Education Commons^™

Differentiating Instruction Through Math Stations And Literacy Centers, Olivia Bates

Faculty Curated Undergraduate Works

Differentiating instruction based on students’ readiness, interests, and learning profiles is essential for creating effective and meaningful learning activities. Identifying these characteristics allows teachers to meet students’ needs and engage them in learning. By differentiating instruction, educators target specific students’ strengths and challenges in developing lessons to support their understanding of content. Two useful strategies for differentiating math and literacy instruction include stations and centers. In stations and centers, students work on specific skills catered to their educational needs while rotating activities in flexible groups. This guide supports teachers in identifying strategies and understanding the benefits of differentiating math and …

Using A Repeated Measures Anova Design To Analyze The Effect Writing In Mathematics Has On The Mathematics Achievement Of Third Grade English Language Learners And English Speakers, Zoe A. Morales

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The gap that exists between English language learners and English speaking students’ achievement in mathematics continues to grow. Moreover, students are now required to show evidence of their mathematics knowledge through writing in standardized assessments and class assignments.

The purpose of this study was to analyze students’ writing in mathematics and the metacognitive behaviors they portrayed through their writing as they solved mathematics problems. The instruments included a pretest, two biweekly tests, and a posttest. The writing instruction encompassed students learning to solve problems by using Polya’s four phases of problem solving which was completed in 12 sessions over a …

The Effects Of Professional Development On Elementary Students’ Mathematics Achievement, Jonathan L. Brendefur, Keith W. Thiede, Sam Strother, Dan Jesse, John Sutton

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper describes the effects of a professional development (PD) program – Developing Mathematical Thinking – on student achievement. Six Title I elementary schools with similar demographics, within one school district, were chosen to participate as either a treatment or comparison school. Three schools were chosen to participate in professional development that incorporates effective PD recommendations. All the teachers had to participate in all aspects of the PD, thereby eliminating potential self-selection bias. Using the state standardized achievement test as the before and after measure, results suggest improved student performance after professional development was implemented over a two year period.

Creating Art Patterns With Math And Code, Boyan Kostadinov

Publications and Research

The goal of this talk is to showcase some visualization projects that we developed for a 3-day Code in R summer program, designed to inspire the creative side of our STEM students by engaging them with computational projects that we developed with the purpose of mixing calculus level math and code to create complex geometric patterns. One of the goals of this program was to attract more minority and female students into applied math and computer science majors.

The projects are designed to be implemented using the high-level, open-source and free computational environment R, a popular software in industry for …

The Relationship Between High-School Mathematics Teachers' Beliefs And Their Practices In Regards To Intellectual Quality, Jonathan L. Brendefur, Michelle B. Carney

Curriculum, Instruction, and Foundational Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

This study examines the relationship between mathematics teachers’ beliefs and instructional practices related to learning, pedagogy, and mathematics in regards to components of intellectual quality for eight high-school mathematics teachers. Research has demonstrated that the higher the degree of intellectual quality for instruction is rated the higher student achievement is on standardized assessments. The findings in this study demonstrate a consistent pattern between teachers espoused beliefs and their instructional practices. Even though teachers’ practices changed as they wrote curricular units to be more in line with intellectual quality characteristics, their beliefs stayed consistent over an 18 month period and were …

The Evaluation Of Rhode Island Public High School Teachers: The Impact On Students, Stephen Lamontagne

Honors Projects in Mathematics

In 2012, the state of Rhode Island began the full implementation of a high-stakes teacher evaluation system. Its purpose is to increase teacher accountability and to improve student performance. However, a significant amount of literature casts doubt about the effectiveness and validity of teacher evaluation. This paper utilizes statistical methods including regression and decision trees in order to determine whether or not there is a relationship between teacher evaluation in Rhode Island and student performance, using RI Department of Education Data for each school from 2008-2015. Furthermore, this presentation investigates other factors that affect schools, to see if changes in …

Collaboration And Creativity In Southern Califonia: An Offering, Gizem Karaali, Ami Radunskaya

Pomona Faculty Publications and Research

WiMSoCal (Women in Math in Southern California) is a regional conference in its ninth incarnation. The conference is the result of the efforts of Professor Cymra Haskell (USC) to create a supportive local community for women mathematicians. At our first meeting in 2007, a confluence of Ami’s EDGE regional cluster and Cymra’s WISE group at USC, we socialized, got to know each other and brainstormed about what we, as a group, would like to see happen. It was clear that our younger colleagues wanted to meet as mathematicians, sharing intellectual ideas as well as anecdotes from the trenches.