Math Night

In early December, TPS parents were invited to Math Night, an evening devoted to our mathematics curriculum. The keynote speaker was Janine Remillard, Associate Professor of Mathematics Education, University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. Following Janine's presentation, parents were invited to explore various activities, relating to the following strands of study: place value, algebraic thinking, and geometry. Parents sampled activities for children in Preschool through Middle School.

The three strands of study are described in the Principles and Standards for School Mathematics, published in 2000 by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). This publication, a guide for mathematics educators in prekindergarten through grade 12, is grounded in the belief that all students should learn important mathematical concepts and processes with understanding.

Place value is the foundation of our number system and is a central part of the “Numbers and Operations” strand. Place value understanding involves knowledge of the base-ten system and how we use numerals to represent quantities. Through developing strong place value understanding, students come to see how the number system works and they can use the patterns in the number system to compute flexibly and fluently. According to NCTM, instructional programs from prekindergarten through grade 12 should enable students to understand numbers, ways of representing numbers, relationships among numbers, and number systems.

Activities set up in the classroom for the evening demonstrated how our mathematics curricum builds the concept of our number system over the years.

Algebraic thinking encompasses the relationships among quantities, the use of symbols to represent and generalize mathematical relationships, the modeling of phenomena, and the mathematical study of change. According to NCTM, instructional programs from prekindergarten through grade 12 should enable all students to
• understand patterns, relations, and functions;
• represent and analyze mathematical situations and structures using algebraic symbols;
• use mathematical models to represent and understand quantitative relationships;
• analyze change in various contexts.

Activities set up in the classroom for the evening showed how they develop from simple patterns and rules to more complex representations and then equations and graphs to represent relationships.

Geometry is the study of how we label, describe, and solve problems in the physical space around us. Students learn about geometric shapes and structures and how to analyze their characteristics and relationships. Geometry is a natural area of mathematics for the development of students’ reasoning and justification skills that build across the grades. According to NCTM, instructional programs from prekindergarten to grade 12 should enable all students to:
• analyze characteristics and properties of two- and three-dimensional geometric shapes and develop mathematical arguments about geometric relationships;
• specify locations and describe spatial relationships using coordinate geometry and other representational systems;
• apply transformations and use symmetry to analyze mathematical situations;
• use visualization, spatial reasoning, and geometric modeling to solve problems.

Activities set up in the classroom for the evening demonstrated how the activities build from familiarity with shapes, to their characteristics and relationships with each other, to more complex understanding of the use of equations to represent aspects of these shapes, such as area and volume.

Janine distributed two hand-outs to parents. One included frequently asked questions about basic math facts, and the other was an article published by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics.