Quick tips for starting the school year

Perhaps the single most important suggestion for teachers new to a CPM course is to trust the book. This means, first and foremost, following the pacing of the chapter and lesson guides. In addition, use the suggestions from the authors; more specifically, use the Teacher Edition as your central guide. The ideas provided there are classroom-tested by the authors as well as dozens of other field-test teachers. Remember that the three primary elements of the courses—problem-based learning, study teams that stimulate student discourse about mathematics, and spaced practice—are research based. In addition, study after study shows that students who complete CPM courses score above state averages on tests that measure content knowledge.

Some teachers are hesitant to move to the next lesson until most students “get it.” However, the CPM courses develop understanding and mastery over time, acknowledging that not all students learn an idea at the same time or at the same rate. Not only does the research show that heavy doses of practice with an idea over a short duration are less effective if long-term learning is the goal, but our experience as teachers confirms this. How many times have you said or heard another teacher say, “They knew it two weeks ago, but now they cannot do it”?

The structure of the courses requires that you utilize class time differently. Effective study teams are built over time. Use the team roles and study team strategies (STS) to keep students engaged with the work of the course. Students will become better problem solvers if you use a repertoire of open-ended questions. Ask “What if…?” instead of “What is…?” “How do you know?” instead of “Is that right?” “Tell me what you know about that” instead of “Let me show you.” The goal is to shape the student questions, work, and occasional confusion in directions that will engage them in seeking solutions to problems. Your responses should be crafted with that goal in mind.

Certainly there are times for direct instruction. Parts of some closure sessions may require that you emphasize some aspect of an idea or help pull things together for the class. Sometimes students need some information to move forward. However, do not be too quick to step in to “make a lesson go smoothly” for the students. Part of learning is working through the rough spots of a problem. While it is certainly appropriate and necessary to make the goal(s) of the lesson clear to the class, it is not appropriate to give a presentation that tells them everything they are supposed to learn from the lesson. (Who likes to be told the end of a story or a movie in advance?) Doing so is not only ineffective, it uses valuable time that students need to do the lesson. The briefest advice about using study teams is simple: understand their purpose, use the structures provided in the CPM resources, and use common sense.

Daily preparation is also different for CPM courses. The most valuable use of your time is to work the problems in advance and read the teacher notes. The classroom problems are not routine. By doing them you will understand them and develop ideas for questions to use to help students work with them. The "Suggested Lesson Activity" notes for each lesson are descriptions of how each of them is designed. The notes give you the authors’ purpose for the problems and how they expect the lesson to unfold. They also discuss the mathematics of the problems. However, teaching the lesson is a dynamic process with each class; the notes are not recipes! Use these descriptive baselines as references as the lesson unfolds and as you interact with your students.

Some of the elements of using a CPM course for the first time are challenging, and these challenges are usually psychological or emotional, not so much the details of using the materials. Teachers need to believe that their students can learn mathematics without being told or shown everything by someone else. Then they need to give the students the opportunity to learn! The CPM lessons are designed to provide the structure and support to let this happen. Teachers need to resist the urge to make learning easy, smooth, and efficient. Let the students grapple with the problems, try some approaches that do not work, and make some mistakes as they work through the problems. Keep in mind that the lessons are structured to reach a specific mathematical objective. Your role is to support their efforts by observing, questioning, interjecting, and discussing issues that arise during the lesson, mostly with the teams. Your movement around the room keeps you informed about how everyone is doing—individually and collectively—so that you know when and how to interact with teams and individuals.

Finally, teachers need to use their experience and talents in ways that support students in becoming “the explainers and presenters” of ideas. Keep in mind that change takes time—for both you and the students—but if you make a commitment to the suggestions in this article, your students will learn mathematics deeply and they will become better learners in general.

CPM summer conferences a huge success

CPM conducted two conferences in July, one in Sacramento, CA and one in Annapolis, MD. The 310 attendees were almost equally divided between the two sites. Teachers had a chance to attend the sessions with CPM’s mentor teachers, several of whom conducted the sessions. Each site offered 42 sessions along with opening and closing keynotes by the two founding Directors, Judy Kysh and Tom Sallee.

Participant feedback praised the variety of topics on the program. Some sessions focused on sharing ideas within courses, while others dealt with technology, universal access, study team strategies, assessment, and aspects of teaching CPM lessons. A common theme of the session evaluations was how practical the content of the sessions was—teachers could immediately use the ideas in their classrooms. Others commented that they found the sessions thought-provoking.

Several of the sessions were based on conference presentations that CPM mentors do at state and NCTM conferences. Handouts for all of these sessions are available at http://www.cpm.org/teachers/info.htm. Handouts specific to the CPM Summer Conferences are at http://www.cpm.org/teachers/CPM_conf_resources.htm.

We will complete our evaluation of the conferences and the feedback from the participants shortly, then announce plans for conferences and workshops for 2009 in the November CPM newsletter.

