Professional Development Focus or Topic: PD Date:

Developing better questioning techniques by visual math. 12/1/2018

Intended Audience: Mathematics Department (High School) – 1 hour meeting

Outcomes: (What will participants know and be able to do as a result of the training?)
Ability to change the environment in a classroom to foster more thinking by improving questioning techniques by visual
math.

Assessment Analysis: (Why was this topic the focus for PD?)
Our School improvement goal is:
Goal #2 = All teachers will differentiate instruction in response to individual student learning needs.

Part of that goal is that:

Teachers will have knowledge of differentiated instruction practices/strategies and level of implementation

Why questioning as a PD topic?

Good questioning by visual math is a way of differentiated instruction in that it forces higher-level thought.

“Mathematics teaching and learning needs to become more visual – there is not a single idea or concept that cannot be
illustrated or thought about visually” (Boaler 2016)

(Boaler J, Chen L, Williams C, Cordero M (2016) Seeing as Understanding: The Importance of Visual Mathematics for our
Brain and Learning. J Appl Computat Math 5: 325. doi: 10.4172/2168-9679.1000325)

1. Warm-up/focuser (Brief activity to jump-start 2. Introduce new content (How will participants learn
thinking and/or interaction among the the new material?)
participants?)

The Turkey Problem A man is on a diet and goes into a shop
to buy some turkey slices. He is given 3 slices which
together weigh 1 of a pound but his diet says that he is
allowed to eat only 1 of a pound. How much of the 3 slices
he bought can he eat while staying true to his diet?
The most advanced class that they teach and the lowest
level they teach will group teachers.
The high-level groups will be given a level appropriate visual
math problem to solve.

Then the teachers will transition to the lower level groups

and solve another level appropriate visual math problem.

Finally, the lower level group will be challenged to find a

problem that they will be teaching in the next week and
make it into a visual math problem.
 3. Process the learning (How will participants process and internalize the new information? What interactive
structures can be used?)

They will learn by being in the student role first by doing some problems. Then transition into a teacher role by creating a
visual math problem for their class.

Also, technology will be available to explore:

-Geogebra (geoebra.org)
-Desmos (desmos.com)
- ST Math (https://www.stmath.com/play)
-You Cubed (https://www.youcubed.org/resource/visual-mathematics/)

4. Sharing and debriefing the content (How will participants share their ideas/reactions to the new material?)

The teachers will be given a short survey (google) about how they view visual math after the meeting. They will also be
asked if they would like help creating lessons/problems or complete a lesson study.

5. Reflection and closure (How will learning be Follow-up (What types of follow-up and support will be
summarized and personalized?) provided?)

The teams will come together as a group and briefly share The ending questionnaire will be analyzed and each teacher
what they learned or came up with in their investigations of will be individually contacted to see what his or her needs
visual math. are moving forward.

From Bay-Williams, J., McGatha, M., Kobett, B., and Wray, J. (2014). Mathematics
Coaching: Resources and Tools for Coaches and Leaders, K-12. Pearson. P.192