norms, refine them, and reinforce them throughout the school year.
This breakout session will cover how to promote student-led learning, discussion and contribution. It will discuss how to encourage students to see their full potential and have confidence in their math learning abilities, which can lead to creating strong positive memories of exploring math.
Come learn how Granite School District students, teachers, and coaches are hearing mathematical discourse like never before. We’ll share how we’re partnering with TeachFX, utilizing the data with our students, reflecting on our questioning practices, and leveraging the insights in coaching conversations.
What is THE right way to teach math? Is a problem-based curriculum the answer? How about drilling students on basic facts? Join this session to learn how Eureka Math2 sits in the Dynamic Middle, balancing time spent on procedural fluency, conceptual understanding, and application to produce powerful math learning experiences.
Let's put ourselves in spaces that we ask of our students: engaging and collaborating on a math task, productive struggle, and making connections. In this session, attendees will experience the many virtues we hope to cultivate for our students: visualization, structure, deep investigation, persistence, abstraction, etc.
One focus of the AP Pre-Calculus core is the relationship between exponential and logarithmic functions. During this session, we will explore, using tasks and technology, how this inverse relationship can be extended to transformations (vertical and horizontal shifts as well as dilations) of these functions. We will discover why any exponential function is a dilation of any other exponential function and why any logarithmic function is a dilation of any other logarithmic function. Finally, we will unwrap the rates of change of exponential and logarithmic functions to discover why the rate of change for any exponential function is also an exponential function and why the rate of change for any logarithmic function is a dilated rational function. This work serves as a precursor to derivatives of exponential and logarithmic functions in AP Calculus AB and BC.
Global competition for in-demand tech-related careers is at an all-time high and will continue to increase as the world ideologies, environmental factors, and high-tech globalization flourish. Students deserve choices in careers and emerging technologies, and academic esports offer access to diverse and equitable workforce skills. Professional skills gleaned from these experiences include problem-solving, teamwork, collaboration, communication, and a plethora of skills mastery which leads to certification in a variety of wide-ranging careers. Discover how to maximize math participation and create relevant rigorous academic curricula. Connect the relevance of innovative curricula to help students successfully complete career pathways/industry certifications while building a solid college prep portfolio. Garner support from all stakeholders and hear from math teachers and the community at large.
This session is a call to action for educators to learn from and with all their students, reimagining our notions of mathematics and broadening perspectives on what it means to “do” mathematics. Dive deep into strategies for nurturing students' mathematical identities, encouraging them to bring their unique perspectives and experiences to the learning environment. Join us as we explore the crossroads where curriculum meets technology and mathematics meets community.
This presentation will emphasize the importance of daily, spiral review in the classroom. The presentation will include ideas for quick, spiral review that can be easily incorporated to the school day.
Partner talk and hands-on activities are critical elements of the number sense intervention. Students need to talk and hear others talk about numbers as much as possible to gain confidence, recognize relationships between numbers, and develop flexibility in using them. Attendee will experience an intervention number sense lesson and get a first peak at our Fractions intervention that is being launched in July 25
By delivering open questions, teachers invite students at different stages of mathematical development to benefit and grow. You’ll learn how to create and implement open questions to build on that innate curiosity, giving it an openness to flourish.
This session will unpack how to use low floor, high ceiling tasks to engage students in mathematical sense making around fundamental math topics. So often, students can be reluctant to engage in genuine conceptual sense making for fear of being wrong. This session will provide attendees with practical strategies and content for breaking down these barriers to student centered sense making.
Assessments are an integral part of every student's higher math education journey to becoming a secondary school math teacher. Students, whether they like it or not, are required to complete this assessment (mostly a culminating exam) in order to get a good score on their course. Giving students opportunities to develop, connect, and build their assessment according to their fieldwork experiences helps create a sense of belonging in math and values students' experiences. Tools used in this presentation will be unit plan templates. Group discussion and brainstorming ideas will be the most used strategies in this session. Participants will think about the format and process of unit plans they use in their math methods courses and how these formats and processes help future math teachers in their math teaching journey.
I'll be presenting on a portion of my master's degree, focusing on the use of digital manipulatives increasing mathematical understanding. I’ll present the resources my students had the most success with, the benefits of digital manipulatives over physical manipulatives, and the best free and paid resources.
This will be an overview of my first two years implementing Dr. Liljedahl's building thinking classrooms instructional and assessment framework in my high school math classroom. I will share the good, the bad, the ugly, and all the adjustments i made in year two so you can learn from my mistakes.
The debate about how to best teach students math has intensified over the years—inquiry-based or direct instruction? Let's settle the debate. In this session, we'll look at some surprising research surrounding direct and inquiry-based instruction, the impact each type of instruction has on students, and ultimately practices that will help students learn math.
