Aggie Azzolino - mathnstuff.com
asquared@mathnstuff.com
Teaching with Trig Tricks

Take notes with Alt+Print Screen and a paint program. Make 30°-45°-60° functions easy. Think "Oscar Had A Heap Of Apples." Use connect-the-dots to complete simple computations. Make radian measure easy. Consider reference angles and "Veronica's Bow Tie." See the Unit circle move. "Derive" quadrantals and trig graphs with SketchPad. Graph all 6 functions w/special trig graph paper. "Prove" the Pythagorean identities with the Unit circle. Curve shift with Excel. Review with Windows Explorer.

Angelique Bender – Lenape Valley Regional High School
abender@lvhs.org
Using Pasta to Explore Theorems in Geometry and Trigonometry

A hands-on experience with the converse of the Pythagorean Theorem, The Triangle Inequality Theorem and The Ambiguous Case for the Law of Sines

Eric Berkowitz – Parsippany Hills High School
eberkowitz@pthsd.k12.nj.us
A Picture is Worth 1000 Proofs

Proofs can be confusing, and so can algebraic identities that are not intuitive. Why not show it in pictures? Geometric figures can be used to prove many well-known algebraic and trigonometric identities, and students see them easily.

Sabrina Bernath - The Frisch School, Paramus
sabrina.bernath@frisch.org
The Use of Technology for Differentiated Instruction and Assessment in Algebra 1 and Algebra 2

This session focuses on math specific apps and software that can assist Algebra 1 and Algebra 2 teachers in reaching all types of learners in their classroom. Ideal for teachers of schools with 1-1 iPad programs. Participants attending this session are encouraged to bring their own device (even a phone with a QR reader is sufficient) to maximize their engagement at the session. As the session's "students" you will experience four or five different modes of blended learning instruction and real time assessment while seeing the corresponding data-rich teacher dashboard. Are you tired of technology talks that do not offer concrete ideas for implementation? The goal of this session is that you leave with ideas that can be used in your classroom immediately.

Keith Bosler - Red Bank Catholic High School
boslerk@redbankcatholic.com
Enhancing the Teaching of Transformations with a Numerical Approach

One of the more abstract concepts for students in the beginning of pre-calculus is the seemingly intuitive method that many textbooks use to present transformations of functions. Such “intuitive methods” can be difficult for students who already struggle with both reading and producing graphs; however, coupling this “intuitive” idea with a more concrete, numerical approach may lead to a better understanding of the transformation process. This method will also allow students to make an easier transition to producing graphs of other functions learned in a pre-calculus course. This method will also give students great exposure to working with functions represented as tables, which is a necessary skill for success in AP Calculus.

Kathleen Carter - North Hunterdon High School
kcarter@nhvweb.net
Discovering the Unit Circle – What is a Radian Anyway?

With the implementation of the Common Core State Standards and the upcoming PARCC assessments, students shouldn’t have to wait until they get to precalculus to learn about the unit circle. Come learn exciting ways to discover the unit circle with you students in algebra 2 and geometry classes. Participants will also discuss 'what is a radian?' and learn how to help students understand the concept of radian measure on the unit circle.

Ihor Charischak – CLIME - Council for Technology in Math Education - an affiliate of NCTM
ihor12@me.com
Anatomy of a Dynamic Math 2.0 Classroom

The Internet, cloud computing and portable devices are making inroads into the classroom. What does a Web 2.0 based classroom involving dynamic math software that produces active learning look like? Examples of collaborative, math 2.0 activities will be shared.

Ken Collins - Charlotte (NC) Latin School
kcollins@charlottelatin.org
Precalculus Explorations that Help Students Understand Limits

This session will illustrate precalculus calculator activities that are effective preparation for developing student understanding of limits. Participants will receive a reproducible copy of these tested classroom activities. We will discuss how to integrate these investigations into the precalculus curriculum.

Neil Cooperman – Millburn High School:
NCoop@att.net
Challenging Precalculus Alternative Assessments Using the Free Online Desmos Calculator

This session is designed to introduce two major Precalculus Projects designed to help your mathematics students transform the way that they learn and understand what they are learning. This is not about better ways to "efficiently" answer questions. This is about challenging your students to create their own mathematical images and artwork with the subtext of requiring them to be able to explain their creations verbally and in writing. Unless your students can demonstrate their understanding of the mathematics in five ways (Numerically, Algebraically, Graphically, Verbally, and in Writing) they don't really "own" the knowledge. There is a "huge" difference between "Doing" mathematics and "Understanding" mathematics. Come learn how to make that happen. If possible, bring your laptop to begin to experience this yourself.

