The Elements of our PD Model Can be Customized to Meet the Needs of Large and Small Programs
We share information on math teaching and learning via concrete research-based activities teachers can immediately use and adapt
The gains are sustained by training local coaches in how to mentor early childhood teachers
This impacts children’s success far into the future
Online PD for Teachers
Job Embedded Teacher Learning
What is the online component?
The Kids Play Math online training component provides you with classroom-ready tools that effectively and easily integrate early math learning into your preschool or Kindergarten classroom.
The approach is simple. The online training has four sections that cover: the learning trajectory of counting, representation of numbers, addition and subtraction, and geometry.
Short videos (approx 30 minutes per lesson) explain the main concepts of early math teaching and learning and classroom-ready tools that effectively and easily integrate math into your classroom.
Most of the activities are job embedded, designed to be completed in the regular school day. Over 90% of teachers who start the course, complete it.
The cost of the PD is $295 per teachers.
What do you receive?
- Short videos with the most important facts about early math learning
- Videos and animations of classroom activities that you can use immediately
- Discussion forums for peer-to- peer learning and sharing activities
- All of the suggested assignments are for your classroom!
- A workbook with all the content
- 3 CEU’s from the University of Denver
Take this professional development opportunity if
- You are teaching staff (teacher, assistant, mentor, coach, coordinator or home provider)
- You want more fun math activities to integrate into your daily routine
- You want more fun math activities to integrate into your daily routine
- You want to enhance instructional support in mat
- You like being able to apply what you learn immediately to your classroom
- You want to know more about developmentally appropriate and individualized math instruction
“Thank you for all your assistance. I look forward in observing what the staff learned implemented in the classrooms. I know that the course really helped me--most early math courses are not as detailed and specific as yours was. I very much enjoyed it and I feel I am more prepared to offer assistance to staff in this area.“
“Taking the course allowed me to gain insights, strategies, methodologies, and approaches to math that I never used before. This course was for me a school that taught me math teaching on the kindergarten and first grade levels.”
“I truly enjoyed the course. It was well organized, simple, and provided many hand-on opportunities and valuable resources. I am sharing many of the activities with the teachers, specialists and family childcare providers that I currently coach.”
Early Math Coaching
Why Early Math Coaching?
Content-based coaching is extremely important for improving instruction (research says this and so does our experience).
This is a two-day face-to-face workshop that takes place after the coaches take the online PD.
In the workshop coaches learn what instructional support looks like in math, and gain valuable skills in observing math lessons, analyzing lesson plans, and supporting teachers.
Coaches are also trained to provide the one day face-to-face Instructional Support training to their teachers.
The cost of the Early Math Coaching Certification is $1,700 per coach.
What do you receive?
- An online training course in Early Mathematics prior to attending the workshop
- Coaching materials, math activities for teachers and methods for supporting ongoing improvement
- Feedback and discussion with Kids Play Math staff and other coaches
- A Coaching wrkbook and a Online PD workbook
“I observed a teacher individualizing math for the children in her classroom. They were using dice dots during a transition. The first few children rolled one die and counted the dots. When it was a more advanced student’s turn to roll the teacher said, “Let’s use two dice.” The child counted the dots on both dice separately. The teacher asked her to count them all together, which she did with assistance.”
“The formative assessments were extremely useful as intervention activities and I used them to collect data and see the students’ progress on some skills, especially for counting and numeracy.”
“I’ve found it helpful in terms of advancing their [teachers’] instruction to the ‘next level’ and coaching them into the kinds of concept development that we want to use. It’s also been helpful in giving them concrete examples of how to expand quality of feedback.”
Instructional Support
Concept Development, Quality of Feedback and Mathematical Language (EMILI)
What is the EMILI?
The EMILI (Early Mathematics Instruction and Learning Instrument) is an instrument designed by Kids Play Math to support teachers to design, implement and improve instructional support in concept development, quality of feedback, mathematical language and instructional learning environments for mathematics. It is fully integrated with the Kids Play Math online course.
What is the EMILI Training?
It is a one-day, hands-on, highly interactive face-to-face training designed to help teachers internalize and implement their learning from the course.
Teachers bring some of the math lesson they have implemented, and then the lessons are analysed in groups from the lense of the EMILI instrument. We also use the principle that all lessons can get better, no matter how good they already are. The categories of Concept Development, Quality of Feedback, and Mathematical Language provide the path of improvement.
The training can be delivered by Certified Coaches or by Kids Play Math staff. If the training is done by Coaches, it can be done in 2 to 4 days. The training should takes place when teachers have completed at least two of the online lessons.
The cost of the training for programs with Certified Coaches is only the cost of materials, about $20 per teacher
Increase Understaning of Instructional Support
Our Instrument (EMILI) is aligned with the Instructional Support categories of the CLASS instrument that is used by Head Start Programs. The main difference is that our instrument is based on math content, which we believe helps teachers' understanding. It is the same priciple that supports content based coaching.
Head Start teachers score very high in Classrrom Organization and Emotional Support, but they continue to score low in Instructional Support despite several intitiatives to increase it.
Teachers consistently tell us that their understanding of Instructional Support increases with our course, and we have verified this in small studies
“The EMILI instrument helps them teachers organize their thinking and make more sense of how it all works in the classroom”
“Teachers and coordinators have used the EMILI to develop lesson plans in early math for the daily routine of the classroom”
“Having the EMILI instrument is useful in providing feedback after CLASS observations. It helps to show how teachers can take their instruction to the next level.”
For Questions
Please send an email to Alvaro Arias
aarias@du.edu
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