K-12 Mathematics Virtual Office Hours
We will be resuming office hours again starting in late September. During our sessions we'll do math together, talk about successes and challenges and make connections for collaboration. Look for Newsflashes on Tuesdays for an invitation with days and times
To view the slide decks and recordings of past office hours visit our Educator Resources page.
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Getting to Know Each Other-Desmos Activity
 Getting to know your students and making connections with them is going to be a challenge this year, while simultaneously being more important than ever.
This activity is intended to help you get to know your students and for them to get to know each other. Consider spreading screens out over the course of several days or using this activity all at once.
Find this activity here. (also available in French)
Youcubed Resources
 The importance of a growth mindset and the positive effect it has on math learning are well documented. With the unique learning situations happening around the state, we wanted to high light a few resources to help foster this kind of thinking with your students even in a remote environment.
Week of Inspirational Math(s)- Choose your own maths adventure with our interactive tools that allow you to build a custom playlist of inspirational maths activities and messages! New resources added for this year.
Youcubed at Home- In these times of uncertainty, youcubed is here to help students at home continue to explore and learn maths in rich and creative ways. We are collecting here modified versions of our tasks to be more home-friendly, as well as some new explorations designed for learners at home.
Planning for 2020-21 School Year
The following are resources to consider when planning for the 2020-21 school year.
Thinking about Math
We love hearing and learning from you all, so here is this edition's Thinking about Math question:
Share your favorite activity for cultivating a culture of learning and support in your digital environment.
Click here to submit your answers
In our June edition we asked you to share your best strategy to spark math curiosity virtually and we got some great responses.
"...I developed a "spiral review" and the students loved the variety and having something more familiar and comfortable to work on. I have also been using "Krypto" to reel kids in and it's SO much fun!"
"My favorite was when students were asked to find slope in the world around them and figure out what the slope was. There was a wide variety of slopes...some were horizontal and vertical taking pictures of a door frame, some built their own slope stairs using shoe boxes. It let the students use a lot of creativity to look at their world around them and use a math concept we were learning."
The two winners for the April drawing are:
Keri M. from Wenatchee School District
Stephanie P. from Eastmont School District
In each Newsletter edition we will randomly select an entry to receive a free set of classroom posters.
Washington Dual Credit Summit: Strengthening Programs and Addressing Equity FREE Virtual Series
Every Wednesday, September 30- November 11, 2020 12:00-1:00pm
As an SQSS measure, a school’s ability to build equitable, sustainable dual credit programs will be key to improving its WISF scores while helping to support its students be college and career ready. This webinar series on Dual Credit has experts from around the state sharing best practices on all aspects of building and supporting equitable dual credit programs, with the effects of COVID-19 at the forefront.
For more information, visit OSPI’s Dual Credit website.
Join a Washington OER Hub Information Webinar
The Washington OER Hub is an online platform for freely sharing K-12 open educational resources. Curated and created for and by Washington educators, the site promotes equitable access to standards-aligned, quality instructional materials.
During the webinars (same content for each), we’ll:
- Review the updated Washington OER Hub
- Explore new Continuous Learning Collections
- Learn how to search for grade-specific resources and save, download, and adapt content
Washington OER hub webinars flyer
Thursday, September 3 11:00 am – 12:00 pm
Register
Tuesday, September 22 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm
Register
For more information or questions about OER Commons and/or Open Educational Resources, contact Barbara Soots at barbara.soots@k12.wa.us or 360-725-6102.
Teacher Tech Project (TTP)
 CSTP’s Teacher Tech Project, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, provides information, resources and learning opportunities for teachers to develop their knowledge, skills and understanding of Learning Management Systems and instructional design for distance learning. Through the Teacher Tech Project, 36 Washington state teachers have worked through the summer to create learning opportunities in preparation for remote learning in the fall.
Resource Guides have been developed with curated information and resources for the five most commonly used Learning Management Systems in WA (Canvas, Google Classroom, Microsoft Teams, Schoology, and Seesaw). “Ask-A-Teacher” Help Desks utilize social media to engage teachers in asking and answering specific questions about the LMS platforms. Lastly, asynchronous modules about instructional design for distance learning are free and available professional learning for teachers that cover topics including community building, student engagement, differentiation, and feedback to students, to name a few.
The Framework for Remote Teaching
The attached resource on teaching remotely was just released by the Danielson Group. It provides a thoughtful, practical, culturally responsive approach to developing virtual learning, and addresses both synchronous and asynchronous instruction. The document is a tool for support (not evaluation). While based on the Danielson Framework for Teaching, districts using the CEL 5D+ and Marzano instructional frameworks will also find it to be helpful.
As this document advises, this is not the year for full-on evaluation processes for most teachers. OSPI has released guidance on Comprehensive evaluations for the 20-21 school year, available here. Further information on choosing a single student growth goal (criterion 3 or 6) for teachers on a modified Comprehensive evaluation will be forthcoming.
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Exploring Math Through Stories
Great stories are a wonderful way to get young people of all ages excited and interested in mathematics. The annual book prize, Mathical: Books for Kids from Tots to Teens, recognizes the most inspiring math-related fiction and nonfiction books that bring to life the wonder of math in our lives.
Pigeon Math (2020 Award Winner)
Written by Asia Citro • Illustrated by Richard Watson
K through 2nd grade
Telling a story about pigeons should be simple. But what’s a narrator to do when the number of feathered friends is constantly changing? Can our intrepid storyteller use math facts to keep up with the unstable quantities… or is this pigeon-centric tale doomed?