Index for additional teaching ideas

Past issues of the CPM newsletters are posted at www.cpm.org/teachers/news.htm. They are a rich source of suggestions for using the CPM curriculum. Below is an index of issues and topics since 1996. The September 1999 and 2001 articles in bold below are the most comprehensive summaries of CPM methodology outside of your teacher edition. The “Seven Proven Ingredients” article from the 2003 August/September newsletter is a short list of teacher behaviors that lead to success. It is based on the experiences of hundreds of CPM teachers. “Keys for success for new CPM teachers” are featured in the September 2005 and 2007 issues.

Chris’s Corner: A view from the classroom

Starter tips for using study teams

One of the best ways to get the year and your teams off to a good start is to use team roles from the first day of class. They are described in the Teacher Editions of the Connections courses and are also available at http://www.cpm.org/teachers/study.htm. Student roles include a Task Manager, Facilitator, Reporter/Recorder and Resource Manager. Using teams helps to transfer many responsibilities to the students. The roles do not have to be complicated. Abbreviated roles, used every day, can be very powerful. The Facilitator should be the one to get the lesson started. The Task Manager should be the time manager. (This was especially helpful for me to finish a lesson in time so that I could do closure. The students tended to watch the clock better than I did!) The Reporter/Recorder should make sure that everyone is writing everything down that the team says and does. The Resource Manager calls the teacher over when everyone has the same question and also gets supplies. Posting the basic responsibilities in the classroom—on the board, the overhead, or a poster—will help remind teachers as well as students what the roles are and to use them regularly.

Another way to help teams run smoothly is through the use of study team strategies (a.k.a. STS). These strategies are modeled in the CPM workshops, but during the first year of teaching a CPM course, teachers too often forget about them. There are resources on the website to help. At
http://www.cpm.org/teachers/study.htm you will find study team information including organizational information, the latest STS cards, and a list of study team strategies for the Connections courses suggested for specific lessons (a new resource this year). Try one or two of these strategies and you will see what a difference it can make in getting all of your students actively engaged in a lesson.

Video model for teachers and students

I am now showing the CPM video, We Have A Question, to my students so they get a sense of what my role is as well as their responsibilities during study team work. One of the outcomes of sharing this video was that it broke my habit of snatching pencils from the students and just showing them how to complete a problem. It also reinforced the norm that everyone must have the same question when the Resource Manager calls the teacher over to the team. In some circumstances you might also want to share this video with parents. The video is on the course assessment CDs.

California Corner

The California Department of Education has now approved the two volume, soft bound student version of Algebra Connections, California Edition. The Spanish version is being reviewed by CDE and we expect to have it available by October.

The 8th grade Algebra 1 mandate passed by the State Board of Education in July was supported mostly by some elements in the business community. Most stakeholders with experience in education opposed it. CPM will continue to support high standards but work for their implementation in ways that are consistent with what we know about how students learn.

Textbook & Curriculum Updates

SMART Board files

CPM has developed SMART Board files for each chapter in Algebra and Geometry Connections. The first six chapters are also completed for Algebra 2 Connections and Pre-Calculus. The last six chapters for these courses will be available in October. These files can be downloaded from the CPM website at: http://www.cpm.org/technology. Choose the course you want,
then scroll down. In order to use these files, you need SMART Board software which can be downloaded at:http://www2.smarttech.com/st/en-US/Support/Downloads/default.htm.
You can view the files free with the Notebook Interactive viewer 9.5 version, but you will not have all of the features of the 10.0 version. In order to use the 10.0 version for more than 30 days, you need a SMART Board product at your school to obtain the product key. You would not want to use these files unless you are using a computer connected to a projector in your classroom (time to replace that overhead projector!).

Algebra and Geometry Connections

The most recent version of both courses is 3.1. These versions differ from version 3.0 with the inclusion of a few additional topics following Chapter 12 and minor adjustments to a few problems. The specific changes are posted at www.cpm.org/teachers/resByCourse.htm. Spanish editions (soft bound) of both courses are available.

Algebra 2 Connections

The final first edition of Algebra 2 Connections was completed in late May. Replacement copies of the teacher edition were shipped in June and student texts began shipping in mid-July. The Parent Guide with Extra Practice and the new assessment CD will be available by mid-September (see "News Bytes" p.4). The CD will include electronic files of the printed assessment section as well as a PDF copy of the Teacher Edition.

Pre-Calculus with Trigonometry

Student copies of the successor to Math 4 (Math Analysis) began shipping on August 19. Teacher editions were shipped a few weeks earlier. The assessment resources are currently being revised and expanded by our editor. A CD with the electronic assessment files and a PDF copy of the Teacher Edition will be sent to all registered Math 4 and Pre-Calculus teachers in the fall, hopefully by mid-October. The assessment will cover all chapters of the course.

Course resources

Just a reminder that all of the printed ancillary support items—parent guides, extra practice, skill builders, and resource pages —are available at the CPM web site as well as in print form. You can send individual students there who need alternate explanations of ideas, examples, and additional practice problems, or use selected topics if your entire class needs additional resources for a topic. Should your school decide to purchase these resources in quantity, we offer 50% off the list price for orders of 20 or more of an item.

