Belfast Professional Development in Math...What are we learning about?

A few months ago a small group of Belfast teachers met in the library learning commons to talk about math. More specifically teaching math. It is something we all have to teach yet many of us, myself included, often struggle to know if we are doing the best we can for our students. We started considering the tasks we design for math learning and thinking about how to shift these tasks to be more open ended. Our thinking was that we can do a better job of personalization and differentiated instruction if we design tasks that encourage students to be expansive in their thinking.

By coincidence Darren was having a meeting with Geri Lorway. Geri, who failed grade 8 math. Geri , who in a previous life was a teacher. Geri who now is a University Professor researching math development. Geri who would convince us that we could be excited about our professional learning in math. Geri who challenged “If you think math is number, think again!”

We have now had 2 sessions with Geri Lorway. Throughout this year we will have multiple opportunities to learn from her and reflect on our teaching . Here are some insights that we have so far.

• The basics of math seem simple to us but we underestimate how hard they were to learn.
• The number one predictor of math in early childhood is visual spatial reasoning - shape and space - and it relates to fine motor coordination
• Measuring is one of the most important things we do in math (calculations are expressions of measurement).
• As soon as you organize ideas you are doing math (we need to web, graph chart and, list)
• We need to move young students on from counting quickly. Counting one by one to get the answers is labour intensive and unreliable. It also takes up too much brain energy.
• Developing an understanding of 5 is key to student success. You can never too enough with 5!
• Subitizing (the ability to visualize number to distinguish and amount without counting) is a fundamental skill for the brain but a lot of our kids are missing it.

Some things that we can do to develop our brain to be better at math:

• MOVE! The brain is more efficient when the body is moving.
• Trace. Everyday. It doesn’t matter what or how, just do it.
• Do not focus too early on naming symbols (learning numbers) and completing equations. Numbers represent something and building an understanding of quantity is more important than naming the symbols.
• Explore symmetry. It is the basis of understanding equality.
• Learn to draw in 3-D.
• Use authentic math vocabulary.

Geri will be working with our teachers in their classrooms 3 times this year as part of our Math Residency Project. We have also asked her to talk to interested parents one evening in the new year.  We hope many of our parents will come out and learn how we are learning to better enrich math for our students. Stay tuned for more information about dates and times.

Hold the space...

Back to school for a few hours today. It is such a different place without students there to bring the halls alive! None the less it feels like a good place. With no one present at school today,  it made me think about a book I'm reading right now that I picked up at Teachers' Convention  called Everybody present: Mindfulness in education.  by Nikolaj Flor Rotne and Dedde Flor Rotne. I've become increasingly aware in my own practice of the need to co-regulate with kids and pre-requisitely the need to self regulate in order to be completely present with and for students. In some of the most tense situations that have arisen over the past few months I've often found myself without answers to some tough questions. How do I stop this behavior that is happening now? How do I respond to the anger this staff member is showing towards me? How do I transition us back to learning?

Sometimes not having the answer is better than having what turns out to be the wrong answer. I was given some very good advice at one time and it was to "hold the space". I've come to realize that sometime the intervention is not to intervene. That the better answer might be resolving to be present without expectations of the situation being anything other than it is right now. In many potentially volatile circumstances in recent months being able to allow myself not to push forward with a preconceived agenda may have allowed me to be open to an opening or better still allow the student to find the opening for himself. What I have had to try to keep myself focused on is recognizing and supporting the child to come through the opening when they find it. It takes time. A lot of time. It takes repeating. Many many times repeating the same patterned behavior, the same trusted response.  It's easy to think of this as wasted time and get anxious about the amount of work there is to do in a day. The truth is that this is the work. During TCI training (Therapeutic Crisis Intervention) a few months ago our group explored techniques and philosophies for supporting students in crisis. John, our instructor repeatedly came back to the same mantra. These are the kids that need us most and these kids simply take more. More effort, more time, more patience, planning, resources, communication, consideration...  MORE LOVE.

Here are some quotes from the book that I like... so far:

• "...peace within ourselves is a precondition for peace in the world."
• "Once we've engaged in battle, we all have the tendency to keep fighting because we think there's something that needs to be won."
• "It requires the courage to be silent and sensitive to what's going on in ourselves, in others and the space in between."
• "When we're overworked and over committed, it is difficult to be fully present for the children. That feeling of "lacking something" leads to dissatisfaction, mistakes and nagging. But even when we feel pressured, we can still learn to offer our presence, and that way improve the outcomes for our students."

More on this book later... 

Thanks for reading.

L

ReStart

It has been a busy spring break for me. The weather has not cooperated to get us out doors so I am using the time to investigate and experiment with some technologies that I have been wondering about. I went to a kindergarten teacher networking meeting a few weeks ago and was re-inspired to look at Twitter as a platform for communicating out our work, learning and ideas. What a wonderful afterschool meeting it was! We discovered iPad apps that connect to Twitter and learned how Andrew Sibbald's kindergarten classes are using this platform to make learning connected and authentic. WOW. Since then I have rediscovered my Twitter account and have taken the  21 Day Twitter Challenge to make it more a part of my professional connection and professional learning. I've come to realize that there is an enormous conversation "out there" that I was tuning out from. Tuning in has been so energizing! Please look me up onTwitter  @loriholford  I'm not hard to find -- on purpose. I've discovered networks relating to Assessment for Learning, Reggio Emilia, Ed Tech, Leadership and Early Literacy that I'm now following. I hope some of you will join me!

Lori