The pre-teaching assessment tool includes questions and problem-solving situations designed to be completed by the student at the start of each unit. The purpose of the tool is to provide the tutor with information about the students’ prior knowledge of the mathematics addressed in the unit. Based on the information obtained through the pre-teaching assessment tool, the tutor may decide to skip some of the investigations in a unit, enhance the investigations with further study of particular mathematics concepts, or choose another unit.

The checklist of mathematics concepts may be used at any time during the unit to help the tutor determine the students’ progress through the unit and their understanding of the mathematics presented in the unit.

Each investigation is designed to be used in at least one tutoring session, with some follow-up activities available for further exploration. An investigation contains the following sections:

Overview
The overview includes the Mathematical Focus of the investigation. This provides a general description of the math concepts addressed. The overview also includes a list of Materials to be collected and prepared prior to the start of the tutoring session. In many investigations, this includes making copies of student pages that are included in the MathPARTNERS materials.

Activity
This section describes the steps involved in presenting the investigation and working through the investigation with the student. Questions are provided to elicit student thinking so that the tutor can determine whether or not the student understands the mathematics and is ready to move on to the next part of the investigation.

Teaching Tip
Sprinkled throughout the investigations, teaching tips provide tutors with teaching strategies and suggestions about what to look for in student responses.

Extension
These are follow-up activities that further extend the mathematics studied in the investigation. Extensions may be used during a tutoring session or assigned as a homework activity.

Student Pages
Most investigations make use of some reproducible blackline maters. Some student pages contain manipulatives such as fraction strips, or shape templates that need to be cut out prior to the investigation. Other student pages contain blank tables to be filled in by the student. Still others present a problem-solving situation to the students

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Last modified: April 16, 2008