Your interview snippets demonstrate teachers' engagement. Do you have examples of elementary grades modeling tasks that are particularly exciting for students? 

As a school administrator, I know how challenging it can be to involve local school districts in research projects. I am delighted to see that you have not only been able to be in multiple states but also work with 3 different districts as a result of that. Do you have any suggestions for teachers and researchers who are interested in creating such partnerships?

I'm curious to know if you're working with specific curricular materials (like Investigations, Everyday Math, etc.), or is the program independent of specific curricular materials. I'm also curious about the structure of the professional development.

Are there results about the success in student learning, critical thinking skill development, changes in teamwork, collaboration as the process is implemented by the teachers? While the students are "making connections" and "loving the work," is the project limited to the teacher preparation?  

HI Jennie, 

From our teacher case studies, we have teachers who have reported how Math Modeling tasks in the elementary classroom elicited the 21st century skills of Critical Thinking, Creativity, Communication and Collaboration. 

For example, in one of their MM projects, students were designing their "Best" family trip and creating a math model to describe the cost, and time for each of the trips. Below is one of the excerpt: 

Critiquing and defending their “best” trip- One of the most important stages of math modeling is the evaluation stage where students critique their model. This was a perfect opportunity to have students share their mathematics solution and get feedback. In defending their best trip, students had an opportunity to offer their rationale for why their trip was the best. Some cited that their trip was the best because it was the most economical and fun, the closest and fun, and the most entertaining for all age groups. These criterion led to a great discussion about using ranking model as a way to determine the best under different circumstance.

Another example where MM elicited Creativity was in our "School Store MM task". Below is another excerpt from our teacher's case report-

For the problem of “How to handle dead stock”, we also observed creativity and innovation in mathematics as students pondered different ideas for dealing with their dead stock dilemma. As mentioned above, the dead stock problem was an issue identified by the students. Students came up with a variety of ideas including a price drop, a buy-one-get-one free (BOGO), and a give-away-with- purchase plan. As discussed above, they presented their proposals to each other by graphically representing their predicted sales. After listening to and evaluating each others’ mathematical reasoning, students selected the BOGO option. By discovering fresh insights and communicating them to others in this process, students had the opportunity to understand that mathematics is a creative endeavor that builds on previous knowledge.

Thanks for your question and I hope this helps give you a flavor of the successes in student learning! 

 Has the project come to an end? How are you thinking about sustaining the work?

Hi Ben,

It's a lot of fun responding to these questions :-) We are in the last year of our project. (YEAR 3). We would definitely like to explore ways to continue this work. A natural way we have planned to sustain this work was by engaging district leaders and teacher leaders as our co-designers and co instructors. We have also selected school teams to participate so that we can build a collective cohort of teachers who can sustain and multiply our efforts within the district. One exciting trend has been to see how some of our year 1 participants have become our teacher leaders and lesson study facilitators for year two's cohort. Our district leaders are definitely "All In". Some of them see Mathematical Modeling as a wonderful content focused PBL approach which many districts are encouraging. They are seeing how MM is promoting the 21st century skills while adding rigor to the mathematics curriculum.  We hope that we can sustain the work with these talented teacher designers and supportive district leaders!

Awesome. Thanks!

I LOVE your project's focus on mathematical modeling in the elementary grades. Modeling is such an important part of problem solving in mathematics, and teachers are often not very familiar with how to teach it. In our professional development work as part of the Math for All project (see our page at http://stemforall2017.videohall.com/presentations/1011) we are working with elementary school teachers to help them make high-quality mathematics instruction accessible to all learners, including those with disabilities. Modeling is a strategy that often helps to open up the mathematical content of a task and provides multiple entry points for students with diverse strengths and needs. One aspect of the modeling process that can be particularly challenging for students is explaining or justifying their processes.  Can you share particular strategies for supporting students with this that you and your teachers have found promising in your work? Thanks in advance for sharing!

Rachel, the impact on elementary students' long term learning would be an interesting follow-on as you mentioned. Are there other content areas where this PD and the results might be relevant?

Important work. I think mathematical modeling means different things to different teachers, especially at the various grade bands. Teachers at all grade levels, but in particular at the elementary grades need to better understand what mathematical modeling looks like and how instruction can promote and support students' engagement in it. In your work, how do you define mathematical modeling for your teacher participants and are there particular frameworks you use with your teachers and/or instructional strategies you provide to support their implementation?