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In-service program documentation
Acquainting teachers with the supportive materials for the illustrative units (D6.2)
Text of the reading assignments

Tuesday's assignment - First reading assignment from the Illustrative unit support materials for teachers

Tessellation reading assignment

Now that we have completed our brief experience " Investigating Tessellations to Learn Geometry" as mathematics students and you have had a brief opportunity to hear about similar experiences in middle school classrooms you are probably already thinking about how you might use this topic in your own class. We would like you to take this opportunity to become familiar with the materials we have created to support your planning. Please read each of the following:

• the overview of the unit (pps. 1 - 7) from "Investigating Tessellations to Learn Geometry: Goals, Overview and Ideas for Planning the Unit"; this will help you get a fuller image of an entire unit since we were only able to experience a small piece of a unit.
• the overview of Kate Levy 's and Deb Morley's implementation and maybe skim Bigg & Daniel's Daily Synopsis from "Investigating Tessellations to Learn Geometry: Detailed Reports of Three Classroom Implementations"; this reading will help you see how different the unit can be given different classes, teachers and goals. This difference had a profound effect on the nature of the "Detailed Plan" we created to support planning.
• sections from the Detailed Plan: The explanations (pps. 23 - 24 ) and,

Identify appropriate approaches, resources and tools for carrying out the inquiry: an experience with justifying conclusions to interpret a definition for tessellation (pps. 29 - 39)

or

Defining the scope of the inquiry: developing and focusing questions about tessellations - MAKING CONJECTURES / ASKING QUESTIONS (pps. 43 - 51)

or

Carrying out the inquiry: finding the answers to the tessellation questions TESTING CONJECTURES /INVESTIGATING QUESTIONS, DRAWING CONCLUSIONS AND SHARING RESULTS (pps. 52 - 57)

These are pieces we did together - as you read one of these sections try to identify the actual options we used in our experience, doing this can help you make sense of the rather unique format of this text.

Thursday's assignment - Second reading assignment from the illustrative unit support materials for teachers

Area reading assignment

Soon you will want to decide which of the three units you would like to implement in your classroom. You have engaged in activities meant to introduce you to each of the units. To further inform your decision and to give you an indication of the materials available to help you in your planning of these other two units we would like you to read the following:

• the goals and overview section from the Goals, Overview and Ideas for Planning the Unit booklets for "Understanding area through investigations" (the thin blue book pp. 1 - 9); this will help give an overall understanding of the nature and scope of the units.
• the section, "On the mathematics of area" (pps. 10 - 23) and 1 or 2 figures of your choice from the Appendix (pps. 57 on) from the Goals, Overview and Ideas for Planning the Unit booklet for "Understanding area through investigations" (the thin blue book). This piece will consolidate today's discussion on rethinking the mathematics of area, and help you to become familiar with the "mathematical potential" pieces in each of the thin books.

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