Mandy Smoker-Broaddus (OPI) Karma Nelson, EdD. (OPI Liaison/Educational Consultant)

 Achievement Gap Data, Pilot Background and Vision  CGI Research Base  CGI Classroom  Data after 1 year  Project support  Year 2 plans

The Achievement Gap

Largest gap of 39% -(8 th grade in & 06-07) American Indian students in grades 4, 5, 6 & 7 all saw declines in proficiency from rates

The Achievement Gap Criterion Reference Test Percent Proficient & Advanced American Indian Students only Grades 3-8 & 10 Combined School A8% School B10% School C11% School D13% School E17%

Conference Fall 2006 “Closing the Achievement Gap for Native American Students” Rapid City, South Dakota

Mandy Smoker –Broaddus Montana Office of Public Instruction Indian Student Achievement Pilot Projects Elementary Mathematics CGI & Culturally Responsive Math Student Survey Data School Success Profile Early Childhood McRel & Head Start/Kindergarten Collaboration Project After School Programming Club Invention & After School Science Program

“Understanding how to teach in ways that are culturally compatible is critically important for teachers working with students whose family cultures are not reflected in the dominant or majority culture.” (Hankes, 1998)

Capitalize on research on how children learn (e.g., give them a strong start in mathematics; help them develop conceptual understanding, computational and procedural fluency, and automatic recall of facts; and emphasize effort and persistence).

 Teachers & Students Working Together  Joint Productive Activity  Developing Language and Literacy Skills  Connecting Lessons to Student’s Lives  Contextualization  Engaging Students with Challenging Lessons  Emphasizing Dialogue over Lectures  Choice and Initiative  Modeling & Demonstration  Expert/Apprentice  Perspectives for Teaching Indigenous Students, NCTM

Culture and Context Reference to everyday knowledge, local ways of knowing, being and learning. Pedagogy Social organization, communication, expert-apprentice, classroom management and social norms. Math Content and Knowledge Teachers math knowledge Students Math Knowledge

 Time generous  Lessons are relational - focus on problem solving  Manipulatives and models are present  Students work mostly in cooperative groups  Independent work is limited  Classroom discussion is mostly conversational  Activities are contextualized  Teacher facilitates autonomous as well as cooperative student discussions

 Caring and supportive relationships  High Expectations  Opportunities for participation

“We want people to believe in us”

 Carpenter, T., Fennema, E., Franke, M., Levi, L.  University of Wisconsin: Madison (1999)

 Children bring an intuitive knowledge of mathematics to school with them. This knowledge should serve as the basis for developing formal mathematics instruction in primary school. This thesis leads to an emphasis on assessing the processes that students use to solve problems.

 Math instruction should be based on the relationship between computational skills and problem solving, which leads to an emphasis on contextual problem solving in the classroom instead of the repetition of number facts.

 The process standards serve as a focus for instruction (problem solving, reasoning, communication, connections and representations).  Children decide how they should solve each problem. They use multiple strategies to solve problems.  Children communicate to their teachers and peers how they solved the problem

 A framework for identifying the intuitive developmental strategies that children use when solving word problems is used. The stages include 1-1 correspondence, direct modeling, counting on/back, facts, deriving strategies and invented procedures.  A framework that distinguishes difficulty among problems is used. (Refer to CGI Story Problem handout)

 One week summer training with two national CGI consultants  Onsite professional development with OPI mathematics education liaison  Three three-day on-site CGI trainer visits  Model lessons  Observe teacher lessons  Coach teachers  Encourage self assessments by teachers

 Mathematics educator liaison  Attends all workshops  Serves as a connection between OPI, administration, teachers and trainers  Coordinates data collection  Provides additional mathematics education support to teachers  Administration  Supportive  Sets high expectations  Attends all workshops

 Building coaches  Attend week long workshop  Helps with data collection and student interviews  Monitors and supports needs of teachers  Teachers  Attend workshop and mathematics professional development throughout the year  Open classroom to trainers and observers  Engage in self assessment and reflection of teaching

 Data  Base 10  Teacher observations  Teacher self reflections  State CRT (3-5) and ITBS (2)

 Teachers were observed teaching a lesson three times during the school year by outside CGI professional development instructor.  The instructor rated each teacher who also rated him/her selves using the same 4 point rubric based on the process standards. (See handout)

 PS2: Problem situations were differentiated to meet the needs of students regardless of ability  R3: Students were offered choices (numbers, problems, groups) during the lesson.  C1: Students explained the process by which they solved, to each other, the teacher, or a partner  C3: Different strategies were presented to display variation amongst the class  M2: Students almost always connect their solution strategies with the appropriate number sentence, symbol or procedure.

 C4: Quality questioning was used to check student understanding.  M1: Appropriate “math tools” were available for children to resolve problem situations.

2008 Raw ITBS Score 2009 Raw ITBS Score ConceptsPSCompTotalConceptsPSCompTotal

2008 & 2009 CRT Mathematics Scores % Proficient & Advanced

 Traditional procedures are already ingrained without an understanding of the process.  Students’ beliefs about their ability to do math are established.  Difficult change for some teachers.  Giving up the book as the curriculum.  Pressure of CRTs  Students are shy about explaining their work.

 Familiarity with teaching strategies (Implementation Dip)  Teacher content knowledge  Teacher pedagogical knowledge  Access to standards based curriculum materials.

 Students share when they return to the class.  Students feel empowered - don’t feel incapable  Student dispositions change when they are allowed to use their own strategies to solve problems and are able to justify their strategies.

 Advanced training during summer #2 workshop  Increased coaching from OPI mathematics education liaison during the year  Increased focus on building learning communities at grade level  Training & partial implementation of standards based curriculum materials more closely aligned to CGI.  Use of data analysis