Fred Decovsky - Consultant, Teachers Teaching with Technology, Millburn
fdecovsky@aol.com
Common Core Based Investigations in Geometry

Implementing the mathematical practices is crucial to improving the learning of our students. In this session participants will explore several hands-on activities designed for students that allow them to investigate the Common Core State Standards for Mathematics and the Mathematical Practices related to geometry. See how these explorations and the use of handheld technology make the mathematical practices come alive in the classroom and engage students in tasks rich in problem solving.

Angelo DeMattia - Kean University
angelomdemattia@gmail.com
Maximizing the Volume of a Right Circular Cone

Would you really want the biggest ice cream waffle cone? This session will have participants construct cones from a paper disk and develop a formula for finding the maximum volume of a cone. If there is time, an additional physical model related to the volume of a square pyramid will be presented. Bring a graphing calculator!

Iftikhar Husain - University High School, Newark
husains4ever@gmail.com
Preparing for PARCC with Technology

Infusing meaningful technology to prepare students of all grades for PARCC where reasoning and sense-making are presented using practice questions.

John Kerrigan - Middletown Township Public Schools and Rutgers University
johnkerr@rci.rutgers.edu
Alice Seneres - Rutgers University
seneres@rci.rutgers.edu
Using Dynamic Software to Prepare AP Students for College Calculus

Students often enter first- and second-semester college calculus courses with certain deficiencies that prevent them from fully mastering major concepts, including the definition of derivative and the hypotheses and conclusions of important theorems. Participants will examine several such stumbling blocks and learn how to effectively use virtual technologies, such as Desmos and Geometer’s Sketchpad, to improve questioning and learning in the AP classroom. By dissecting released open-ended questions, multiple choice questions, and textbook explorations, participants will discover ways to spiral their instruction all year long to ensure success both on the AP exam and in college calculus.

Joyce Leslie - Columbia High School, Maplewood/South Orange
joyce.leslie@gmail.com
The Transformation of Supplementary Math as a Result of Shifting to PARCC

Theshift from State NCLB tests to Common Core PARCC assessments is forcing NJ schools to modify math curricula.  The changes to the supplementary algebra 2 class at Columbia HS in the South Orange/Maplewood school district are transformative.  The previous math exams in NJ (NJ ASK and HSPA) covered algebra, geometry, number sense, probability and statistics.  The HSPA class focused on helping students to use a wide variety of strategies to write solutions to "Open Ended" problems that were graded by teachers.  As such, students who struggled with formal algebra were able to use less formal strategies (tables, charts, graphs, etc) to find solutions and justify them.  The new tests are subject-specific, require students to demonstrate facility with formal algebra, and the answers must be typed on a computer.   The new tests require students to provide answers in a form that the computer-based grading software expects.    I will discuss a new curriculum for Supplementary Algebra 2 that:  is designed to help students to bridge the gap between their idiosyncratic solutions and the required/formal algebra solutions; and also attempts to address the knowledge gap in the use of math software interfaces.   I will share my experiences implementing this new curriculum and some of the impacts on my students.

Patrick Letourneau - North Hunterdon High School
pletourneau@nhvweb.net
Flipping Your Classroom

For teachers who are looking to find new, creative, unique ways to present material to students in order to appeal to specific needs of different learners. The workshop will be broken into 4 parts: (1) an introduction of what flipped lessons and flipped classrooms are, including their purpose, function, advantages, and disadvantages; (2) descriptions of multiple ways to create flipped lessons through videotaping**, creativity, note taking, video checks, etc.; (3) demonstration of flipped lessons and what purpose they directly served in class, and student response to flipped lessons; and (4) question and answer time as well as sharing any personal ideas. (** including working through steps and procedures in various video recording programs like Windows Live Movie Maker and iMovies.)

Irina Lyublinskaya - College of Staten Island, CUNY
irina.lyublinskaya@csi.cuny.edu
My Favorite Locus Problems - Implementing CCSS Mathematical Practices with TI-Nspire

In this workshop we will discuss implementation of CCSS mathematical practices while exploring my favorite geometry locus problems with TI-Nspire technology.

