To assist teachers with continuing this upward trend of math achievement for all students, a variety of resources are available on the VDOE website. District-level trainers for mathematics will find a host of professional development resources and prepared presentations on the Mathematics SOL Institutes webpage.
There is good news to report: the achievement gap between typical students and subgroups such as students with disabilities is closing! Michael Bolling, K-12 Mathematics Coordinator at the Virginia Department of Education, has analyzed student performance on Mathematics SOL tests and prepared several graphs (broken link)that represent a trend toward closing the achievement gap that exists between subgroups and across grade levels, beginning in 2002 through 2010. As noted by Michael, the graphs illustrate both an upward trend in math achievement across the grade levels and the narrowing achievement gap for subgroups such as Students with Disabilities.
To assist teachers with continuing this upward trend of math achievement for all students, a variety of resources are available on the VDOE website. For example, to examine how concepts such as counting and place value, or estimation, are addressed at various grade levels you may want to review the vertical articulation documents. If students are not yet achieving at grade level, this document can help identify earlier skills and concepts for students to master. Also, Mathematics Enhanced Scope and Sequence (ESS) Sample Lesson Plans are available for teachers to access by using a keyword search, or by selecting specific SOL objectives by grade level.
Consider reviewing the instructional videos that are provided as support to teachers for the implementation of the 2009 Mathematics Standards of Learning (SOL). Included are videos that address the following topics: Strategies Across the Strands, Number and Number Sense, Computation and Estimation, Measurement, Geometry, Probability and Statistics, and Patterns Functions and Algebra. Demonstrations provided in the short videos offer great ideas for teaching students by using concrete materials and representations of mathematical concepts that will promote greater understanding.
District-level trainers for mathematics will find a host of professional development resources and prepared presentations on the Mathematics SOL Institutes webpage. The resources are focused on facilitating students’ mathematical understanding through problem solving, communication and reasoning.
