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A Year in the Life of an AP Vertical Team for Mathematics, Part II
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by Dixie , Ross
Teacher
Pflugerville High School
Pflugerville, Texas
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| | This is the second in a series of articles regarding vertical teaming in mathematics in my school district. In this installment, I will share the results of and reactions to our first three meetings as well as the plans that we have for meetings five and six.
First Meeting
Our first meeting was in a large auditorium with teachers from four different subject areas (English, social studies, mathematics, and science) and from schools across our district. Results from the first year of our project were presented, which showed some impressive gains in terms of student participation and success in AP classes and exams. The lead teachers were given some time to talk to the teachers in their own subject areas, but it was difficult because it was a large space and our teachers were scattered throughout the auditorium. Nonetheless, paperwork and contracts were distributed and completed, so the main objectives of the first meeting had been accomplished.
Second Meeting
For the second meeting, the math teachers met in my classroom and sat in small groups according to the level of mathematics that they teach. Each group received a worksheet based on an AP Calculus free-response question from the 2003 examination. (See related article "Adapting AP Questions as a Pre-AP Strategy," below.) They were asked to work through the questions and to discuss using those or similar questions in their own classrooms. One of the frustrations in the previous year of our project was that the middle school teachers felt as though the vertical team meetings were directed more at the high school level and that there wasn't anything for them to take back directly to their classrooms. By having them sit in groups and examine problems geared to their level, we seem to have alleviated this issue greatly. As each small group reported back to the larger group, the consensus was that the adapted problems could be effectively used at all levels and would lead to a greater student understanding of analysis of functions. One of the high school teachers expressed a concern in finding similar problems that would go beyond the textbook and would challenge students to deepen their understanding of topics, rather than just repeat a process they had seen demonstrated. I was able to provide her with a partial solution in the form of a sample text that I had on the shelf. She created the rest of her solution by giving the worksheet from our meeting to her students and asking them to write their own versions using a piece-wise function that they had created. I hope that by the fifth year of our project, teachers will feel comfortable in writing their own adapted versions of AP questions for use in their classrooms.
Third Meeting
Assessment was the topic of our third meeting. We again had the teachers sitting in small groups, examining an assessment particular to their level. The assessments were designed to be AP-style in that they made use of multiple representations (verbal, graphical, numerical, and analytical) and asked students to "justify, show, explain why or why not, or interpret." Although there was concern about the length of some of the assessments, teachers agreed that the level of questioning was appropriate. Many of the teachers, particularly at the middle school levels, are already including assessment items of these types, and some of the teachers discussed sources of challenging questions or performance task type of assessments.
Fourth Meeting Plan
For the next meeting, we asked teachers to bring in one AP-style assessment item to share with their group. It can be an item that they have found somewhere or one that they have created. I fear that the intervening holidays and end-of-semester grade reports will cause many teachers to forget the assignment. I will send out a reminder, though, and hope that we get some interesting items. In addition to sharing these items, our next meeting will focus on the AP Statistics topics of simulations and randomness. Since registration for next year's classes will begin soon, we are eager to remind everyone about the existence of AP Statistics, a course that is relatively new in our district.
Fifth Meeting Plan
As we move away from our old selective "honors math" system to the new, more inclusive Pre-AP program, we are necessarily including more students whose math background and work habits are not as strong as some of the teachers would like. Therefore, the topic of our fifth meeting will be "Building a Supportive Pre-AP Math Program." We will solicit effective instructional, assessment, and grading strategies from both teachers and students to share at the meeting. We will also discuss methods to enlist the support of parents and ways to motivate students to take advantage of the support structures that we currently provide (such as re-testing, correcting quizzes, additional tutoring, etc.).
Sixth Meeting Plan
Our sixth meeting of the year will focus on the topic of limits. We will look at how we can introduce the topic using hands-on activities at the middle school level and then formalize students' understanding as they progress through subsequent grades. This idea of a conceptual strand woven throughout the students' mathematical experiences will become the template for many of our future meetings.
My experiences in vertical teaming in mathematics have taught me that you have to have a very specific plan in mind when you bring teachers together. Just giving them the time and space to meet will not be effective or lead to desired outcomes. So far, the plans that we made for this year seem to be working out well, though there are always opportunities for improvement. I have appreciated those teachers who have given me honest feedback about what we are doing and I have tried to address their concerns and incorporate their suggestions in future meetings. Although planning is obviously important, flexibility has its place as well. In the next installment in this series of articles, I will report on the results of meetings four and five and will share our plans for meeting seven, the final meeting of the year.
Dixie Ross has over 17 years of teaching experience in all levels of mathematics from remedial to AP Calculus BC. She began as a mathematics teacher at Taylor High School in Taylor, Texas. She started the AP program there in 1989 and began working as a College Board consultant and workshop leader in 1994. She served on the Development Committees for the Math Vertical Teams Toolkit, the Setting the Cornerstones workshop, and the new Building Success in Mathematics workshop, and has also served as an Exam Reader. In 1999, she began teaching at Round Rock High School, where she is currently teaching AP Calculus (AB and BC) and pre-calculus.
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