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

Rationale: We believe that it is important to take the time to allow participants to share their thoughts, questions, and reactions to the readings to demonstrate the value of the reading assignment. More specifically, we want to:

• invite participants to share WHAT they got from the readings - since readers are bound to find them useful in different ways this can give others more ideas for using the materials as well as help us as we try to prepare useful documents
• get information about HOW the participants read these documents - since readers approach the reading of documents in a variety of ways this can give others additional ideas how to engage with the materials as well as help us in our preparation of the documents and the reading assignments in the future,
• allow the participants to raise some first questions they may have about the unit to the teachers who already implemented it and/or the people who put the unit and materials together;

1. Introduction

• Begin by telling them how I have become so fascinated by hearing about how other people read things and what they have gotten from them as a result of my work in our previous project "Reading to learn mathematics for critical thinking". Tell them that my high school students and I have often talked about how many different strategies we've learned for reading from listening to how others read. Since we will all be using these materials (or ones similar to this) in the future AND since we, the project staff, are continually revising both the format and content of these materials, we would like to take some time this morning to share thoughts, reactions, questions, and strategies for reading the tessellation unit materials.
• Reminding the participants of the different kinds of materials they have sampled in their reading assignment on the tessellation unit:
  • goals and overview to show the scope and nature of the unit
  • the overview of various experiences, to get an idea of how different teachers interpreted and adapted our ideas and materials to suit their own instructional goals and situations
  • sections from the "detailed plan" to get a sense of the format of these materials
• Invite them to share their thoughts about the readings and ask the questions they may have raised as a result of the readings (remind them that there are people present who have designed and/or taught the tessellation unit and might be able to respond to their questions).
• Start by inviting participants to share their reactions or questions; point out that, though I am facilitating the discussion, they should feel free to address their comments and questions to the most appropriate person(s).

Discussion

• Keep the discussion open and led by participants but these issues don't come out naturally (and they may not because people are not used to talking about how they read or what they personally got reading this type of material) be sure to ask:
  • What did you get from reading: the overview of the unit; the overviews of the different implementations; the segment of the detailed plan
  • How did you actually read this kind of document? What specifically did you do - What were you trying to get from it? For example: "When I was reading the overview of the unit I skipped the "message to the reader", began reading about the unit on page one and went on to the overview of the unit, but then when I caught on to the format "state the task - briefly tell the scenario - rationale - detailed scenario" I started to just read the task and brief scenario" to get sense of the whole unit.
  • Any suggestions of what seemed to work for you that other people could use in their own reading of this kind of document?
  • (This is important so that participants become aware that many of the things they hoped to have are there - but maybe not in the form they were expecting!) Which of the "things" listed on our "wish list" of materials to support your implementation of a tessellation unit did this kind of document help you with? What did you need to do/ how did you need to read it, in order to get this information?

MATERIALS NEEDED

• newsprint on "what do you like to have/know about the T. unit we have tried to develop in order to support the design of a Tessellation unit for your OWN classroom?", generated in the Tuesday session on presenting the project supporting materials

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