Building Powerful Proportional Reasoning Online Workshop

What if you could teach so students think and reason mathematically?

Ready to conquer solving proportions?
We got you.

This workshop is everything you need. 6 modules, 6 weeks, a powerful transformation to make a REAL impact for your students.  $347

Leaders - Looking for packages to support groups?

"If you have even one student in your class that struggles with math, then take a Pam Harris workshop."

-Christopher Peterson, West High School, CA

Have you ever felt frustrated that you have to teach content you were never taught to unprepared students? Do you wonder how it is that you work so hard and your students aren’t doing better?

If you’re a middle school mathematics teacher, leader, or professional learning facilitator looking to energize your teaching, then you probably already know that your students come to you unprepared, have gaps, sometimes not even knowing their multiplication facts.

This course will help you feel empowered, enlightened, and energized. 

By using the Development of Mathematical Reasoning to guide your decisions, you choose tasks that are open enough so that all your students can access and each are challenged.

What is in the Workshop?

Module 1: What is Proportional Reasoning?

What Will I Learn?

• What "math is figureoutable" means, what is real math, and what it means to mathematize
• How to help students think like young mathematicians
• Why proportional reasoning is an important part of mathematical reasoning 
• What it means to reason proportionally
• Steps to take action in your classroom

Why Is This Important?

This is the why, the background, the setting so that the rest of the workshop makes sense, so that you can implement lessons and strategies knowing how it all fits together.

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Module 2: Practical Strategies for Teaching Students Who Don't Know Their Facts

What Will I Learn?

• Instructional routines to develop multiplicative reasoning and proportional reasoning at the same time 
• How to extend the learning to division, decimals
• How to connect the learning to functions  
• What a Problem Talk is and how to use it to support the learning 
• Steps to take action in your classroom 

Why Is This Important?

You have students all over the map. This module helps you meet the needs of students who may not know their facts. 

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Module 3: The Teacher's Role in Developing Students' Proportional Reasoning

What Will I Learn?

• How to use a rich task to develop proportional reasoning
• The five interpretations of rational numbers 
• Proportional reasoning with non-unit rates
• How to connect the learning to graphs 
• Steps to take action in your classroom 

Why Is This Important?

This is the meat of helping students develop proportional reasoning with all of the connections — with descriptions, tables, graphs, and equations — so that you’ll be clear on how to guide students to bring it all together.

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Module 4: Using Contexts to Strengthen Students' Reasoning

What Will I Learn?

• What it means to reason inversely
• How to develop inverse variation with students 
• How to use relationships to solve proportions with decimals  
• How to use relationships to solve similar figure problems 
• The powerful model of ratio tables for solving complex proportions 

Why Is This Important?

This module helps you extend the learning so that you can help students reason proportionally with many contexts and configurations.

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Module 5: The Top 3 Lesson Types for Student Success

What Will I Learn?

• Rich tasks to develop concepts 
• Problem Strings to introduce and solidify strategies, models, and concepts 
• Problem Talks to compare strategies 
• How to sequence lessons to maximize learning 
• Steps to take action in your classroom  

Why Is This Important?

This is the "how to do it in your classes" module so that you can make it happen for all of your students all of the time.

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Module 6: Expert Teacher Moves that Help You Help Your Students 

What Will I Learn?

• High leverage teacher moves to encourage student sense making 
• Teacher moves that support equity and access 
• Teacher moves to differentiate — to support and challenge all learners 
• How to support meaningful discourse to facilitate learning
• Steps to take action in your classroom 

Why Is This Important?

In this module, you’ll learn the high level teacher moves that make the learning happen like a pro.

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Module 7: Differentiation and Extension of Proportional Reasoning

What Will I Learn?

• Additional contexts with proportional relationships to use in middle school
• Subtle differences between fraction, rational number, and rate 
• Linear equation writing of proportional and near proportional relationships
• Additional activities to use with students to build proportional reasoning
• Steps to take action in your classroom 

Why Is This Important?

In this module, you’ll learn how proportional reasoning prepares students to reason about functions.

As a Participant

You will identify how the teaching of proportional reasoning has changed and why it matters so that you can base decisions on helping your students develop.