Many of the things we (sometimes unintentionally) do as a teacher can be demotivating for our students, and just might be the root cause of why we are bombarded with statements like "I hate math!", "Why are we even doing this?" or "This is pointless!" In this interactive session, we will explore some classroom experiences that demonstrate how our students arrive at these statements, and learn how to avoid practices that bring frustration to both learners and teachers.
Have you ever been asked to teach a math co-taught class and wondered about best practices and strategies to help students with disabilities? As math teachers, we are highly trained to teach students mathematics, but what about teaching and collaborating with a special education teacher? During this session, we will discuss how we have successfully implemented a co-teaching model in our classroom as we focus on helping all students achieve learning at high levels. We will discuss strategies that allow the strengths of each teacher to shine. Participants will come away with new thoughts on co-teaching, action items that can be implemented immediately, and discussion questions that will help get this process started whatever your circumstances may be.
The purpose of this session is to introduce participants to the interactive functionality of Equatio Mathspace, a digital learning environment designed specifically for use in the math classroom.
This session will give educators information about free educator endorsement courses, including elementary math and math specialist that can be taken fully online at no cost to the educator through a grant with USBE. These courses also roll into an M.ED, which will allow teachers to have completed 1/3 of their degree already. We will also discuss other program offerings, including general professional development, conference credit, etc.
I will be showing teachers how I incorporated building thinking classrooms into my math class. I will also show teachers how this has created better thinking in my students as well as how it has saved me time and effort as a teacher.
There are many myths out there about what great math teaching looks and feels like. Let's explore how to make powerful moments in your class tomorrow! Warning: This is a high energy presentaion, so be prepared for laughter and lots of learning.
Mathematical discourse is key to deepening students’ understanding of concepts, fostering critical thinking, and building communication skills. This session will focus on designing engaging, thought-provoking tasks that spark rich mathematical discussions in the classroom. Participants will explore how to create and implement tasks that encourage students to explain their reasoning, justify their answers, and engage in collaborative problem-solving. We will examine strategies for structuring tasks that promote productive struggle and peer-to-peer dialogue, ensuring that all students have opportunities to participate in meaningful discourse. In addition, the session will cover techniques for facilitating discussions that value multiple perspectives, using questioning strategies that drive deeper thinking, and creating a classroom culture where mathematical talk thrives. Educators will leave with practical tools and ready-to-use tasks that can be tailored to their students’ needs and promote an active, student-centered learning environment.
With 360° math, the teacher is no longer at a physical disadvantage, but able to see the most important thing in a math classroom...student thinking. Standing in the middle of the classroom, the teacher has a 360° view of every student working every problem on the walls. The framework works effectively with any curriculum and any set of standards. Walk away with the tools and inspiration to immediately improve math engagement and achievement.
Are you someone who supports (or wants to support) elementary pre-service teachers’ or new teachers’ learning? Are you looking for ways to help teachers enact equitable math instruction? In this session, we share how teaching cases can be useful for helping pre-service or in-service teachers grapple with the challenges of enacting equitable math instruction. We will share examples of teaching cases that have been designed by current teachers to depict the challenges they’ve encountered when trying to teach elementary math equitably. These cases take up issues such as power dynamics in group work, curriculum that is not representative of students’ experiences, and the impact of cultural beliefs and practices on math learning. We’ll share several cases with participants, engage in discussions about what teachers might learn from the cases, and brainstorm ideas for new cases that can further support teacher learning.
This will be an open discussion where I define Critical Race Theory, explain its use in education, and its particular relevance to mathematics education. Time will be provided for discussion and Q&A.
Interested in learning how you can support students to experience the love and joy of mathematics? USU researchers will share the practical applications of their research, all revolving around the common goal of enjoying mathematics. Come join us for an interactive workshop which will include four stations, each with a glimpse into various ways you might help students enjoy mathematics. Dr. Vela will share about garden-based STEAM learning, Dr. Campbell will teach you about the different elements of well-being in mathematics and STEM, Dr. Frierson will highlight the potential of AI in supporting students’ STEM-based projects, and Dr. Shumway will share what her team has learned about students' spatial and computational thinking when learning to code with robot coding tools and what these results mean for elementary mathematics teaching. The session will end with participants sharing their ideas for how they can implement what they have learned in their classrooms.
When do people ever use geometry in real life? How can we make polynomial algebra more engaging? In this hands-on session, participants will apply typical mathematics topics to solve real-life problems and experience how engaging mathematics can be. They will discuss and work through problems from geology to the environment to puzzles as they discover ideas and resources that will enhance their own instruction.
We will present activities using technology which will model polynomials and polynomial functions and help us visualize polynomial multiplication and division, and how to find solutions to polynomial equations.
I will share which demonstrations I have integrated into my math classroom, allowing the participants to see some in action. I will provide the accompanying worksheets and which standards and units I used them in. Then I will spend some time talking about funding sources I used to buy class sets and demos.
