The primary audience for the professional development is grade 6 math teachers. Grade 6 is a high-leverage grade level for student math learning, and grade 6 teachers play a pivotal role in identifying students' fraction conception difficulties, the underlying misconceptions that cause them, and the evidence-based strategies needed to remediate them. Grade 6 often includes much-needed review and consolidation of math content learned in prior grades.

Additional audiences include the following:

• Special education teachers.
• English learner specialists.
• Math leaders and administrators, including principals, assistant superintendents, curriculum directors, math coaches, and teacher leaders.
• Teachers and administrators working in surrounding grade levels because they may gain deeper insight into the progression of fraction comprehension and more understanding of common misunderstandings across the grades.

The professional development is designed for grade 6 teachers to participate as a group, led by a local facilitator. Facilitators could be math professional development leaders, such as curriculum directors, professional development specialists, math coaches, and teacher leaders.

The professional development includes six modules, each with three sections. The modules are designed to be completed in order because the activities of later modules build on the activities of earlier modules:

• Module 1: Fractions on a Number Line (Recommendation 2 focus) 
• Module 2: Understanding Fraction Addition and Subtraction (Recommendation 3 focus) 
• Module 3: Understanding Fraction Multiplication and Division (Recommendation 3 focus) 
• Module 4: Implementation of Fraction Computation (Recommendations 2 and 3 focus) 
• Module 5: Understanding Ratio, Rate, and Proportion (Recommendation 4 focus)
• Module 6: Implementation of Ratio, Rate, and Proportion (Recommendation 4 focus) 

Each module includes two facilitated meetings and self-paced interim activities to be completed between the meetings. The structure for Module 1 is shown as an example:

It takes about 2 hours to complete Meeting A for Module 1 and 1 hour to complete Meeting A for Modules 2 through 6. Meeting B for each module takes 1 hour to complete. The self-paced interim activities between the two synchronous meetings for each module takes about 2 hours to complete.

The primary audience for this professional development is grade 6 math teachers. Grade 6 is a high-leverage grade level for student math learning, and grade 6 teachers play a pivotal role in identifying students' fraction conception difficulties, the underlying misunderstandings that cause them, and the evidence-based strategies needed to remediate them.

Additional audiences include the following:

• Special education teachers.
• English learner specialists.
• Math leaders and administrators, including principals, assistant superintendents, curriculum directors, math coaches, and teacher leaders.
• Teachers and administrators working in surrounding grade bands because they may gain deeper insight into the progression of fraction comprehension and build an awareness on how common misunderstandings can take root or be overcome across the grades.

The professional development includes six modules, each with three sections. The modules are designed to be completed in order because the activities of later modules build on the activities of prior modules.

An outline and summary of the content of each module are in the Module Summary Table (83 KB). The six modules are as follows.

• Module 1: Fractions on a Number Line (Recommendation 2 focus)
• Module 2: Understanding Fraction Addition and Subtraction (Recommendation 3 focus)
• Module 3: Understanding Fraction Multiplication and Division (Recommendation 3 focus)
• Module 4: Implementation of Fraction Computation (Recommendations 2 and 3 focus)
• Module 5: Understanding Ratio, Rate, and Proportion (Recommendation 4 focus)
• Module 6: Implementation of Ratio, Rate, and Proportion (Recommendation 4 focus)

Each module includes two facilitated meetings, conducted either by videoconference or in person, along with self-paced interim activities to be completed by teachers between those two meetings. The structure for Module 1 is shown as an example:

The role of the facilitator is to use the facilitator guides and slide decks to lead the six professional development modules for a group of teachers. Each module includes two meetings and a set of interim activities for teachers to complete between meetings:

1. During Meeting A, the facilitator leads a synchronous in-person or videoconference meeting to start the module.
2. Teachers work on interim activities at their own pace between Meetings A and B. Facilitators remind teachers about activities and check if teachers have questions or need support.
3. During Meeting B, the facilitator leads a synchronous in-person or videoconference meeting to end the module.

In addition to implementing professional development for the modules, facilitators also coordinate logistics (e.g., arranging rooms for in-person meetings) and manage ongoing communication with teachers (e.g., send reminders about upcoming meetings). Facilitators also may want to initiate discussions with teachers to explicitly connect the rationale and content of the toolkit with their local context and experiences with students.

The module-specific facilitator resources pages, such as the Module 1 page, includes guidance to support facilitators. The facilitator resources for each module include a facilitator guide and slide decks for each meeting:

• The facilitator guide provides an overview of the module, information about preparing for the module, and detailed instructions and tips for leading Meetings A and B. It includes steps for each activity, slides to show for each activity, tips about facilitating the activities, background information about the content addressed in the activities, and notes about key points to emphasize or share with teachers.
• Two slide decks are provided for each module, one for Meeting A and one for Meeting B. The slides include information, activities, and discussion and reflection prompts. In addition, the slide notes highlight key ideas to emphasize to participants with each slide and summarize what the facilitator and/or participants will do with each slide.

The facilitator guide and slide deck are color coded as follows:

• A brown edge indicates general introductory information about the module.
• A purple edge indicates information about Meeting A.
• A green edge indicates information about the module's interim activities to be completed by teachers between meetings.
• A blue edge indicates information about Meeting B.

