MVP ➡️ OUR: Better Than Ever

 

I have been using Mathematics Vision Project materials for four years now, and I was very excited about the updates and watched for them all summer long. Sample units of Open Up High School Mathematics were released, and my coworkers and I started digging into the newly published resources. In early August, we were at last able to see the curriculum unfold on the Open Up Resources site.

I started going through Open Up High School Mathematics with my coworkers to scope out the updates. We compared the MVP materials to the new Open Up High School Mathematics resources… lesson by lesson, practice by practice. Some of the team was very trusting – any new changes to the material must be amazing because MVP is already amazing. We continued to dig deeper into the content updates in the lessons and the practice assignments, and we discussed and agreed that all of the changes were improvements and would likely help more students comprehend and master the material.

Our team found that most of the lessons and contexts remained in this newer version! This was a relief for teachers creating digital lessons during distance learning because they needed to make minimal changes to update their lessons with the Open Up High School Mathematics enhancements.

While the story contexts have mainly stayed the same, there still have been updates.  The format of the lessons have been improved upon, with many bells and whistles. Many additional resources have been provided in a user-friendly and easy-to-find manner.  Also, there is more that is offered for FREE now than ever before.

One of the places to start going through the new material would be the Planning and Implementation tools. You can find these for each lesson.    

In the Planning tools you will find everything that you need to be able to prepare for teaching a lesson.  This resource is online, but you can also choose to purchase it in print.  The material is still incredibly focused and organized.  It begins by listing the learning goals for the lesson and the standards that will be addressed.    

Materials

Then there is a section with resources to download.  There is a link to download the printable Student versions of the lesson, a separate file for the Exit Ticket, and the Ready, Set, Go.  Also, a new addition is the inclusion of curated Google Slides to help in presenting the lessons to students.  These resources are available for every lesson. These resources are available for every lesson and were created by educators in the Open Up Resources Facebook community.

Required Preparation

The Required Preparation information is key to the proper implementation of the Open Up High School Mathematics lessons.   In order for the students to get the most out of each lesson, teachers need to plan and prepare themselves before teaching a lesson. That process begins with a section in which teachers can learn to Anticipate Student Thinking, then they can read and understand the Progression of Learning that will happen in the lesson, as well as the Purpose of the lesson.  These are essential components that a teacher needs to understand in order to maintain an organized and focused implementation of a lesson.  

Jump Start

A new component that is in many lessons, but not all, is a Jump Start.  These activities have been carefully chosen and placed, in order to review and frontload lessons with required skills as needed.  

Learning Focus

Each lesson now has a Learning Focus that is included in all student versions, noted previously as Essential Questions. This consists of a combination of statements and questions about what students should be thinking about and trying to learn, as they complete the lesson.  

Launch, Explore, Discuss

This section is the meat of the lesson.  For the most part, there have been minimal changes to these portions of the lesson  from the MVP materials.  The same problem-based, rich learning experiences we are familiar with are apparent in Open Up High School Mathematics.  This is where the guided discovery happens, where teachers Launch the context of the story, students Explore the activity, and then the class are guided through a Discussion in which teachers help them to make the proper connections and ensure the learning goals have been met. 

Ready for More

These extension questions are now clearly defined with a section heading! With the new Open Up High School Mathematics curriculum, nearly every lesson has a Ready for More? question to further expand and deepen student understanding and learning.

Takeaways

The Takeaways section has been made a regular component to nearly every lesson, too. In this section of the lesson, students take a moment to ponder and reflect on what they learned in the lesson, and it gives teachers a chance to ensure that the proper understandings and connections have been made to meet the learning goals set out in the Learning Focus.  

Adding Notation, Vocabulary and Conventions

When appropriate, there is an additional section in lessons where students can write notes that help fine tune the details of their learning.  Sometimes this section is just titled Vocabulary, other times it has the full name including Notation and Conventions.  This all depends on the progression of learning within a unit, and adding in the proper Notations and Vocabulary when appropriate for student understanding.  This is a place where teachers could have students define Vocabulary, or even just point them in the direction of the definitions provided in the new Glossary feature.

