Power Up Your Math Community, K-5

Mathematical proficiency is more important than ever to our student’s success in school and life. However, student achievement measures in mathematics show a need for a new approach to improving math teaching and learning. Former Learning Forward Texas Board Member Dr. Sue Chapman has written a book with Holly Burwell to support school leaders, instructional coaches, and teacher leaders in creating a plan to strengthen their school’s mathematics program through curriculum-based professional learning.

Power Up Your Math Community is a guidebook to a year-long journey toward becoming a school that recognizes and celebrates its mathematical powers and is a community that enjoys learning math together. Each chapter offers a month’s worth of practice-based professional learning activities focused on a specific math habit alongside parallel math problems and learning activities for teachers to use with students. Power Up Your Math Community walks you and your team through the process of building a

highly effective school-wide math program where students and teachers delight in doing and learning mathematics.

Book outcomes include:

• Design a strategic plan to strengthen their school’s mathematics program.

• Explore ways to integrate math professional learning into their school’s already-existing routines and professional learning structures.

• Identify the habits of mathematically powerful people and describe the role these habits play in growing students’ and teachers’ mathematical identities and agency.

• Learn how to build a powerful math community of students, teachers, leaders, and parents who see mathematics as a lens for understanding and appreciating the world and a way of thinking that allows them to tackle interesting and important real-world problems.
  

Note: The publication date for Power Up Your Math Community: A 10-Month Guide to Practice-Based Professional Learning is September 17.

Dr. Sue Chapman is a professional learning consultant and author of MathVentures: 33 Teacher-Coach Investigations to Grow Students as Mathematicians. She is also a former Learning Forward Texas board member and blogger. Connect with Sue at SueChapmanLearn@gmail.com and on Twitter at @SueChapmanLearn.