Liz Marquez - Educational Testing Service
lizmarq@aol.com
Paul Westbrook - Rutgers Univeristy
paul@westbrook.net
Mathematics, Money, the Common Core, and the Quality of Life

We will demonstrate how to teach to common core content and practice standards in a way that engages students in building their mathematical and financial literacy. College costs, potential career earnings and the implications of college debt on the quality of life will be addressed. Examples will cover Algebra 1 through pre-Calculus.

Amro Mosaad - Middlesex County Academy, Edison
mosaada@mcvts.net
"HELLO my name is x+3" - Cooperative Group Activities for Teaching Polynomial and Rational Functions

Students’ understanding of polynomial and rational functions will be enhanced when they see them constructed.  By breaking the functions into their building blocks, you will be able to use cooperative group activities to engage students.  Students will collectively form polynomial and rational functions and see the connection between zeros and factors and determine other properties like domain, range, and asymptotes.   Worksheets will be shared.

Afroze Naqvi - Saskatchewan Polytechnic, Regina Campus
afroze.naqvi@saskpolytech.ca
An Introduction to Combinatorics and Probability

This workshop offers a brief introduction to the areas of discrete mathematics referred to as combinatorics and probability.  The workshop will include some specific examples and some group activities relating to these topics.

Audrey A. Nasar – Stella and Charles Guttman Community College, CUNY
audrey.nasar@guttman.cuny.edu
Teaching Algorithms and Algorithmic Thinking in Precalculus

Given the impact of computers and computing on almost every aspect of society, the ability to develop, analyze, and implement algorithms is gaining more focus. An algorithm is a precise, systematic method for solving a class of problems. Algorithmic thinking, which is a form of mathematical thinking, refers to the thought processes associated with creating and analyzing algorithms. A primary goal of mathematics education is to prepare students to be flexible problem solvers. Both algorithms and algorithmic thinking are very powerful tools for problem solving and students could benefit from covering these topics in their mathematics education. In addition, exploring algorithms can help students see mathematics as a relevant and creative subject. In high school, however, algorithms are usually restricted to the computer science curriculum.

This presentation will introduce several important algorithmic problems and illustrate how they can be incorporated into a high school Precalculus course. It will focus on the mathematical skills needed to describe different types of algorithms for several problems and to distinguish more efficient algorithms from less efficient ones.  Beginning with the fundamental problems of searching and sorting, the problem solving techniques of recursion and divide-and-conquer will be used to analyze how different algorithms are structured and to define their complexity functions, which give the number of operations necessary to execute an algorithm based on the input size. Furthermore in order to determine which algorithm is more efficient, a comparison of the complexity functions’ growth rates will be carried out.

Robin O’Callaghan and Daniel Klag – Educational Testing Service
rocallaghan@ets.org
Assessment of the CCSSM in the Classroom and Beyond

How will the new assessments of the CCSSM face the challenge of covering content essential to college and career readiness and at the same time measure students’ mathematical understanding?  How can testing in the classroom increase students’ ability to reason and justify their arguments? How can teachers encourage students to demonstrate mathematical proficiency both inside and outside of the classroom? Come hear the answers to these questions and more.

Peter Pace - Life Center Academy
petlin2@verizon.net
It is So Much More than Rabbits!

We gain knowlege and wisdom by using mathematics to understand the world we live in. The Fibonacci numbers are evident throughout nature and give us keys to unlock the truly marvelous structure of  our world. Come and see how to integrate the mathematics of the Fibonacci sequence into your math classes to make them fun and challenging for your students.

Robert Riehs - Mathematics Specialist, NJ Dept. of Education, Retired
rjriehs@bellatlantic.net
Pitfalls to avoid in implementing the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics

The session will focus on lessons that have been learned by observing the initial stages of implementation since the Common Core was adopted in 2010.  Suggestions will be offered to hopefully avoid an unnecessarily rocky transition for students and teachers. Strategies will be shared that have been used in some New Jersey districts and also other states.  Mistakes and misconceptions will also be shared.

Joseph G. Rosenstein – Rutgers University
joer@dimacs.rutgers.edu
Problem Solving and Reasoning with Discrete Mathematics – A Guided Tour of the Book.

This presentation will be a shameless advertisement for my new book, Problem Solving and Reasoning with Discrete Mathematics (new-math-text.com), a Preliminary Edition of which is now available.  I will discuss the mathematical topics that are included in the book, and its themes of problem-solving, reasoning, and modeling, all of which are extolled by CCSSM, which falls short in incorporating these practices into classrooms.  Problem Solving and Reasoning with Discrete Mathematics, which will be available for classroom use in September 2015,

• uses the content of discrete mathematics as a vehicle for improving students’ reasoning, modeling, and problem-solving skills, in line with the “Mathematical Practice” portion of the CCSS, and also
• provides an enriched curriculum for all students, including those whose needs are not addressed by the CCSS, which is focused on preparing students for calculus and college.