Teacher registration with CPM

Please be sure that any teachers who are new to the school this year and teaching CPM complete and submit a teacher registration form. They are available at www.cpm.org/teachers/apps.htm if there is not one in their teacher edition. Registering with CPM is important, because we use the database to send out new or revised resources and the newsletter. We also use it to make decisions about where to hold meetings for teacher feedback about courses, prioritize staff time to do state correlations and other work related to local support, and publishing decisions.

News Bytes

CPM web site expansion

If you have not visited the CPM web site before—or for a year or so—you may want to take 10 or 15 minutes and check out what is available. There is information about CPM’s research base and program effectiveness, workshop dates and sites, and ordering information. The “resources” tab on the teacher home page takes you to the student resource pages, parent guides, extra practice (skill builders), and the CPM Forum.

The “Resources by Course” tab has additional materials for each of the courses too numerous to list here. There are also “State Standards Supplements” that are mini-lessons for topics that are necessary to bring CPM books to 100% compliance with the content standards for several states. Colorado and New York are complete. We will add several more this fall. Another section has support for study team strategies. The technology page has all of the downloadable files for the Connections courses and Pre-Calculus as well as SMART Board files (see the article in the “Curriculum” section of this newsletter, page 3).

Purchasing CPM materials

An order form is available at www.cpm.org/teachers/ordering.htm. Teacher editions are $75, hard bound books $44, and most soft bound, two-volume student sets are $28. Pre-Calculus and Calculus soft bound sets are $50. All prices are good through December 2008. Fax orders to (916) 444-5263. Address questions to the Business Office at (209) 745-2055 or lgraham@cpm.org. You may also call the CPM Business Office and make small purchased (under $300) by credit card.

Register for the CPM web site forum

We encourage you to register for the CPM on-line forum for teachers where you may ask questions, offer suggestions, share resources, and generally discuss using CPM. Teachers are able to post ideas for teaching lessons, resource materials they create, or commentaries about how a lesson or problem went with their students. Once something is posted, any registered forum participant may add to it.

The forum is divided into categories by course. In addition, we have created categories for classroom management, assessment, and student learning styles. We will add categories as the discussion forum grows. The forum URL is http://www.cpm.org/phpBB2. Click “register” in order to post messages. Carol Cho, the San Francisco Bay Area Regional Coordinator, is the moderator of the forum (cho@cpm.org).

Hotmath.com homework help

Help with the homework portion of each lesson in the FFA 1 and 2, Math 1-4, and Algebra, Geometry, and Algebra 2 Connections textbooks is available at http://hotmath.com. (Note: Algebra 2 version 3.0 chapters will be posted as they are completed by Hotmath this fall, with Chapters 1-4 completed by August 31.) CPM has paid a national licensing fee to Hotmath.com so that anyone at any time can access the web site. Click on the course from the tabs on the left side of the home page, then click on the CPM textbook icon, and enter the student text page number of the problem. With your cursor next to the page number, press “enter” or “return” and the problem numbers will appear below. Click on the problem you want.

The complete text of the CPM courses (except Calculus), including the classroom investigations, connecting text, and tool kits/math notes, are available at http://hotmath.com. Follow the same access instructions in the previous paragraph to get to the page you want. The solutions are provided for the homework problems only, not the developmental problems in the lessons.

Assessment resources for the Connections courses

Last fall we mailed everyone who is registered as an Algebra Connections and Geometry Connections teacher an assessment CD. In addition to upgraded resource files, the CDs contain PDF copies of the teacher edition. If you did not receive yours—that is, if you are still using the temporary CD with the hand-written label—send a request for the current CD to lgraham@cpm.org. Please include your name and address and where you teach. The CDs with the color picture of a Connections student book on the cover are the current CDs.

Algebra 2 Connections teachers are scheduled to receive their CD along with a copy of the A2C Parent Guide with Extra Practice in early September. The CD will have files with assessment resources, video files, and a PDF copy of the teacher edition. We expect to post the chapter by chapter PDF files for the Parent Guide at the CPM web site by the end of August. NOTE: We will mail the new assessment CD and Parent Guide to all teachers who are registered as A2C users. This means that you must have completed the teacher registration form in the front of the teacher edition and sent it to CPM or turned it in at a workshop. If you completed the form in 2007-08 as a user of the preliminary edition, you do not need to send the form again.

Ideas from Algebra 1 sharing session

Astrida Lizens, from Twin Valley, PA, moderated the Algebra 1 sharing session at the Annapolis, MD conference. The session participants offered the following organizational suggestions. Several ideas are useful for any course.

Executive Editor: Brian Hoey

Assistant Editor: Tracy Frank

We welcome your comments and suggestions:

Production Manager: Brian Hamada
e-mail: bhamada@cpm.org

Thanks to all!