Reasoning Relay Race with Michael Serra

Grades 5-8

In this double block session, teachers and their students will work together as a team in a relay race that involves logical reasoning and athletic abilities.  Teachers without students are welcomed to pair up and work as a team too.

During the first session students and teachers will be introduced to a number of sequential reasoning puzzles. Participants will work in small cooperative groups to solve these puzzles.

Teams will be formed in the second session and participants will compete in a "Reasoning Relay Race." Team members will be given their first puzzle to solve.  When they have solved the puzzle one member of the team will race to their goal post 2 to turn in their puzzle solution and return with their second puzzle.  When they have solved the second puzzle a different runner from the team will race to the goal post to turn in the second puzzle solution and pick up and return with the third puzzle.  The race continues in this way until all the puzzles have been solved. Teams will score points based on values earned for correct answers less the time needed to solve them.  Each puzzle set will include a "novice" puzzle worth fewer points and an "expert" puzzle worth many more points.

The puzzles may include the following types:

Rook's Tour Puzzles

Queen's Tour Puzzles

Knight's Tour Puzzles

Magic Square Puzzles

Sliding Block Puzzles

Polyomino Sudoku Puzzles

KenKen Puzzles

For more information on Michael Serra go to www.michaelserra.net.

(Teacher-Student Session)

Shadow Geometry with Beth Motoki

Grades K-2

Shadow Geometrywill have students exploring basic quadrilaterals (ie., squares, rectangles, rhombi, and parallelograms) with the focus being on squares. By the end of the session the students will be able to articulate the properties of a square in their own words and compare it to other quadrilaterals. Teachers will be able to document student conceptual development (and realize themselves why a square really is a rectangle and a rhombus, but not the other way around, and all of them are parallelograms).  (Teacher-Student Session)
  

Singapore Math with Laura Fukumoto and Saundra Takara

Grades 1-8

Our session will address teachers, preferably from grades K- 8th with a focus on Model Drawing, a very powerful Singapore Math  problem-solving strategy that focuses on visualizing math concepts and on thinking skills.  Students are able to solve difficult math problems without the use of algebra but with the use of algebraic thinking and model drawing. Teachers who spend the time to learn this strategy increase their knowledge of mathematics and become keener thinkers. (Teacher Session)

Baxter Brown's Messy Room with Beth Motoki 

grades K-2

Baxter Brown's Messy Room helps students deal with data, and has them develop graphical representations of the information given in a story.  As we work from kindergarten up to 2nd grade, the students will become more sophisticated with the graphs and ways of interpreting them, will be able to critique the methods of graphical construction, and will explore the world of "predicting from data." As in the other session, formative assessment techniques are built in, and teachers will be able to document students' conceptual development.  (Teacher-Student session)

Singapore Math Olelo Hawai`i with Jason Franks, Pele Harmon, Alohilani Rogers, Meahilahila Kelling, Leilani Franco, Pualani Erhorn

Grades 1-8

This presentation will include the work the group has done over the past year involving translating the Singapore Math Curriculum into the Hawaiian Language, an introduction to the curriculum and why the schools chose it, different models of implementation from the 5 different immersion Hawaiian-focused Charter Schools, a demonstration of how model drawing is scaffolded through the different grade levels and how the common core standards align with the curriculum.  There will also be some time for Q & A to follow.  (Teacher/Administrator session)

Conference Schedule

8:00-8:30 Registration Check-in and Breakfast

8:30-10:00 Session 1

10:15-11:45 Session 2