- Continuing discussion with Ian Lowe, Professional Officer, Mathematical Association of Victoria, has resulted in a succinct, deep and useful Working Mathematically Curriculum Scaffold. This document is likely to be applicable in all education systems. It will only take a short time to read - longer to ponder. See the appropriate link in Working Mathematically on the left.
- This follows from Working Mathematically in VELS produced for the MAV 2005 December Conference and now distributed with their 2006 Catalogue. The MAV is intending to continue the work started with WM in VELS by developing unit plans at a range of Year Levels. Ian expects to continue to make use of our Tasks, Maths300 and Maths With Attitude in these units.
One Victorian and three South Australian MOTM workshop days have been booked so far for 2006. More are in discussion for South Australia. However, with these sessions and a broad range of other PD which we support, the diary is now pretty tight until after Easter. If you are anywhere in the world and have been thinking about using one or more of the highly successful Maths on the Move workshop days, then settling dates as soon as possible is a good idea. See the Maths on the Move link on the left for our library of workshops.
During December or January several schools engaged our Distribution Manager, Ina Koetsier, to refresh their tasks ready for the new year. This is not a role that teachers should be filling. Your time could be better spent on the pedagogical, curriculum and assessment issues related to using the tasks in your school. No-one knows the tasks back to front better than Ina, and her service is efficient and economic. You can contact Ina at any time about this service. See the Refresh Your Task Centre link in Resources on the left.
- There are hundreds of schools all over the world using our tasks.
- That means there are thousands of students in hundreds of schools using our tasks.
- We know there are scores of teachers every day who have uplifting experiences involving tasks and kids.
- We know it's hard to find the moment to sit and write an email at that moment of excitement, or to send us a photo, or to encourage the student to write to us...
- But we would like to hear from you...
- And so would your colleagues.
This year we hope to provide support information for two tasks per month; and since we had a holiday in January, you get four tasks this month to start off the year.
Read about these Tasks of the Month in Task Cameos in the Iceberg Information link on the left, or click on a photo to go straight to printable information about the task.
If so you missed information about:
- Working Mathematically in VELS
- Advice about ensuring on-going integration of tasks into your curriculum
- Comments on the negative effects of national benchmark testing
- Task 7, Consecutive Sums
- Poly Plug support
- ... and more
