News

2025 News In this edition of the News you will find: February 2025   The Year of Free Mathematics Centre What does free mean? Why this way? Pass it on April 2025   Seeds Have Begun To Scatter First responders Future firsts New to Mathematics Centre Video ... Maths on a Mat: 3 Generations Web Papers ... Two papers about teaching craft Rotagrams ... Discover their new home Antonio's teaching craft

Email News Services If you would like to subscribe please send an email request to: doug@blackdouglas.com.au: In the subject line write Subscribe Maths. Add your name and preferred email address. Mathematics Centre eNews is published two or three times per term through the school year. Working with Mathematics Centre (PDF) will help you find your way around our site. Browsing Hint Use the View/Zoom options of your browser to 'move' the page closer or further away. Ctrl +, Ctrl - and Ctrl 0. Please feel free to distribute this information.

February 2025

The Year of Free Mathematics Centre

On or before December 1st this year, depending on interest, Mathematics Centre will be turned off.

From February 2025 the complete Mathematics Centre site and all digital resources are freely available. You only have to ask. If that's all you need to know, go to the Order Form now. If you want to know more, read on.

What Does Free Mean?

It means it's a gift. You receive free, the complete Mathematics Centre site to store on any computer or server, whether or not the storage device is publicly available on the internet, and all digital resources. Poly Plug and Rotagrams will still need to be purchased. The Order Form has all the details for both Free Mathematics Centre and the purchasable materials.

Free Mathematics Centre is provided to be freely used, shared, reproduced or distributed in perpetuity.

Changes have already been made to the live site to redesign the Professional Development link to focus on an extensive range of unique free DIY Professional Learning programmes. Also Calculating Changes has been modified to allow free access to the Members section. That's 75 new number sense activities (K-8) that most teachers have never seen before.

As detailed on the Order Form Free Mathematics Centre is an all or nothing gift. The whole is greater than its parts.

• The web site is rich on its own, but without the resources, which originally grew from teacher-expressed need, it offers much less practical, day to day classroom assistance.
• The resources without the web site are useful but without the web site do not have the extensive documented classroom-based, teacher-contributed wisdom which brings insight to their use.

Consequently, individual items are not available separately.

A small word of caution:
When you get your copy of Free Mathematics Centre, don't mess with the structure, for you know not what you do and it will break.

Why This Way?

Fifty-five years ago to the month, at Orbost High School, I taught my first mathematics lesson as a qualified maths teacher. As far as my grandchildren are concerned, I'm not sure about anyone else, I haven't yet taught my last.

However, over the past year or two I have come to realise there is an outside chance I might fall off the face of the earth sooner rather than later and I began wondering what would happen to all the wonderful collected stories, rich with classroom wisdom and, often surprising, mathematical content, held in trust in Mathematics Centre if I did.

Mathematics Centre exists to:

• encourage debate about teaching craft that fascinates, captivates and absorbs students in the process of learning to work like a mathematician.
• provide unique resources supporting teachers to build Working Mathematically classrooms.

This is a charter which teachers have shown, over more than 30 years, to be sufficiently flexible as a core curriculum planning and execution framework - in several countries and within the demands of many official curriculum documents - to produce quality learning, teaching satisfaction and success beyond what is normally expected or experienced.

As you weave through Mathematics Centre note the teacher names, the range of schools and where they are in the world. It won't take you long to find evidence to validate that claim. If you're one of those contributing teachers reading this, put your hand up now.  : )

I could turn the site off right now and get on with my next fifty-five years, but how would that support the teachers who use it right now (presumably at least some of the 2,000 or so subscribers to this eNews), or honour the 'share so all can grow' attitude of the hundreds of teachers who have contributed to the evolution of Mathematics Centre? I decided instead that I had to try to pass it on.

Pass It On

In early 2024 I approached the Mathematical Association of Victoria, wondering if they would accept the Mathematics Centre site and the business aspects of its resources as a gift. MAV was enthusiastic at first. Discussions and questions were rolling along positively, but at the end of the year I was informed that the decision was no thank you. Curiously that change of mind occurred after a claim from the Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers to some form of intellectual property right in the those few Mathematics Centre tasks from which some Maths300 lessons have grown. A claim that has been made by others in the past, then withdrawn.

No one owns the concept of hands-on problem solving tasks, no one owns the problems on which each task is based and no one owns the names of the problems. All this is part of the history and world of mathematics education. A history that is well documented on Mathematics Centre back to March 1977 and includes the pre-history that led to that moment.

It is only possible to copyright the layout, wording or format of any representation of the problems involved in a task. Anyone can take the same problem and create their own educational form of it, but no one can copy another's layout, wording or format in doing so.

When the discussions with MAV ended I was asked Could you gift it to someone else?. My immediate thought was there wasn't any other suitable organisation. However, with a little more thought the path became clear. What came from teachers, schools and the broader world of mathematics education could be offered back to teachers, schools and the broader world of mathematics education, but spectacularly enriched by the decades of input from others and the curation of Mathematics Centre.

