NJ Association of Math Supervisors and Leaders (NJAMSL)

Organization Info

Region
Eastern US 2

Website
sites.google.com/site/njmathsupervisors/

As a member of NJ Association of Math Supervisors and Leaders (NJASML), you will be kept on the cutting-edge of state and national issues confronting math education.

• Through newsletters, conferences, and mailings, NJASML provides opportunities to exchange ideas with colleagues and to affect the changes needed to improve math education in NJ.
• NJASML is an organization for leaders in mathematics education – leaders by either position or by interest and influence.

Mission Statement:

NJ Association of Mathematics Supervisors and Leaders will disseminate to supervisors and leaders information, research and policy to guide effective instruction practices in K-12 mathematics classroom.

We know that high quality Standards are necessary for effective teaching and learning but insufficient as Standards do not describe or prescribe the essential conditions required to make sure mathematics works for all students.

We are guided by the facts that:

1. Effective teachers of mathematics respond to most student answers with “why?”, “how do you know that?”, or “can you explain your thinking?”                           
2. Effective teachers of mathematics elicit, value, and celebrate alternative approaches to solving mathematics problems so that students are taught that mathematics is a sense-making process for understanding why and not memorizing the right procedure to get the one right answer.                                               
3. Effective teachers of mathematics provide multiple representations – for example, models, diagrams, number lines, tables and graphs, as well as symbols – of all mathematical work to support the visualization of skills and concepts.
4. Effective teachers of mathematics take every opportunity to develop number sense by asking for, and justifying, estimates, mental calculations and equivalent forms of numbers.
5. Effective teachers of mathematics embed the mathematical content they are teaching in contexts to connect the mathematics to the real world.
6. Effective teachers of mathematics devote the last five minutes of every lesson to some form of formative assessments, for example, an exit slip, to assess the degree to which the lesson’s objective was accomplished.