Professional LEARNING
EMTL Program
Elementary Math Teacher Leader Program supports teachers in their efforts to acquire the content knowledge and pedagogical skills necessary to successfully engage their students in rich Common Core-inspired learning experiences.
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Elementary Math Teacher Leaders
About This Program
Sponsored by the Delaware Mathematics Coalition, the EMTL program is designed to support teachers in their efforts to acquire the content knowledge and pedagogical skills necessary to successfully engage their students in rich Common Core-inspired learning experiences. The program is funded through district contributions.
The EMTL planning and professional learning team includes Valerie Maxwell, Jamila Riser, Nancy Thornburg, Taffy McAneny, and Sally Todorow. Dr. Virginia Bastable (Mount Holyoke) serves as a thought partner to the team. She provides expertise to support EMTL’s conceptually-focused work, particularly as it relates to understanding the structure and behavior of operations and promoting representation-based argumentation and proof.

Understanding the Behavior of Operations
The EMTL team utilizes rich problems and number routines purposefully designed to elicit and build students’ reasoning skills. EMTL coaches, mathematics specialists, and teachers engage in the following mathematical work in support of improved learning outcomes in teachers’ classrooms:
- Noticing regularities and structure in number.
- Constructing and investigating conjectures about their observations.
- Using multiple representations to support claims about number properties.
- Articulating viable arguments & critiquing the reasoning of others.
- Comparing & contrasting operations.
Participants read and discuss research on the phases of student learning and number operations, with an emphasis on work taken from: Connecting Arithmetic to Algebra, Making Number Talks Matter. Number Talks: Fractions, Decimals, & Percents, & Intentional Talk.
Recommended Resources
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