Freely offered, easy to obtain, and with the invitation to keep passing it on to others. Sharing so all can grow. ... And then I could turn off the site.

Your copy of Free Mathematics Centre is waiting. Use the Order Form ... or contact me to make an appointment to come to our Bayswater North office with your USB. We could have a cuppa and a chat while the computer does the copying.

Keep smiling,
Doug.

If you love something set it free; ... Often attributed to Richard Bach, author of Jonathan Livingstone Seagull, but there is some doubt about the original. Look up the rest of the quote for yourself.

April 2025

Seeds Have Begun To Scatter

Free Mathematics Centre - a gift to you of this entire web site and all of its digital resources - has begun to spread around the world since the gift was announced on February 17th.

I would love to receive a copy. I have used your tasks regularly throughout my classes and always enjoy the challenges and thought-provoking discussion they promote.
...Ted, Western Australia

If you haven't read the original announcement above, best to do that now for background.

First Responders

Antonio Sánchez was the first person in the world to contact about accepting the gift of Mathematics Centre. Hello, I am a teacher from a small town in Spain (Murchante). I was browsing the internet and was intrigued by the "Maths with Attitude" papers. I didn't know that the resources had been made freely available to everyone until I clicked on the link to order form. ... I was wondering if there was any possibility of getting the content of the Mathematics Centre site from Spain. Teachers from outside Australia need to make contact first because postage varies from country to country. I wrote back to Antonio and explained the process. Within a day he had sent the appropriate amount by PayPal and the first Free Mathematics Centre USB in the world was on its way, arriving, as you can see in his photo, on the 6th of March. Read below about Antonio's fascinating approach to teaching. The first FMC to a southern hemisphere teacher went to Mitch Howard in New Zealand.

You might remember coming to Lincoln High School about 16 years ago? It was a great day and I know the people who were there still remember it fondly as a source of inspiration. ... I'm interested in the 'year of Free Mathematics Centre'.

A quick call a day or so later with card details and Mitch's copy of FMC was on its way to his current school.

The first Australian to receive a copy was Dr Paul Swan in Perth.

I hate the idea of good ideas being lost.

His copy was sent off at the same time as he was heading to South Australia to run professional development sessions. True to his word he told teachers about FMC and some have responded since. A few days later he included information about FMC in his newsletter and that has resulted in more sent off around Australia and overseas.

Thanks Paul. You help is very much appreciated by myself and the teachers receiving their copy.

Following these three there have been copies sent to USA, Denmark, Canada, UK, Netherlands and Sweden as well as several across Australia.

The opportunity to receive your copy remains open. Read the original announcement above then follow the directions on the order form. The process of entrusting Mathematics Centre to one teacher who passes it on to two more will ensure that this collection of classroom success stories is always available to teachers of future generations. There's a potential growth function involved here too. Virus mathematics put to good use.

Future Firsts

Which will be the first maths teachers association ... the first teacher training institution ... the first school system ... the first education department to include Free Mathematics Centre on their web site. Does it have potential to enrich debate about what makes great mathematics teaching and learning?

Comments such as those below, extracted from recent emails, suggest that there are many teachers who feel learning to work like a mathematician in fascinating, captivating and absorbing classrooms has currency within a wide range of official curriculum now and into the future.

• I happened upon your site by sheer luck. Your work here is amazing! There are so many great tasks. I look forward to using them. I teach special ed mild/moderate disabilities grades 3-5. Lots of the infant activities will be great to start and I think I can move them to some of the older activities as we go. (Alma, USA)
   
• I can't thank you enough for your amazing resources! I have been using them with my own children and recently have been running a homeschool math/science workshop and have been sharing the activities with even more children! (Johanna, Australia)
   
• The children do well in maths but their understanding of spatial reasoning is not as good as their understanding of other areas. I want to put together a sequence of learning for us to try and thought the resources you have could be useful. (Christine, UK)
   
• I've loved all of your workshops I attended over the years and have used so many of your activities with my high school classes. And Maths at Home was a life saver in 2020. (Ann, Australia)
   
• I am a relatively newly qualified maths teacher in Denmark, and yesterday I came across your wonderful collection of various math exercises for school children. (Hans, Denmark)
   
• Thank you for your generosity. This is very helpful especially to a newly certified teacher who wanted to encourage more thinking and less rote memorization. (Kamille, Canada)
   
• I am a math coach at an elementary school in North Carolina. I learned of your retirement from Dr. Paul Swan's email newsletter. Over the years I've used and shared many activities from your Task Centre. Your work has been far-reaching, and SO appreciated! (Alisan, USA)
   
• I love your article on Explicit teaching! (Margarita, Australia)
   
• My kids all attended a school that used your resources a lot. (Matt, New Zealand)
   
• (Thanks) ... for the training you delivered to a school I worked in some 15 or so years ago. Today, I still draw on that experience, and the subsequent experiences shared with the students as we rolled out the Maths Task Centres. It has shaped my practice and my personal values along with it. (Lizzy, Australia)
   
