Adult Numeracy Network - ANN Teaching & Learning Institutes

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ANN Teaching & Learning Institutes

The ANN Teaching & Learning Institute is a day of training and community-building that typically takes place during COABE pre-conference, a day or so before the COABE Conference begins. Materials from previous ANN Teaching & Learning Institutes will be shared on this page for all members.

If you would like to join the ANN pre-conference planning team to work with other teachers and professional developers to plan our teaching and learning institute, we would love to have you! For more information, please contact, ANN President-Elect Dee Crescitelli (KY)

Teaching Materials from previous ANN Teaching & Learning Institutes

(Click on the title of each year's institute to explore the resources)

Understanding the Math We Teach (2025) In Adult Education, as generalists, we often find ourselves teaching math when we don’t necessarily feel sure of our own math background. In this session, we will develop our own understanding of why the math works, allowing us to make sense of familiar and new strategies. As we grow as flexible thinkers ourselves, we support students’ building on their good ideas and prepare them to take on both testing and the math of life.

Math for Identity & Belonging in Community (2024) Math for Identity and Belonging in Community is a project of the Adult Numeracy Network that opens a space for teachers to build community and bring our whole selves to math through projects driven by what matters to us. In this session, you will learn about this project, explore your own sense of identity in math, and be invited to collaborate and dream with the adult numeracy community, where there is a place for you.

Elevate Student Agency with Mathematical Play (2023) Engage in various forms of mathematical play - structured and unstructured, goal-directed and open-ended, hands-on, paper and pencil. Explore what is going on behind the play, exploring how bringing different kinds of play into the math and numeracy classroom can lead to desired student outcomes ranging from specific conceptual understandings to broader questions of mathematical identity, agency, and ownership. Reflect on classroom culture and how making space for play can help create a safer, more joyful, and more equitable classroom for all learners.

Math Mythbusters (DO Try This at Home) (2022) What math myths and misconceptions have we heard from students or believed ourselves? What patterns have we been in for so long that we don’t even see them? To change the face of math education, we must expose mistaken ideas and disrupt myths about how math works and to whom it belongs. Let's unpack our mathematical assumptions and together we'll create a positive math movement. Please DO try this at home

Experiencing Harmony & Beauty in Mathematical Patterns (2021) Beauty, joy, creativity - Are these things present in your math classes? Could they be? ANN invites you to channel your inner artist and explore relationships between mathematics, music, and art. Come learn how the arts can deepen students’ understanding of essential math concepts and help them tune-in to the math in the world around them. No music or art skills are needed to enjoy this fun-filled day of learning and growing as math practitioners.

Put on Your Own Math Before Assisting Students (2018) When flying to new higher altitudes of math standards and assessment, we need to put on our own “math” before assisting our students. Regardless of the level of math that you teach, having increased content knowledge will equip you to better explain concepts to students and give you more avenues to connect with their background knowledge as you listen to students explain their reasoning.

Revealing a Path from Basic Math to Algebra (2019) Unmask students’ potential to learn mathematics that will prepare them for success. Through hands-on, collaborative activities, we will work to deepen our own math content knowledge & consider practical ways to bring this learning into our classrooms.

Linking Today to Tomorrow (2017)

Exploring workforce math (in construction and nursing), inquiry based lessons, and the connections between ANN math principles and employability skills.

Resources & Materials from Math & Numeracy Strand Workshops at the COABE National Conference

In addition to organizing a Teaching and Learning Institute at COABE pre-conference, the Adult Numeracy Network is also a Strand Partner that sponsors the workshops in the Math & Numeracy Strand.