Project Director:
Jeff Brown
Phone Number:
(559) 970-5735
The Central Valley Math Project is part of the Second Cohort of the
California Math and Science Partnerships grant program. The partnership
consists of Sanger Unified School District, Kings Canyon Unified School
District, the San Joaquin Valley Math Project, Educational Resource
Consultants, and California State University, Fresno. The overall goal of
the project is to produce gains in student achievement by increasing teacher
content knowledge in mathematics.
CVMP is part of a federal research project that requires a minimum of 80
hours of intensive professional development with at least 24 hours of follow-
up. A week-long Summer Institute was held during the week of August 1-5,
2005 at Fresno State University. Twenty hours of mathematics content
instruction was provided by Fresno State professors and 20 hours of
instruction in lesson study was provided by facilitators from the San
Joaquin Valley Mathematics Project. The lesson study curriculum, LessonLab,
came from the California Mathematics Project. CVMP was the first large
group to go through the course in California and will be sharing some of the
experience at conferences in the future. Five Saturday sessions (the last
one held on November 5, 2005) completed the 80 hours of intensive
professional development.
During the lesson study component, each group develops a lesson that is
taught by one of the members, while the rest observe. The group then
reflects on the lesson and revises it, if necessary. The lesson is then
taught again by another member. Through this process a well-crafted lesson
is developed that may be used again and again. There are two lessons
developed each year.
The second summer institute was held July 24-28, 2006. The main emphasis
for the summer was on problem solving and applications. The 5th and 6th
grade teachers were at Fresno Pacific University and the middle and high
school sessions were held at Fresno State. We had a visit from PublicWorks,
the state-wide evaluator for all the Math/Science Partnerships. Also
visiting was Kay Garcia, our program monitor from the California Department
of Education.
The third summer institute was held July 23-27, 2007. Elementary teachers
were again located at Fresno Pacific University and secondary teachers at
Fresno State. Proportional reasoning and problem solving were the main
topics discussed.
Our fourth and last summer institute for this first phase of the project was
held July 21-25, 2008 at Fresno State University. A highlight was teaching
some of our lesson studies in a "public lesson" format. Some migrant
students from Monterey County who were going through a month-long program at
Fresno State served as our "students" and we were able to showcase some of
our lessons that had been developed over the past three years.
We are currently in the first year of the second phase of the project - a
federal research project. Details are on the "Announcements" page.
For more details and/or information about the project, please contact the
director, Jeff Brown, at the number above.