• We met about 20 years ago at a UK maths conference... I shared several reports (through Mathematics Centre) on lessons using the Maths Tasks. Since then, I'm back in the US, I have a PHD in maths education, and I'm working with gifted students in 6 schools as well as teaching at the local university. Throughout this time, I have used many of the task cameos with my students and also pointed my university students towards the activities as great examples of getting students involved in hands-on, brains-on learning. (Matt, USA)
   
• Thank you so much for sharing. I am a pre-service teacher, so I'm sure these resources will be very helpful for years to come! (Christine, Australia)

New to Mathematics Centre

Filmed at the 2024 December Conference of The Mathematical Association of Victoria, Eleni Pilafas, Matt Skoss and Doug Williams introduce teachers to the possibilities of whole body involvement in learning mathematics, using a variety of content at a variety of year levels. The finale involves the teachers acting out the working processes of a computer sifting a set of numbers into order from highest to lowest. This video is now available for staff discussion and workshopping on Cube Tube.

New Web Papers

Two papers added in the last month. Access them from the Web Papers section Index.
Both address:

• the value and importance of investing in teacher professional development.
• consciously choosing teaching craft from a broad palette of proven learning features.

Inquiry into Effective Strategies for Teacher Professional Learning
Text of a presentation and support papers presented to a 2008 Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry which argues that teachers are the best resource we have. It includes suggestions from teachers about what makes professional development effective.

Explicit Teaching: Opportunity or Opportunity Lost?
Originally published in the October 2024 edition of eNews, this article highlights how the technique of Explicit Teaching needs to find its place as one choice among a broad palette of proven learning features.

New Home for Rotagrams

The new world supplier for Rotagrams is now:      Objective Learning Materials      Contact John Lawton ... 0438 199 228 / jlawton@mathomat.com.au This information is included in our Order Form and Resources list. Designed by renown Scottish educator Geoff Giles in the 1970s, a Rotagram is used to explore the concept of angle and develop and explore various angle theorems, without the use of a protactor. The focus is on angle as a geometric entity, rather than its measurability. Read a little more about Rotagrams in Resources / Rotagrams. Your copy of Free Mathematics Centre includes all the classroom materials listed here.

We are delighted that this remarkable learning tool will not be lost to mathematics education when Mathematics Centre closes. Even better, John's current Ph D study in Mathematics Education focuses on teaching and learning geometry and already includes a section on Rotagrams.

Antonio's Teaching Craft

Currently teaching in primary school, Antonio has ... "spent about 20 years trying to bring manipulative and comprehensive experiences to the classroom and trying to generate a love of mathematics.".

At Murchante school they video all their maths lessons. Antonio straps his mobile to his chest and forgets about it as the lesson progresses. Why?
The videos:

• "help the kids revise or see how we learnt stuff."
• "show the families what we're up to in class. Since our maths teaching's a bit out there compared to what they're used to, the vids keep everyone happy. And the grandparents love seeing their grandkids in action, ha!"
• "are great for us teachers in our training workshops."

"I also run arithmetic workshops for the folks, so if we send home some homework, they don't try to force their old-school ways on the kids."

The 'go to' concrete material at every level of the school is Cuisenaire Rods. Caleb Gattegno would be very impressed. "We use Cuisenaire rods from Year 1 to Year 6 for just about everything - numbers, sums, geometry, stats, you name it."

In many of their videos you see large boxes of them on every table. You also see other materials. You see many other teaching craft choices in action too. I don't understand Spanish, but I do understand classroom and some of the things I saw were:

• Children working in groups.
• Vigorous and enthusiastic mathematical discussion.
• Children confident to move around the room to share their work with colleagues and teachers.
• Use of words and drawings, not just symbols and equations.
• An atmosphere of encouragement, respect and purpose that aims to include all children and build self-esteem and group interaction.

It's a classroom experience - an every day classroom experience - created by deliberate teaching craft choices. An atmosphere that could never be achieved by focusing on explicit teaching.

And it is successful. "...after our good results in the diagnostic tests, the government rang me up the other day asking if I want to be a maths advisor.".

It is absolutely worth looking at the EscuelaMurchante Channel. There are 245 classroom lessons arranged in playlists for Years 6 through to 1. What do you see?

Keep smiling,
Doug.

Link List Order Form (PDF)

Did You Know? You can Search Mathematics Centre. Our Site Map acts as a Table of Contents to help you find what you need in Mathematics Centre. You can find photos of every task using the Task Library. You can find tasks by content using the Task Cameo Content Finder. You can create your own Task Library in a professional learning context with the eTask Package. Calculating Changes offers Content Finder & Year Level Finder tools. You can find tasks coded by Year Level and Curriculum Strand in the Task Centre Catalogue. (PDF file) You can search for lessons by Year Level, Curriculum Strand, Lesson Features & Keyword at Maths300. You can connect Tasks to their Maths300 companion lesson using Tasks & Maths300. (PDF file) Excel version provided by Pymble Ladies' College also links each Task to its Maths With Attitude content strand. All these links, and more, appear in Working with Mathematics Centre. (PDF file)