News

From Year 7, students at St. Mary MacKillop College, Swan Hill, are learning to work like a mathematician. All staff are involved in developing this curriculum and a significant part of it is delivered through Replacement Units. Replacement Units build in the expectation of extending a task and preparing a report of the investigation.

As staff representative, head of department Damian Howison offered a workshop at the MAV December Conference entitled Jack and Jill's Buckets and How to Write a Maths Report. The blurb for the session was:

Jack and Jill went up the hill ... and were faced with a mathematical conundrum. We will learn about that problem and how it was solved. At the same time we will learn about one particular model of writing a mathematical report. Maths teachers often don't feel very qualified to give learners advice about writing. But when learners have worked like a mathematician on an interesting problem they should also know how to communicate this work to others. This workshop aims to give those learners and their teacher the tools to publish a report as well as delve deeply into a simple but very interesting problem.

Damian has shared background to the school's approach, documentation to support teaching how to write a report, the school's assessment rubric and examples of student reports, all of which we have woven into a story you can find in the Link List below.

Questions are beginning to be asked about teaching practice connected with using i-screens.

• They isolate students to their own machine making collaborative learning less likely.
• They involve about as much kinaestheic learning as licking a window.
• For all their magnificent graphics they are only two dimensional.
• The criteria for placing an 'app' in the education category of 'app shops' appears to be that the developer (usually not a teacher), places a tick in the education box.

On the plus side there is no doubt that the technology fascinates, captivates and absorbs kids.

Just as with the introduction of mini-calculators decades ago, which also fascinate kids, we must ask about capitalising on the fascination in the best way to improve learning.

With its guiding principle of one screen, two learners, concrete materials and a challenge, Picture Puzzles offer one response to improving learning with i-screens - any screen - smart phone, pad, tablet, netbook, laptop, desktop. Twenty Picture Puzzle investigations are currently available, in four menus - Pattern & Algebra, Number & Computation, Shape & Measurement, Shape & Space. More are in development. As you would expect, all are built around learning to work like a mathematician. Two examples and the full teaching notes for Pattern & Algebra A menu are available in the Free Tour section. See Link List below. From March 1st access to Picture Puzzles will be $330. February is the last opportunity to order this resource at the introductory price of $220.

Picture Puzzles are also now available through the Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers (AAMT) catalogue.
See Link List below.