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How does it feel to work like a mathematician? Andrew Wiles, the mathematician who solved what is sometimes called the world's hardest problem, describes it as like being in a mansion of dark rooms. You stumble around in the dark until you find the light switch, turn it on, and everything fits into place. Then you open to the door to the next dark room. The double session workshop we offered at the recent conference of the Mathematical Association of Victoria, titled Algebra Experiences You Won't Forget, provided teachers with time enough to experience the darkness - and be dazzled by the light. Kathy and Steve were filmed in a 'darkish' few moments of the session which they are happy to share with you through our latest Cube Tube video. See Link List below. After watching it, if you want to find the light, as they did eventually, you will need to explore the task referenced in the video notes.

Participants in our Self-selected Mathematics Learning session at the conference had the opportunity to experience the first sample eTasks. We provide the print files - you make the task. The response was positive. All present saw that as no problem. Schools, they thought, had lots of cupboards with useful bits and pieces. Teachers they recognised as creative and resourceful. One teacher commented Great, then we could make all the tasks we don't already have.

What was also important to all was using the tasks as a professional development focus. Sharing the work of making, learning about and planning the use of tasks as the core of in-house professional learning. Especially the opportunity to share the experience with key parents and students - a community approach to curriculum shift.

130 tasks have already been converted to eTasks. We don't know when the full set will be available.

In the meantime you might want to invest in the last of the ready made, ready-to-use tasks.
See our Order Form in the Link List below.

Task 35, Crosses

This was the natural choice for the Cameo this month because our sister site, Maths300, has just upgraded its presentation of the whole class investigation built around this task. Tiles 1 to 9 have to be placed on the cross so the vertical and horizontal arms add to the same number. How many solutions are there? How do you know when you have found them all? The cameo explores the basics of these questions. The Maths300 lesson goes much further, including providing software to extend the problem. The cameo also provides two remarkable From The Classroom items. One precedes the task with a unique lesson based around summing 5 numbers and checking it another way. The second tells the story of a professional mathematician who got hooked on the problem and eventually published a formula to determine the number of solutions for any size Crosses puzzle. See Link List below.

Very impressed with this display at a recent education expo. The school's focus question for the year was Which pedagogy most effectively supports inquiry in the multi-age classroom?. The whole school has been vigorously interrogating the question through professional development, readings, modelled lessons, discussions, improved use of resources and a range of other inputs. Congratulations to Lisa Binutti-Wilson and the team from Sacred Heart, Pearce, who were supported through the year by maths leaders from the central office of Canberra Goulburn catholic education. Where did your 2016 mathematics education journey take you? Where do you want your 2017 journey to take you? Keep smiling, Doug.