Maths PD with Ian Stevens

What? Today for our Educator only day we had a Maths PD session with Ian Stevens.

So what? These were some of the things that Ian first spoke to us about:

The 3 character strengths that are predictors of success, which school can cultivate are:

• Self regulation
• Habits & attitudes of a good person
• Habits & attitudes of a good learner

• Educating Ruby: What our children really need to learn By Guy Claxton & Bill Lucas is a great resource to help us achieve the above.

Why is Maths important? Two parts are:

• Educators covering the knowledge
• Teaching a way of systematic organised thinking

To be numerate have the ability & inclination to use mathematics effectively:

- at home

- at work

- in the community

Next we played some games

2 players (odd & even), 2 dice:

Roll dice, add numbers. If even numbers are rolled then even gets the point, if odd numbers are rolled then odd gets the point. The first person to reach 10 is the winner.

We then discussed whether it is fair?

When explaining the answer we used the following prompts:

I see it

I get it

I can explain it to others

We realised that when we add playing the dice game it was fair as there were 18 combinations for both.

Multiplying was not fair because 9 out of 36 odd; 27 out of 36 even

Next we discussed Problem solving information. Our group had to discuss the organisation section. We spoke about introducing the problem, groupings and reflection.

                                                                           Symbol

                          Word                                                                      model

Concrete to abstract e.g 3x4 (symbol) is 3 groups of 4 (word) show action/ equipment (model)

We also created games using dice on 'Trello'. A good idea would be to organise these games into stages.

Next we played an Addition love bug bump game using 2 dice where we had to add numbers and bump our partner out or lock a number in.

Thereafter we did an activity called 'What is the value of your name?'

Vowel : $150

Consonant: $50

Radha:

50+150+50+50+150

An alternative could be: A=1; Z=26

We then did a Measurement/ Geometry packaging net activity using

1. Small cereal box
2. Large cereal box
3. Glad wrap
4. toothpaste
5. String
6. Toilet paper
7. Film
8. McDonalds fries

We then had to Draw a net to hold 4 tennis balls.

Finally we did an activity where we had to sort out Maths problems into the various stages, year levels & curriculum levels.

Now what? I learnt a lot from today's PD with Ian. I am looking forward to trying out some of the games with my learners and using more open-ended problems with my learners.