Ahmed Salama - PANTHER Academy, Paterson:
salamamath@yahoo.com
Learning Linear Equations through Kinematics

The goal of this presentation is to investigate the variety of means by which the motion of objects can be described. The variety of representations that we will investigate includes verbal, pictorial, numerical and graphical representations. In algebra class, students should be able to utilize understanding the kinematics to learn linear equations.

Jay Schiffman – Rowan University
schiffman@rowan.edu
Problem Solving in Calculus and the Common Core

This hands-on presentation will engage participants in several rich problems from calculus and precalculus. Each of the problems will address many of the eight Standards for Mathematical Practice. Please join us and be ready to delve deeply into rich problem tasks.

Anita Schuloff – Paramus Catholic High School
aschuloff@yahoo.com
Making Calculus Visual

Calculus students sometimes have a difficult time visualizing derivatives, curvature, asymptotes, limits and especially volumes of revolution. The Advanced Toolkit capability of Geometer’s Sketchpad can make these lessons pop out with their crisp graphics and bright colors. Bring a laptop and a mouse so that we can all share files.

Andrew Schwartz - College Board
anschwartz@collegeboard.com
The Revised SAT

This presentation will briefly discuss the overall philosophy underlying the upcoming revision of the SAT math test. The bulk of the presentation will give examples of questions that cover new material, along with examples of questions that are being removed from the SAT.

Robin Schwartz - Math Confidence/College of Mt. St. Vincent
mathconfidence@aol.com
Using ‘Good Wrong Answers’ to Achieve Math Confidence and Success

Multiple choice tests have tempting incorrect answers that often reflect students’ common misunderstandings.  Studying these “good wrong answers” and identifying potential errors leads to deeper comprehension, higher confidence and better grades while improving problem-solving skills. Participants will receive a packet of excellent questions with 'good wrong answers'.

Doug Smith – A.P. Schalick High School, Pittsgrove
dsmith@pittsgrove.net
How to Teach Statistics (AP or not) for $5.91

I will show everyone how I demonstrate many, many concepts in statistics in my classroom, from mean to confidence intervals to hypothesis testing using my $5.91 in pennies.  It appears the students even understand it better that way!

Linda Treilman – Mercer County Community College
linda.treilman@gmail.com
These are a Few of My Favorite (SMART Notebook) Things

I have been fortunate to have a SMART Board in my classroom for about 15 years.  New tools added/old favorites kept.  Sharing the tools I love (tables, object animations, dual page view) and have found useful to teach mathematics including what’s new and exciting in Notebook 2014 (and maybe a hint about Notebook 2015).

Michael Weingart – Rutgers University
weingart@math.rutgers.edu
Pascal's Triangle and the Bell Curve

This talk will give a concrete interpretation of what the entries in Pascal's Triangle mean, and how, even without explicit formulas for them, they can be used to teach ideas in probability.  We will then use Pascal's Triangle to build, test, and refine intuitions about bell-shaped probability distributions and data.

David Weksler – Consultant
wex@pobox.com
Math Education and Technology: Big questions and interesting angles on approaches

How do Apps like PhotoMath - http://photomath.net - challenge the tradition of textbook based math curriculum? For that matter, how does educational software push us to re-think both what we are teaching and how we are teaching concepts in any discipline. Are we moving towards a more interdisciplinary educational model where teachers explore connections between math and art, math and music, math and the rest of the curriculum, by finding ways to use the problem-solving skills for real-world issues?  Is this more authentic learning? A conversation will take place.

Amanda Zielenkievicz (Caldwell) – Ramapo Indian Hills Regional District
azielenkievicz@rih.org
Utilizing a Flipped or Blended Learning Environment in AP Statistics

AP Statistics is a great place to use a flipped or blended learning environment to teach all of the content knowledge while still having class time for simulations, practice problems, and AP review. By utilizing technology or simply paper and pencil, you can guide students to utilize time at home for definitions and introductions that allow for deeper conversation about topics and applications that provide you the opportunity to address and correct common misunderstandings before they become common practice. Class structure strategies, testing strategies, and use of technology will be addressed.

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