We received this email recently from a Year 6 teacher:
Hi Doug,I responded as supportively as I could, suspecting their were others teachers with similar feelings. A couple of days later we received:
I am a Grade 6 teacher in ... I believe in my kids. I've achieved amazing things with my kids this year. We use your task designs. We encourage - no - celebrate creative and original thinking. My kids blow me away with the things they come up with. My kids are all about to be given a C, D or E rating from Dr Nelson. I feel helpless and I hurt for my kids. What are we going to do?
Yours in despair, ...
Hi Doug,Here is the story:
Thank you for your prompt response. I have now got over the initial shock and emotional response ...and ... have now taken some positive steps to preparing my kids for this situation. In the knowledge that my students have a thorough understanding of our assessment process, indeed are an active part of our assessment process, I told them a story and was overwhelmed by their immediate understanding of the situation and their reactions to it. I have attached my story for your interest.
Thank you again for your time,
Yours, (much more happily) ...
(Name and school suppressed to protect the innocent).Grey People
Out there, all over the world there are groups of people. We can call them Grey People. They can be men or women. They wear grey suits and have grey hair. They work in grey office blocks in grey offices with grey filing cabinets and grey carpet. I suspect they also have grey telephones and grey blinds at the windows.The Grey People are very powerful. Every day they make black and white decisions that get mixed up into varying shades of grey. These decisions affect hundreds of different people in hundreds of different ways.
...Interruption from student...A lot of these Grey People work in Canberra - it seems to attract them. One of them is called Dr. Brendan Nelson. He is a very grey person who makes black and white decisions about the whole of the education system in Australia. One of these decisions is going to affect you and your end of year report.
- Does this mean that we are rainbow people Miss?
- Oh absolutely!
...Interruption from student...Dr. Nelson has decided that every student in Australia should have a letter of the alphabet attached to their name. These letters of the alphabet will give some indication as to how you have performed at school this year.
- How can a Grey Person in Canberra affect our reports - he hasn't even met us?!
- Exactly!
...Interruption from student...What I want you to know is that these letters of the alphabet have nothing to do with me and nothing to do with you.
- But Miss he can't know how I've performed this year - he's never visited our classroom - has he?
- Grey People don't visit classrooms. In fact there is a suspicion that Grey People were never actually children. They just appear as Grey Adults, usually in pairs with mobile phones attached.
...Interruption from student...Actually kids, that's a great idea! When you receive your letter of the alphabet ask your parents' permission to change it to a letter that you really like! Then you could post it back to Dr. Nelson to let him know which letter you would like to be!
- What if I don't like my letter of the alphabet? Can I change it to something else?
- Another student: Yeah! 'W' has always been my favourite letter of the alphabet!
- There follows some heated discussion on various letters of the alphabet - I start to feel a chance and data investigation coming on...
...Interruption from student...
- Miss, there could never be any Grey People at this school could there?
- Good grief no! This is definitely a rainbow school. If ever a Grey Person came to work here it really wouldn't take us long to start to colour them in.
- So Miss, the report you have written won't have any letters of the alphabet? That's the one that counts 'cos you know who we are?
- You got it kiddo!
Dr. Nelson's contact details are at:
http://www.dest.gov.au/ministers/nelson/contact.htm
At its recent annual conference, the Mathematical Association of Victoria presented participants with its 2006 Catalogue. Strategically placed in the centre is an important document for Victorian teachers titled Working Mathematically in VELS (Victorian Essential Learning Standards). The document begins with the text:
This guide is a directory to the best possible ways to involve your students in working mathematically at a high level - while also dealing with the content requirements of the curriculum. Its material is available from two sources: the MAV (Mathematical Association of Victoria)We are delighted that our tasks, Maths300 lessons and especially the highly respected Maths With Attitude kits are referenced throughout this publication. We trust our work will be very useful to all MAV members who choose to use this document to address the new VELS requirements., and the CC (Curriculum Corporation) . With the assistance of only a small carefully chosen selection from the huge range of ready-to-use materials described here you can take the big step of 'forgetting the text book'.
We sometimes hear from teachers that they have found a set of 'tasks in the cupboard' which must have been bought by another teacher. They are disturbed (and so are we) that this fabulous resource is not being used. Yet in other schools the integration of tasks into the curriculum has been continuous for many years. What can we learn from the successful schools? The following seem to be the key elements in building this on-going success:
FrameworkMaths With Attitude is designed to support you with framework, structure, content, assessment and professional learning.
Know why you choose to use tasks as part of the curriculum and why you choose your particular model(s) for using them. This means that the administration, kids and parents also have to be clear about the purpose. The most successful of the frameworks is when everyone recognises that using these tasks contributes to learning to work like a mathematician because they represent an invitation to work on a problem ... and that's a mathematician's work - trying to solve problems.
Document
Feature the use of tasks in the written syllabus material prepared for teachers, parents and students. Reinforce the framework and make the 'when and how' of use clear.
Induct
In-coming teachers need to know why and how you use tasks. Make time to work with them on understanding the tasks and the principles and practice behind their use. Introduce them to this web site.
Communicate
Keep the framework and the documentation in front of the school population. Perhaps the most important way to do this is to look for and celebrate student work. See, for example, the Sphinx Album link on the left. However, this also means communicating with parents who are likely to have a different mathematics education background. Include them in the process of learning about problem solving. Consider using the school newsletter and/or web site and relaxed but purposeful 'maths nights'.
Assess
Don't just talk about purposes detailed in your framework, build in appropriate assessment to show how kids are reaching for the purpose.
Re-enthuse
Build in-house and external professional development into your regular professional learning program. Show each other kids' work. Discuss short-term difficulties and how they can be addressed while remaining faithful to the framework. Play with some tasks together.
Revitalise
Make a feature of new tasks added and familiar tasks extended or developed into whole class lesson explorations. For example, Task 116, Who Owns The Monkey?, is in our collection because it was included in one school's collection after a pupil found it in a magazine. Change displays.
Note: The information in this news item has now been permanently recorded in the Principles link on the left.
Task 7 ... Consecutive Sums
Read about this Task of the Month in Task Cameos in the Iceberg Information link on the left.
Whether or not your tasks are in the cupboard or in maximum use, there will come a time when the pieces will need resorting and replacing. Ina Koetsier our Distribution Manager can do this for you very efficiently. Several schools have recently made use of this service. Read about it in the Refreshing Your Task Centre link in Resources on the left.
It has only happened a couple of times in the last decade, but there was a case recently, so perhaps it is timely to remind everyone that you cannot make multiple copies of our task cards. The problems are not copyright - generally they belong to the history of mathematics and mathematics education - but the presentation of those problems in the form on the card is protected by copyright.
Further, there is no implication that bulk purchase of equipment for particular tasks implies any permission to make multiple copies of the task card.
If you have any doubts about the practices in your school/institution in this regard, please discuss this with us.
Many schools use Poly Plug to help turn some tasks into whole class lessons which allow teachers to model how a mathematician works. It is actually quite surprising, even to us, how many tasks can be supported in this way with this material. The link below takes you to the current list. Task 5, Make A Snake, has been added to the list this month. Others will be added as time passes.
If so you missed information about:
- Mathematician's Toolshed
- Success with the Library Kit
- Task 6, Counter Escape
- ... and more
