This year, Middle School Mathematics Institute (MSMI) is offering MSMI 2012: Institute on Fractions, June 11-15, 2012 at Eagle Ridge Academy in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.
The week long course is designed to help educators to develop fractions in their classroom in a coherent, sequential, and precise manner that builds both the conceptual understanding and the procedural fluency students need to understand and master this mathematics, enabling their students to achieve a solid foundation for Algebra 1.
Teachers will learn how to help their students increase the depth of knowledge by providing the scaffolding needed for abstract mathematical reasoning. Teachers will develop a better understanding of how they math they teach relates to the math taught prior to and beyond their classroom. Institutes are not geared toward any specific textbook or pedagogy, but provide deeper content knowledge immediately applicable to any classroom.
Why fractions and rational numbers? MSMI concentrates on fractions and rational numbers following the National Mathematics Advisory Panel's recommendations on "Critical Foundations for Algebra". Fractions are the first abstractions in school mathematics. Fractions prepare students because they depend on precise definitions in order to be well defined. Fractions are handled best by thinking symbolically, not by analogies. Learning to work with fractions helps students because if they can handle these elements for fractions, they can handle them in algebra.The main textbook for these sessions is H. Wu's Understanding Numbers in Elementary School Mathematics. For more information including syllabi, please see the individual pages for these institutes.
MSMI 2012 is a 5 day institute, from 9 to 4 pm, June 11-15, 2012, held at Eagle Ridge Academy in Eden Prairie. Registration is $200. Teachers receive 30 clock hours for attendance at the summer session. Click here to register.
The instructor for this institute is Allison Coates. Ms. Coates holds an S.B. in Mathematics from MIT and an M.S. in Computer Science from University of California, Berkeley. She organized and taught MSMI 2011 and co-taught MSMI 2010 with Professor Emeritus Hung-Hsi Wu, UC Berkeley, and she taught numerous institutes and workshops covering math content in grades K-8.
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