Consider using the Assessing District Conditions for Implementing the Recommendations document Assessing District/School Conditions for Implementing the Recommendations (326 KB) with other leaders in your school or district to plan the professional development implementation.

Review relevant background information, including the following:

• Read the practice guide, in particular Recommendations 2–4, which is the content focus of this professional development, and Recommendation 5, which guides the design of this professional development. Recommendation 1 is not a focus in this professional development because it addresses content covered in earlier grades.
• Review local math curricula to understand fractions-related content from grade 6 and surrounding grades. It may be helpful to review the Fractions Content Progression Fractions Content Progression (364 KB) document available on the Administrator & Leader Resources page to deepen understanding of the progression of content across grades.
• Investigate or identify what local structures and norms are in place for professional learning and make plans for how those structures or norms should be enacted or adjusted for the Teaching Fractions Toolkit professional development. For example, this professional development involves sharing and discussing student work. It may be useful to understand teachers' experience with collaboratively looking at student work, requirements and norms for de-identifying student work, and norms for discussing specific student's work.

Set up the group and arrange logistics:

• Identify ways for teachers to earn meaningful certificates, credits, and/or micro-credentials for participation in the professional development.
• Reserve appropriate meeting spaces, technology, and internet access for the meetings.
• Create a schedule for the six modules and share it with teachers. When possible, make dedicated time in the school day or within contract hours for teachers to participate in the professional development. You can make your own or use this Module Schedule Template (112 KB). Note: It is recommended to do all the modules in order because they build on each other. You might choose to invite grade 5 teachers to join for Modules 1 and 2. If time is limited, one option is to only address Recommendations 2 and 3 by using Modules 1 through 4, and skipping Modules 5 and 6, which address Recommendation 4.
• Identify who will participate in the professional development and create an attendance list. You can make your own or use this Attendance Template (55 KB).
• Send an introductory message to the participants prior to Module 1 reviewing the schedule and goals for the professional development and pointing them to the Practice Guide Overview (121 KB) document and the Developing Effective Fractions Instruction for Kindergarten Through 8th Grade Toolkit: Overview (157 KB) document.

The facilitator guide for each module includes information to prepare for the module, including an overview of the specific module. In general, facilitators can prepare to lead a module by doing the following:

• Review the resources and instructions in the facilitator guide and the two slide decks.
• Review the practice guide description(s) of the recommendation(s) addressed during the module.
• Explore the module activities using the handouts from the participant workbook. Anticipate what questions participants might have about those activities.
• Determine how participants will access and use the participant workbook. Each participant will need access to an electronic copy or a print copy of the workbook.
• Make sure that a room is reserved with workspace for teachers to explore tasks and discuss ideas (if meeting in person) or a videoconference is set up for a virtual meeting.
• Ensure that Internet access will be available during the meetings, including to be able to access and demonstrate any online apps used during the meetings.
• Print out copies of the facilitator guide, workbook, and/or slides to refer to while preparing for and leading the meetings, and make copies of any handouts for teachers if you will be meeting with them in person.

During meetings it can be helpful to find informal ways to check participants' understanding. A few options of how to do this include:

• Ask participants to add questions they have to the chat.
• Encourage private chats with a facilitator as needed.
• Prompt participants to ask questions of one another during share-outs.
• Add a quick Zoom poll as an exit ticket.
• Use breakout rooms to engage in think-pair-share.
• Provide an option to attend an open office hour meeting.

Small group or pairs discussions are a great opportunity to engage more participants in discussions about mathematics tasks and student work and to support participants in being comfortable sharing out in the full group. During the Teaching Fractions Toolkit meetings there are opportunities to break into small groups (either in-person or using videoconference breakout rooms). Some considerations:

• Try to mix up small groups or pairs over time so participants get to talk to and hear from people with different perspectives in the group.
• Make sure participants know how long they will have available to talk or work in their small groups or pairs.
• If you are conducting the meetings online, you will need to set up breakout rooms. Tip: you could start setting them up while participants are working on a task earlier in the meeting so they will be ready to go or have a co-facilitator responsible for setting them up.
• If you have 5 or less people in your group, you may not need to break out into small groups as often.

If you are facilitating the Teaching Fractions Toolkit meetings online, here are a few tips to consider:

• Before meetings have resources, you will share on screen open and ready to go (e.g., slides, browser windows you might want to share such as any GeoGebra apps in that meeting or the practice guide). Tip: It can be helpful to have multiple screens if that is available to you when you are facilitating an online meeting.
• If participants are bringing student work or their own mathematical work to a meeting, encourage them to scan what they want to share in advance so that they could share screen with the electronic version rather than trying to hold papers up to a camera. Tip: you could ask them to send scanned copies to you in advance so you can review it and/or assist by sharing your screen with it.
• Encourage participants to have cameras on when possible for maximum engagement, while acknowledging that there may be times that participants need to be off camera.
• When working on a math task during the meeting, if participants are working on paper, then encourage them to use dark pens or thick markers to complete their work so that if they share their work by holding it up to the camera it will be easier for other participants to see.