Dialogic teaching and talking about writing
Dialogic teaching, a term created by Dr Robin Alexander in the early 2000s, harnesses the power of talk to stimulate and extend students’ thinking and advance their learning and understanding.
Noticing the mathematics: Making the connections Part 2
This week’s blog is a continuation of my reflections on MANSW’s PreK-8 conference held in March 2021. The first blog Noticing the mathematics: Making the connections Part 1 shared insights and lessons learnt from the two Friday masterclasses. Part 2 will share some of the ideas gathered from Saturday workshops I attended and the morning…
The making of a maths lesson
As a new year begins, planning and programming are often the focus for classroom teachers. It’s a time to try new things, adapt what has worked before, and think about what makes a great lesson. For mathematics, as with any subject area, flexibility is the key. Catherine Attard (@attard_c) provided some good advice regarding lesson…
Why drafting and re-drafting is important in mathematics
When teaching writing to our students we provide time for planning. When teaching writing to our students we also allow for drafting and re-drafting of ideas, paragraphs, and plot lines. How often do we allow students to revise their thinking or work in mathematics? How often do we allow students a second or third revision…
Reflecting on Mathematics: The Greatest Show (part 1)
This blog is the first of two reflections on the annual MANSW (Mathematical Association of NSW) conference. This year’s theme was “Mathematics: The Greatest Show” and it didn’t disappoint! What an amazing conference, ever year it gets bigger and better and the calibre of presentations and keynotes was out of this world! (I should save…
Slow Teaching
We have slow TV, slow fashion and even slow food, but what about slow teaching?
6 practices that should be in your mathematical repertoire
Programming your practices As the year draws to an end for most schools, planning for 2019 is beginning already. I thought it would be good to highlight some of the ‘buzz words’, concepts or ideas that are having an impact in mathematics classrooms. When planning for mathematics at this time of the year, spend the…
Valuing student voice in mathematics
Student voice in mathematics, and the teacher’s ability to create opportunities for mathematical discourse focused on students’ ways of thinking and working, is at the heart of quality teaching.
Keeping up with the current – part 2
With school holidays approaching in many parts of Australia, I thought it was timely to recommend some holiday reading for primary teachers of mathematics. Last year I wrote a blog titled Keeping up with the current that focused on three mathematics education research articles for teachers to explore. The current blog provides a few recent…
Can we put students first in a national assessment program?
We’ve talked about NAPLAN before, and how to maximise its usefulness, as with student growth being a more useful gauge of achievement. But concerns remain. Are you concerned about NAPLAN’s relevance to classroom teaching? lack of attention to the full range of key learning areas? relevance to the full range of students in your class?…