In this changing world, those who understand and can do mathematics will have significantly enhanced opportunities and options for shaping their futures.  Mathematical competence opens doors to productive futures.  A lack of mathematical competence keeps those doors closed.   —NCTM

Teachers who teach for understanding must find ways to engage students actively in their mathematics learning.  To do this, teachers need to break out of the “2 by 4 mold” – the 2 covers of the textbook and the 4 walls of the classroom – and make math real-life, meaningful, and relevant to their students’ lives. 

Unfortunately for students, most teachers have had extremely limited opportunities to study the mathematics they actually have to teach.  Their knowledge, in a large part, is based on their own early schooling, which typically focused on computation skills, not understanding.  The math that would be beneficial to study hasn’t been readily available and accessible to most teachers.  —Marilyn Burns, Math Solutions

It is only by relating new knowledge to something the child already knows and to something that has relevance in their everyday life that we can build on the simplest mathematical ideas and extend them to develop meaningful complex mathematical ideas.

The brain is designed to perceive and generate patterns, organize and connect information.  Isolated skills and concepts unrelated to each other or anything else in the learner’s world translates into meaningless surface knowledge rather than useful long-term transferable knowledge.  Developing a solid mathematical foundation is essential for every child.  While in our classrooms, students are building beliefs about what “mathematics” is, about what it means to “know” and “do” mathematics, and about themselves as mathematics learners.

In order for children to learn mathematics in ways that make sense to them, they must be actively engaged in making sense of mathematics!  —NCTM 2000 

In this seminar/workshop:

• Educators will deepen their math knowledge and learn strategies and ideas to teach math effectively in ways that excite and motivate the wide range of student abilities and interests by making math relevant and purposeful to the students' lives.  
  
   
• Educators will see the ease of linking math to all subject areas, themes, and the real-world through the use of children’s literature, manipulatives (pentominoes, tangrams, pattern block, coins, etc.) and real-life tools (glyphs, graphs, menus, stamps, maps, sport events, etc.).
  
   
• Educators will be equipped to use the newly released NCTM curriculum focal points scaffolding approach to deepen their students’ math understanding, eliminating the “mile long, inch deep” approach and making mathematics rich, deep, and appropriate for every student. 
  
   
• Participants will be able to apply the knowledge, ideas and strategies gleaned to help students make sense of mathematics, see math in their everyday life, and apply it as a valuable tool for reasoning and problem solving.