Lesson Summary

The last section that has been added to the new Open Up lessons is a Summary of what was learned. It is a brief synopsis of the Learning Focus, and how learning goals were met.   It is another additional section to help support teachers in making sure that the right connections were made and understandings were reached during the lesson.

Exit Tickets 

Exit Tickets are not new to the curriculum, however they have been typed up in a FREE file, instead of just embedded in the print version of the teacher notes.  They are accessible to everyone with a teacher account on the Open Up Resources site. They are linked individually within the Resources section of every lesson, and they are also linked in one complete file per unit under the Unit Downloads.

The next portion of the Planning and Implementation tools is also available online or in print.

5 practices

This section of the teacher materials is essential to effectively implementing the curriculum.  If you are unfamiliar with what the 5 Practices are, you can read about them in the book 5 Practices for Orchestrating Productive Mathematics Discussions, Second Edition by Margaret S. Smith and Mary Kay Stein. This framework is key to being successful with problem-based lessons and the teaching style of guided discovery that is student-centered, as compared to the more traditional method of direct instruction that is teacher-centered. 

This separate planning resource contains detailed student examples and assistance with implementing the 5 Practices. There is more detailed guidance within the 5 Practices section of the teacher materials.  It includes the actions that teachers should be doing during a lesson, as well as examples of student work and misconceptions, potential difficulties students may have in accessing the problems, and possible guiding questions to clarify and advance student thinking.

The next portion of the curriculum that has received some enhancements is the portion where skills are practiced, in the Ready, Set, and Gos.

Retrieval

One major addition, is that of a Retrieval section.  You can find the solutions and explanations for this section at the end of the lesson Planning guide.  This is a really fabulous addition, because it is a set of examples for students of the skills they will be required to complete on the Ready and Go.  Retrieval problems allow students to review content with teacher support before moving on independently.

Ready, Set, Go

This section remains very much the same for most lessons, with some minor changes. As stated in the Course Guide, “The Ready, Set, and Go combined are the distributed practice problems for students to use to reinforce their math understanding and skills.”

Help, Hints and Explanations

Another resource that goes along with the Ready, Set and Gos is the Help, Hints and Explanations.  This resource is available in print for teachers, as a separate book.  This resource is also available to students and families through an affordable video subscription to support students in their completion of the Ready, Set and Gos.  These videos are not mere recordings of directly going through the problems.  They are more mini-lessons on the skills and information that students should understand in order to be able to complete the problems. The link for students to access the videos can be found at the bottom of the family resource page, per individual course.

                                     

The last portion of the curriculum is that of Assessments.  There have definitely been some changes made here as well.  For starters, all Assessments are available for FREE on the Open Up Resources site, along with an explanation of their solutions and rationale.  Only teachers can access these assessments, solutions, and explanations, once verified as an educator on the site.

Most of the assessment portions have remained largely the same.  There are still all three forms of assessment: Quick Quizzes, Unit Assessments, and Performance Assessments. For most units there are still the same number of Quick Quizzes. The assessments are aimed at better meeting the heart of the Standards, primarily with respect to being able to understand and apply learning in context. More questions have been updated to incorporate skills embedded in context, rather than just stand-alone skills. These changes have been made throughout all forms of assessments, where appropriate. This means that the assessments are more rich, more rigorous, and better-aligned to the problem-based learning style of the curriculum. 

Self-Assessments

One new addition that correlates with this section are Student Self-Assessments.  These can be found by unit, under the Unit Downloads.  These resources are chunked and aligned to the Quick Quizzes , so that students can assess their levels of mastery of the learning goals at regular increments in the learning cycle.  For each learning goal statement, students rate their understanding according to a continuum, and then are prompted to provide evidence for why they selected that rating.  At the end of each document, students are asked to describe what they view as their next steps in the process of them mastering the content listed.  This information can be incredibly valuable to teachers, but also helps to make students more accountable for their role in their own learning.

I have been excitedly diving into the Open Up High School Mathematics curriculum this school year and sharing my journey along the way. The MVP and Open Up Resources teams have been busy little bees, too, after looking in-depth at their work to make the best and most accessible curriculum for student learning. Altogether I feel like the enhancements have really provided teachers with more support, organization, and resources, to successfully implement a curriculum that is anything but traditional.