Graduate Certificate in Mathematics 5-8

To foster high levels of learning and achievement in math, teachers must first have a deep understanding of mathematical concepts and know how best to teach them. In this course,  teachers of K—8 mathematics are introduced to exciting ideas and practices to address their own learning and teaching of mathematics. Authentic and engaging mathematics experiences, including modeling, representing mathematical ideas in multiple ways, and identifying and addressing student misconceptions, are emphasized. Educators engage in effective practices for fostering students' ability to reason, analyze conceptual relationships, and persist in solving challenging problems. Connections across mathematics topics, skills, and levels as well as educational policies that impact the learning and teaching of mathematics are emphasized in this course. The Common Core State Standards for Mathematics, including the Standards for Mathematical Practice, and the National Council for Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) practices are frameworks for addressing fundamental principles and skills.

Understanding rational numbers is the foundation for understanding other critical mathematic concepts and their application to everyday life. In this course, middle-level mathematics teachers explore exciting ideas to help students determine appropriate operations for solving problems and becoming more proficient in working with factors, multiples, fractions, decimals, percents, and negative numbers. Teachers develop problem-based activities to engage students in using common algorithms and other mathematical reasoning and sense-making strategies for adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing rational numbers. Strategies for estimation and using the number line to represent and solve problems are also provided in this course.

Understanding the relationship among geometry and measurement and solving problems using day-to-day real life experiences can motivate and guide students' thinking and reasoning around these concepts. In this course, middle mathematics teachers learn strategies to connect geometric thinking and measurement to other topics and develop their own conceptual understanding of geometry and measurement by learning what it means to estimate and measure attributes of objects and how to develop fundamental measurement concepts and skills. In this course educators are challenged and supported as they engage in opportunities to foster students' mathematical processes, proficiencies, and habits of mind around the concepts of shape, spatial relationships, and measurement, including estimation.

Algebra builds on a strong understanding of arithmetic and its properties in the real number system. Middle mathematics teachers have opportunities to move beyond the traditional teaching of algebra to the idea of algebraic thinking as an important component of all mathematics and everyday life. The use of tools, such as manipulative materials, calculators, and other emerging technological resources, provides educational professionals with concrete examples of how to incorporate the Common Core Standards for Mathematical Practice into their teaching. The goal of this course is to deepen educators' understandings of the role algebra plays in problem-solving and decision making so that they can apply this knowledge to support their students in developing similar knowledge and understandings. Educators explore a range of topics, including reasoning and sense-making; various types of functions; multiple uses of variables; pattern recognition; mathematical modeling; estimation; and the development of linear functions from rates, ratios, and proportional reasoning.

Understanding data, probability, and statistics is critical to making sense of the vast amounts of information available in today's world. Educators taking this course have authentic contexts for collecting, representing, and interpreting data, and they reinforce essential number concepts in promoting students' ability to think statistically. Middle mathematics teachers focus on using data as a context for developing a variety of mathematical topics and as an important step toward understanding statistical ideas and processes. The goal of this course is to develop educators' understanding and pedagogical practices so that they can promote their students' ability to use data, probability, and statistics to better understand real-world issues and to solve a wide range of relevant and engaging problems in many contexts.