You will learn how to begin, by providing support for students who don't know their multiplication facts so that you can help students develop multiplicative reasoning and proportional reasoning at the same time.

You will extend the learning to more complicated contexts so that you can strengthen students' reasoning.

You will engage in problem solving so that you can parse out the thinking needed to solve proportional reasoning problems.

You will learn actionable strategies while engaging in the instructional routine called Problem Strings so that you can develop students' proportional reasoning and build specific mathematical strategies.

You will study three lesson types so that you can to learn to introduce, construct, and solidify proportional reasoning.

You will analyze expert teacher moves so that you can energize your classroom and keep students engaged in sense making.

You will get clear about the nuances of ratio, rational number, fraction, and rate so that you can help students use them appropriately.

From Participants of the Live Workshop

Online Participants Think It's Great Too!

Your questioning techniques and encouragement put these students so at ease that they were willing to take risks and explain their thinking. We teachers in our classroom rarely have a chance to tweak our teaching by observing others; this unique workshop has been a golden opportunity to soak in techniques from a master teacher. So much better in many ways than a book or a short session at a math conference. 

Anne Hambrick

I have always wanted to help students understand the "why" of the math they are learning. I've struggled being able to do that consistently, and well, through all of the content. I also definitely thought knowing the algorithm was more important than I do now. Looking back, it's hard to see how those two mindsets fit together.  

I had a lot of a-ha moments throughout this workshop. It's hard to pick one, but I'm going to say ratio tables. I never realized how versatile they can be. I almost always go straight to a ratio table now when approaching problems. It just makes so much sense!  

Teaching students to think and reason through a problem, while still covering the standards, is so doable! We often ask students if their solution is reasonable, and tell them how to "know" if it is reasonable, yet teaching how to determine reasonableness was neglected. That will soon be a thing of the past in my classrooms.

Mindee McBryde

Sharing the idea of how to reason proportionally is huge for me. I have made connections to percentages that I never saw before. It has opened my eyes to conceptual understanding that I didn’t have before. 

Shawn Hershey

I loved that Pam responded directly to my posts. It felt more personal and that she was connecting with me and cared about my questions and thoughts. 

Amy Kimball

I had so many times during this workshop in which I thought "I wish I were still teaching" and "I wish all of our teachers in our district could go through these courses". I used ratio tables in my classroom when I taught to help with proportional thinking, but unfortunately when I first started using them I used it as another algorithm in a way that I showed the students "how" to do it rather than letting the construct them in their own way. The more I learned about them the more I let students do the thinking, but I always get excited when working through problems like we did in this course as I look for different ways to see the problem and reason through the math.  

It was really great to see the student videos. Our teachers always ask what does this look like with students or "my" students can't do that. It was evident that the students in the video were at different levels and you engaged all of them. I loved the equity map. We do a lot of equity work in our district and this will definitely be something I share with teachers.  

Danielle Perico

Peer Testimonials

Are you ready?

If you have heard enough and you are ready to join me in my online workshop, then click below to register now!

The workshop costs $347, less than the registration cost for many large conferences and way more convenient.

I’m Pam Harris and I empower teachers to be the teacher they want to be.

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I have been working with educators for over 20 years as a classroom teacher, university instructor, and teacher trainer, as well as writing books and creating resources for teachers.

As a beginning teacher, I worked hard to make lessons understandable and interesting, but I didn’t realize how much I relied on rote memorization and repeating procedures until I immersed myself in math research. This fundamentally changed the way I do and teach mathematics so that teachers and students reason mathematically, not mimic like robots.

My Guarantees

✔ If you complete my workshop and do not learn anything you can use in your classroom, email me at [email protected] within 10 business days of the workshop ending and I will give you a full refund.

✔ You will feel very supported because there are live Q&A sessions to ask questions, bonus videos and materials, as well as optional activities.

✔ I estimate an average of 3 hours of work each week for the seven-week workshop. You will have access to the workshop content for 16 weeks.

How Does The Workshop Compare?

Learn more about how to earn credits through University of Massachusetts Global.

Take the Workshop on Any Device

Share with educators who want to build proportional reasoning!