Key Math Concepts
- Adding up to 10
- Perseverance
- Solving math problems is fun
Reading Resources
Want to enjoy Mathical books with the children around you? Feeling uncertain about guiding them through the math-related parts of the book?
Here you'll find a list of printable educational resources. There are both free and paid resources available. Check back frequently as they are continually adding new resources.
Click here to access printable resources for Pigeon Math
Copyright © 2019 All Rights Reserved. Mathematical Sciences Research Institute.
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New Family Newsletter!
We are excited to announce the launch of our new newsletter Mathematics at Home.
This newsletter is designed for families and will provide fun, low-prep activities that families can easily engage in at home or around the community.
This newsletter will target families with kids pre-school through 3rd grade and will be sent out later in September. We invite you to help us get the word out by forwarding the Family Newsletter to your families. We will also include a PDF version that can easily be attached to classroom emails.
We hope that Mathematics at Home becomes a useful tool for your families and encourage you to contact us with any suggestions or feedback.
Sign up for Mathematics at Home
Pleas share and encourage your students' parents to sign up at: bit.ly/OSPIMathAtHome
Exploring Math Through Stories
Great stories are a wonderful way to get young people of all ages excited and interested in mathematics. The annual book prize, Mathical: Books for Kids from Tots to Teens, recognizes the most inspiring math-related fiction and nonfiction books that bring to life the wonder of math in our lives.
Slay (2020 Award Winner)
Written by Brittney Morris
Ages 14-18*
By day, seventeen-year-old Kiera Johnson is an honors student, a math tutor, and one of the only Black kids at Jefferson Academy. But at home, she joins hundreds of thousands of Black gamers who duel worldwide as Nubian personas in the secret multiplayer online role-playing card game, SLAY. No one knows Kiera is the game developer, not her friends, her family, not even her boyfriend, Malcolm, who believes video games are partially responsible for the “downfall of the Black man.”
But when a teen in Kansas City is murdered over a dispute in the SLAY world, news of the game reaches mainstream media, and SLAY is labeled a racist, exclusionist, violent hub for thugs and criminals. Even worse, an anonymous troll infiltrates the game, threatening to sue Kiera for “anti-white discrimination.”
Driven to save the only world in which she can be herself, Kiera must preserve her secret identity and harness what it means to be unapologetically Black in a world intimidated by Blackness. But can she protect her game without losing herself in the process?
*Contains adult themes, teachers should preview before assigning.
Click here to access reading guide for Slay
Copyright © 2019 All Rights Reserved. Mathematical Sciences Research Institute.
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Meeting Students Where They Are
Consistent with our feelings in Spring 2020, that we don’t require, expect, or encourage students to sit for an interim in the fall, ELA and Math Assessment Development will soon be releasing our “Meeting Students Where They Are” document.
In this document we present initial priorities at the start of the 20-21 school year: establishing and re-establishing relationships with students, checking on students well-being, followed by building community and engagement through rich culturally responsive learning experiences. The rich learning experiences provide a greater opportunity for student voice and sharing their understanding and experiences as they reenter the classroom, in whatever form that may be, in the new school year. As a result, the teacher will know more clearly what actions could be taken to support students and accelerate learning within grade level concepts, beyond what the limited sample of questions on an interim can provide. The document also provides some examples of how a teacher can formatively assess student learning for ELA and mathematics without the use of the interims.
ELA and math assessment development will also be hosting formative assessment workshops and workgroups throughout the fall and winter. These opportunities are still being developed but information regarding these events will be advertised on the ELA and math assessment website and the Mathematics Newsletters. Stay tuned!
Changes in the Washington Comprehensive Assessment Portal
- The link for the Portal has changed for the new school year as AIR was absorbed by Cambium Assessment Inc in 2019. Be sure to bookmark the new address for the coming school year.
- Hand scoring of interim items (Performance Tasks in Math) will be done in the THSS System. We had the THSS System a few years ago, but it was replaced with AIRWays. The new THSS operates in much the same way it did in the past, but we know its been a while and a user guide for THSS will be posted in the Portal User Guides and Manuals section in the fall.
- The Smarter Balanced Reporting System will replace AIRWays for ELA and math interim results this year. It has much of the same functionality of AIRWays with additional navigation and sorting options, as well as seeing item details after an interim is used.
Please reach out if you have any questions: asi@k12.wa.us
For more information or questions about mathematics assessments, contact OSPI Mathematics Assessment Specialist, Serena O’Neill at serena.oneill@k12.wa.us or 360-725-6437.
Distance learning has given us all a chance to experience and reflect on different forms in which learning can take place. We are excited that this time has given us chance to re-imagine virtual professional development. We hope that this new format will be more accessible to educators especially during this time of limited travel.
Modeling Our World With Mathematics
2020-21 Summer Institute
We still have room in our Self-paced virtual summer institute session!
The Modeling Our World With Mathematics (MOWWM) Summer Institute is a free training designed to provide teachers with the familiarity and support to implement the full course and its accompanying assessments in the 2020-21 school year. New modules and updated MOWWM materials will be released at the Summer Institute.
Who: Any teacher who will be an instructor for the Modeling Our World With Mathematics course
Where: Virtual
When: Opens August 26, completed by September 30
Register:
New Teacher Registration
Returning Teacher Registration
For more information contact OSPI K-12 Mathematics Specialist, Jennifer Cronquist at jennifer.cronquist@k12.wa.us or 360-725-6429.
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