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Methods course documentation
Learning about resources to support instructional innovation (D7.3)
Logistics and scheduling information (by Raffaella Borasi)

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Choice of scope and format for this activity

Scheduling of this activity within the course

Materials needed to implement this activity

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Choice of scope and format for this activity:

Comprehensive curricula that are informed by the NCTM Standards and try to support teachers with novel instructional materials have only begun to be published since 1996. Therefore, I have been able to introduce these materials to my students in the Methods course only in the most recent implementations of the Methods course (i.e., Implementations C and D).

In these materials, I will report on an experience (fully developed for Implementation D, but already implemented in part in Implementation C) that has been designed to make the participants aware of the comprehensive curriculum series that have recently been developed with the support of the National Science Foundation for various levels of schooling. This experience comprises of two main components:

• a brief introduction to the history behind these curriculum projects, and some information about which of these curricula are currently available at various levels of schooling;
• a session where the participants first actively engage with one of these texts, actually doing all the tasks suggested there, and then discuss the potential of such an instructional material based on this experience.

Although most of the units published in the various curriculum series could be chosen as the focus of the second component of this experience, I have found the first Investigation in the unit "Bits and Pieces I" from the Connected Mathematics Project to be very appropriate for this activity because:

• "Bits and Pieces I" is a 6th grade unit, and thus could be of interest to both elementary and secondary math pre-service teachers;
• this investigation presents a traditional math topic (i.e., fractions) in quite a different way, and as such it can effectively challenge the participants' views about this topic as well as illustrate how these curriculum series provide a very different approach to math instruction even when covering traditional contents included in the traditional math curriculum;
• the "Teacher's Guide" for this unit is interesting also because of its unusual format -- which include a good articulation of the instructional goals for the unit and their rationale, and practical suggestions for the teacher to conduct lessons informed by a constructivist spirit.

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Scheduling of this activity within the course

In Implementation D of the Methods course, this activity has been scheduled for about 1 1/2 hour during the class that follows the Midterm Exam -- the last "common class" the students have before splitting into two groups for experiences specific to the teaching and learning of mathematics in elementary and secondary grades, respectively. As such, this activity is intended to introduce all pre-service teachers to resources that can help them "rethink" the teaching of specific math topics -- which is the focus of the following 2-3 class meetings.

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Materials needed to implement this activity:

• Hand-out containing brief descriptions of each curriculum series (as provided by the authors' of these materials) and information about acquiring these materials -- as a resource for participants interested in getting to know these instructional materials better.
• Overhead projector and slides of at least selected pages from the hand-out (to support the initial introduction of the curriculum projects).
• Copies of the section of textbook that partipants are asked to engage in as learners (at least one per pair of participants).
• Newsprint to record key points raised in the discussion.

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