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In-service program documentation
Acquainting teachers with the supportive materials for the illustrative units (D6.2)
Facilitator's plan (by Raffaella Borasi)

Rationale for this session: we want to make teachers aware of our reasons for the very conscious choices that we have made (in terms of both formats and contents) for the various supporting materials we have created for this project, and possibly even "create a need" for them; in past experiences, we found that it was very difficult to get the participants to read most of the materials we prepared at first, and even then to "read" it in an "effective" way -- since it is not the kind of material that is conducive to a "linear reading" in most cases.

1. Introduction (2'-3')

• Introduce this last segment of the day by relating to the previous session, where the participants asked questions to teachers who implemented Tessellation in their classes the previous years; the question now is: how can YOU take advantage of the experiences you heard about, if you are interested in planning a unit on Tessellation in your own class? In other words, though you will want to create your own unit, to fit your goals and your students, you also do not want to start from scratch, since it is so time consuming, and you may also not come up with the best ideas the first time around -- especially if it involves a considerable departure from the way you are used to teach math.
• To answer this question is not as simple as it may seem at first -- as we learned as we struggled in the past two years trying to come up with some useful supporting materials! Thus, we would like this group at this point to brainstorm some ideas about what each of YOU, personally, would think would be useful, before we proceed any further. (Maybe remind of the participants' commitment to adapt and implement one of our units - even if not necessarily Tessellation - in their classes as their first academic unit of the year, so as to make this problem more "genuine").
• PLAN 1 (if the participants seem to have had enough questions to year 1-2 teachers and there is not too much time left): Take 1 minute to "change gears" and think about this different aspect of the question of creating a Tessellation unit (or indeed, any of the other units we are going to present in this Summer Institute) for your classroom, and begin to write a few notes about what specific information and/or materials about Tessellation you would like to have (HAVE WRITTEN PROMPT FOR OVERHEAD READY); then we will have a large group discussion where (X) will try to record on newsprint all the suggestions, so that we can then discuss them in light of the supporting materials and other initiatives that we have tried to put together to support you in your Fall field-experiences.

(This was the option chosen, and I think it really would always be the best one; I chose to be the one recording on newsprint, and I think it worked much better)

• OR, PLAN 2 (if the previous conversation was brief and the participants seem to need a little bit more structure to think about the issue of what they need in order to be supported in the design of innovative units): To do so, first of all I am asking each of you to pair up with the person sitting next to you, and to spend 5 minutes or so doing the following: first, try to recollect some specific case when you were interested in using some other teacher's instructional ideas for your own classroom -- with whatever modifications (if this never happened, think about the Tessellation experiences that we have discussed today); then share with your partner what you found useful to know/have and/or would have liked to know/have in order to take advantage of the other teacher's experience; finally, the two of you should try to create a tentative list of what you think could help teachers take advantage of other teachers' experiences -- this list is what you will be then asked to share with the rest of the group. (Project slide with these instructions, in case people forget or want to be reminded of specific components of the task); Discuss with a partner previous experiences using other people instructional ideas (5'-6')

(This was the option chosen in the previous Summer Institute; it did not seem to me that the pairs had a very fruitful conversation, but most importantly the sharing did seem too repetitious and long)

2. Large group discussion of what instructional materials can be helpful (10'-15')

• Begin with creating a list on newsprint of all the suggestions about what they would like to know/have as they plan their innovative unit. Ask for a first volunteer to share their list of suggestions, and begin recording those on newsprint (or overhead). Then ask for additional ideas, to continue this list.
• Whenever a new item is proposed, try to get enough information about what the teacher really means, and possibly how they actually used (or think they could use) such item for their planning. Stop the conversation when a sufficient number of items has been suggested -- this list doesn't need to be comprehensive, not in one-to-one correspondence with our materials, but rather suggestive of some possibilities.

(This actually became part of the previous "option 1")

3. My presentation of the available materials and their rationale (7')

• Bridge to the presentation of the materials we have actually available by pointing out that (I hope!) they will find many of the ideas we have just listed put into practice in some of the materials we have prepared so far -- while others maybe not, for various reasons (maybe point out more explicitly now or later why we did not do certain things that could be on the list -- ex: oral presentation of the unit; video of classroom experiences -- and also if there is some new ideas that would be worth pursuing)
• Project the slide summarizing the materials we have prepared for teachers, and go through the list on this slide (maybe showing the corresponding materials for Tessellation and/or passing those out, since they are assigned for homework), making explicit connections with the items on the list we have just created (see slide)
• Point out that we are fully aware that it would not be possible to read all these materials during the Summer Institute, though we hope that they will make an extensive use of them in the preparation of their units; but to help them become familiar with the content and formats of these various documents (so that they can have a better sense of what they can find in them and how to read/use them), we have tried to give specific reading assignments in the next few days that will enable them to get a flavor of all these different materials.
• More specifically, introduce the reading assignment for the next day:
  1. read goals and overview of T. unit (to get an overall understanding of the nature and scope of the unit) -- first pages of thin booklet;
  2. read overviews of Deb and Kate experiences, and page through Claire/Steven report (to get a sense of how differently the unit was implemented in different classes) -- thick booklet;
  3. read excerpts from "flexible/detailed plan" (to see how we tried to reflect all these different experiences in a plan that could help providing a framework to specific lesson plans without "imposing too much", and notice how that flexible plan was actually used by the facilitators to plan the Tessellation experience for this group of teachers).
• Conclude by making the point about the value of experiencing and reading about all 3 units, regardless of which one they end up deciding to implement as their first unit in their classroom for various reasons: to enable them to make the best choice of what unit would best suit them as a beginning of the year unit; to become familiar with units they may want to use later in the year (since during the school year we found it became more difficult for anyone to do any more intensive reading and planning); but most importantly to better understand what the approach we are proposing is all about, by seeing how it translated with different math content and themes, so that eventually they can better use such an approach on any unit they teach -- which is obviously our ultimate goal.

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