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.