Our App
Background
In many classrooms, the only time teachers experience someone observing their lesson is during evaluation. These kinds of visits can provide administrators with certain kinds of valuable information, but rarely result in constructive feedback to teachers. Often, their rubrics are too generally worded, not content-specific, or too grade-specific.
Instructional leaders, principals, and early math teachers have expressed the need for a practical observation tool that looks at practices specific to math learning and can help structure professional development.
What is the DREME Math Observer?
Over the last several years, the Vanderbilt team, as part of the COHERE project, has partnered with other researchers, instructional leaders, and teachers to develop an app that can give practitioners the structure they need to give great support to math teachers from Pre-K all the way through early elementary school.
The app was designed to zero-in on what the user cares about as part of supporting teachers. It can also help reflect on strengths and opportunities and set goals with your teachers in a safe, non-judgmental way.
Who is it for?
Whether you are an instructional leader, a principal, or an early math teacher, DREME Math Observer can be adapted to fit your needs. Instructional leaders can use this app to target specific teaching practices as part of an ongoing coaching or learning process with individual teachers. A principal can use the app to do walkthroughs across grade levels and get a sense of broad patterns in practice at their school. An elementary level teacher can use the app in a colleague’s classroom to learn about new ways to implement a math task. This learning tool can provide relevant and timely information about what goes on during a math lesson.
What is in it?
The app is divided into different math teaching and learning practices that you can choose to focus on. Unlike other common observation rubrics, these practices are clearly defined and supported by short example videos and other resources embedded right in the app, so you can be sure you know “what counts.” The practices are all supported by cutting-edge research around what matters in early math teaching and learning, and they align with both the Common Core Mathematical Practices and the NCTM effective teaching practices.
There are many useful features in the app to help you record and reflect. You can collect and summarize notes, track which parts of the lesson are most engaging, record photos of unique strategies, and track trends over time. After each lesson, you get guiding questions based on what you saw, so you and your teacher can build on the great practices they are already doing, and brainstorm about new things to try.
How can I get it?
DREME Math Observer is easy to use across your personal mobile device or on a tablet, so you can easily drop in to see how a math lesson unfolds and keep track of everything in one convenient place.
Download it and try it out now to give your teachers the professional development boost they deserve and help your school become an exciting place for math learning.
