The count down is on! Students will be back to school in NSW over the next few weeks. Our teachers have done a phenomenal job juggling preparing classes for both online and for returning to school. For many it will be like starting the year again, assessing and gauging where our students are at -…
It’s week 6 of the school Term in NSW and we continue to be remote learning. I thought I’d share some awesome tasks, games, sites, ideas, and apps that I’ve been using or I’ve seen being shared around recently on social media. Thought it might be nice to see some of these all in the…
This week’s blog is a follow up to my article from last year Top 10 maths ideas: When it all gets too hard that I wrote at a similar time, when we were in a similar situation – working, and learning from home. Our schools and teachers have done an amazing job in preparing our…
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…
This week’s blog is inspired by research that James Russo, Toby Russo, and Leicha Bragg have recently conducted (and will present at the upcoming MERGA online conference) about factors that influence the mathematical games teachers’ choose. They propose a number of factor themes related to why teachers choose specific games – I will utilise these themes to share a…
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…
Well it’s the start of a new year in Australian schools and this is a busy time for students and teachers. Apart from getting to know perhaps a new teacher or new classmates, students will also be getting ready for new learning. The first week or two at school are usually a time for teachers…
Last year I wrote a blog about Mental maths in action in response to a statement I often hear by both educators and parents: “If they just knew their times tables”. In my support to primary schools, I am regularly asked the question: What about times tables? or, How do I teach times tables? or,…
It’s back to school for Term 4 in NSW and for the first time probably all year, students may have some interesting holiday activities to share. Whether they stayed at home, played with cousins, went camping, visited the zoo, grandma’s, or a friend’s house, first day back often involves writing a recount. Well I thought…
MANSW’s (@MathsNSW) Primary and Middle years (PAM) committee hosted its first Teach Meet during September. The focus was on Successful ideas from online learning: What are you continuing? A number of teachers shared what they are doing in their classrooms and reflected on what new or different teaching strategies came from online learning. My blog…