News

Lilydale High School is big. Around 40 teachers are involved in mathematics. They have invested heavily in professional development and resources to make Working Like A Mathematician the core of their curriculum. By chance their order for multiple Maths With Attitude kits arrived the day after the discount sale was announced. Since the funds had already been committed Marcus Whitby, Head of Department, decided to spend the discount on Poly Plug and other whole class investigation sets. The school has attracted six staff to in-house coaching roles and to begin the professional development their request was for an introduction to the Years 7 & 8 Maths With Attitude kit (which includes a Replacement Unit) and a Discussion Lesson with a Year 7 class. The Replacement Unit starts with a lesson introducing tasks, so that's where we began with the class. Later, two of the observing coaches began the debrief by commenting that the lesson had gone very well and they were changing their plans for the next day's lesson and introducing tasks in other teachers' classes instead. The next day Marcus wrote: Since your visit Kasie and Tim have given the same lesson a go in a couple of other teachers' classes. The other teachers were also quite impressed with the classes but we are quickly realising that this isn't going to be a quick fix process and there is a long road ahead but that it will be worth it.

20% DISCOUNT on all Tasks & Maths With Attitude throughout Term 3 Offer applies to orders received before Friday 20th September - freight added -

And about the same time Kasie wrote:

This message from Ruth Clarke, Head of Department at Wycliffe Christian School also arrived this month. It confirms the continuing success Lilydale can expect. Just wanted to let you know how much I am enjoying using some of the Number and Algebra activities with my Year 7 class. I haven't taught Year 7 for ages and nearly every student is getting it.

The next week we ran a half day workshop for most of the staff. The following day there was another email from Kasie: Tim and I went into a new class today and began using the algebra Maths With Attitude kits. We both worked in the same class for a double period with their teacher also roaming around. I felt the class went really well - the students were engaged for the majority of the DOUBLE and nearly all stayed on the ONE task. We are going in tomorrow and students can play with another problem. I am going to make a journal outline tonight to give to them tomorrow. The PD is continuing. Watch this space.

In the June eNews we showed some evaluations of the first two days of the six day program Working Like A Mathematician being presented for the Canberra Goulburn Diocese of the Catholic Education Office. At the end of Days 3 & 4 the teachers were asked to finish three sentences. Only primary teachers are involved in the course this year (the third year we have presented it) and the two days involved sharing classroom trials since the May meeting and investigating ways of improving the teaching of fractions, decimals and percent.

Here are some of their responses.

Gina, Madonna and Fiona are the local curriculum officers who use school visits and a broad range of other support to keep the pot boiling between our teacher sessions. They, along with the decision-makers in the diocese who have backed them all the way, are to be complimented and congratulated for the well planned and executed changes they are encouraging across their extensive diocese.

If your school, network, cluster, region, district or system is keen to encourage curriculum shift like this, please discuss our 6 Day primary program which focuses on number, or our 6 Day secondary program which focuses on algebra.

Deborah Heath, St. Joseph's, Grenfell, NSW, is one of the teachers in the Canberra Working Like A Mathematician course. She was obviously fired up by her experience and went straight back to school to organise a parent evening.

Thanks to Toni Pfeiffer, Good Shepherd, Amaroo, NSW, who is another of the enthusiatic teachers in the Canberra CEO course, we have three more Investigation Guides to share with you. Toni has provided two guides for Task 13, The Frog Pond, and one for Task 19, Cookie Count. See Link List below.

An Investigation Guide is designed to extend the work on a task card. It gathers the learning developed through the task card and then asks questions to encourage digging deeper. An IG is used in two ways:

1. After the children have worked through the task card.
   They have a discussion with the teacher about what they have done. Celebration and questioning leads to something like, "Would you like to do more on this problem?" If the answer is yes, the teacher provides the IG and the children keep working and recording in their journal. They would normally still have the task with them so they can continue to use the equipment in it.
2. The teacher has converted the task to a whole class investigation.
   After setting up the investigation through class involvement of some sort and after children have begun their exploration an IG can be introduced to support them to dig deeper. At relevant points in the lesson(s) the teacher will facilitate class or small group discussion based on what develops from the children's efforts.