NZL One - Two - Three

Its that time of year when we get a chance to stop and think about all the things we wanted to do and never quite got done. For me one of those things is reducing the reading list & next year I plan to allocate some time each week to professional reading. ULearn15 : If you didn't get the chance to go or like me couldn't be in several places at once and missed some of the spotlight sessions, you can find their presentations here . Keynote presenters included, Grant Lichtman, Dr Ann Leiberman, Pat Sneddon. Over the weekend, I watched Leaders growing Leaders, from Barbara Cavanagh , Principal, of Albany Senior High School. A key message was, to be an educational leader we should learn about learning so we can make every student a successful learner . Her reading list for us included Leadership Mindsets. Linda Kaser & Judy Halbert  Building Learning Power. Guy Claxton  Mindset. Carol Dwek  Student Centred Leadership. Vivianne Robinson  Visible lea

      This week 12000+  secondary students in New Zealand sat their first digitally assessed exam. One Auckland school had 350 students complete digital mcat and by all accounts things ran pretty smoothly. However the trusty pen still rules in 2015. All students are sitting the paper version this week.   In this post there are links to access the digital versions of the paper, videos of worked solutions (EOE) and a few thoughts about preparing students for exams in general. The 2 mcat papers can be found on the NZQA Maths & Statistics Page along with all past papers Subash Chandar K worked his magic Friday afternoon and recorded solutions for the  Day 1  paper. This is a great example of how in NZ we can make use of technology to bring teachers together, innovate & share for the benefit of all students.  After 24 hours hours there had been 600+ views. I will be interested to see what this number will be by Thursday. While looking up the link to a

On the way to work this morning I was captured by an interview, on Radio New New Zealand National,  with Tim Gander, Centre Director, for the Gisborne MindLab about improving the engagement of students through technology.  Listen to the interview  here   Also check out the post grad diplomas available through The MINDLAB   here .  The next course begins on November 2nd & teacher scholarships are available. One school using technology to enhance learning is Ormiston Senior College. I went to Subash Chandra K's workshop at the recent NZAMT conference in Auckland and got re-inspired to work on my video making skills.  He began his journey with an inquiry into flipping the classroom with his year 13 Calculus class. Top tips from the workshop were, keep it simple, keep them short and if you make a mistake while recording just correct yourself and keep going. In the early days he re-recorded videos to try and make them perfect which took a lot of time. Don't be too h

[ image credit ] I always looked forward to getting to the end of Term Two - the hump term of the year - the shortest day has been and gone and by start of term 3 the days are longer and summer feels like it is is on its way again. Early in Term 2, I was lucky enough to go to TEDx Auckland. With a line up of 16 awesome speakers the day delivered much more than I was expecting. A selection of the talks are now on youtube . Tama Iti, spoke about Mana & the power of knowing who you are . Hong Sheng Chiong , received a standing ovation for his work in fighting preventable blindness with $20 and a smartphone Shaun Hendy's talk on innovating struck a chord and I have been wondering how his thoughts around the need to connect to share ideas in order to innovate can be applied to teaching & learning in our maths classrooms.  By using our number 8 wire approach and the power of the internet maybe we can bring teachers together, a bit like the water cooler effect; when wor

When thinking about putting to together a learning programme I often hear , Where do I find ....  in this post I have gathered the key sites for teaching maths & stats in NZ & added links in the side bar for quick reference ________________________________________________________________________   The senior secondary guides    on TKI have been designed to help us develop quality teaching and learning programmes at levels 6–8 of  The New Zealand Curriculum  (2007). THere is a senior secondary guide for all curriculum areas. The maths & statistics guide is full of useful information we should be using to plan our teaching & learning programme. The Achievement Objectives section includes a list if what can be taught, examples of teaching activities that could be used in the teaching programme, key changes, and at the bottom of each page,Achievement standards that can be used to assess the learning. Learning programme design gives examples of diff

14th April was Literacy Leaders day -  as you were probably enjoying your holiday and blissfully unaware of Literacy Leaders day I thought it fine to visit the idea of literacy now. When literacy is mentioned in a mathematical context the first thing that comes to mind is statistics & preparing students to write reports.  Google uncovered many kinds of  literacy - digital, financial, cultural, emotional, geographical, environmental, academic, information .....  Looks like all teachers are teachers of literacy - this prompted 3 questions What is mathematical literacy? Why is it important? What do we need to know about effective literacy teaching? The NZ curriculum says Literacy is the ability to understand respond to, and use those forms of written language that are required by society and valued by individuals and communities (MOE, 2003) PISA defines mathematical literacy as: an individual’s capacity to identify and understand the role that

Towards the end of Term 1 while teachers were finalising their first round of assessment grades a number of questions came up around resubmission. Who to offer a resubmission to, how much can the student "fix" up, can I tell them what to fix, how much time can they have, can we reteach them .... I thought it would be good to share with you some of the "myths" surrounding resubmissions Myth #5 Resubmissions Myth #1. If I want to offer a resubmission to one student then I have to offer it to all students Myth #2. I can show students what they should fix up Myth #3. I can offer multiple resubmission opportunities Myth #4. A student cannot be awarded anything higher than Achieved for a resubmission A resubmission is offered to an individual student on a case-by-case basis . Extracts from SecQual S2009/022 New Rules & Procedures for Further Assessment Opportunities A resubmission should only be offered where a teacher judges that a mistake ha

Here is the first  National Maths & Stats Newsletter  of the year with many useful links.  I particularly like the new you cubed site from Stanford University  http://youcubed.stanford.edu /, and Jo Boaler,  Professor of Mathematics Education and the driving force behind the very successful “How to Learn Maths” course.  She uses Carol Dweck’s work and this website is heavily informed by her interpretations of “Mindset”.  http://youcubed.stanford.edu/category/teaching-ideas/growing-mindset/  .  The positive class norms section contains a document worth sharing with her 7 favourite messages for students Stanford also released a news article last week on the need to teach maths without fear or speed.  You can find the article  here  The short paper the news article is based on is worth downloading and having a read through. While this paper is aimed at younger students, as secondary teachers having students coming into year 9 without a sound knowledge of

This post from the secondary literacy on line forum got me thinking about what we do in maths to start the year.  Great first lessons: Igniting the fire in your students. There is nothing like the first lesson to excite students about the learning both as an individual and as a class of learners who are hopefully going to take charge of their own learning. How do you want them to feel when they leave your classroom? What is the most important thing you want them to know? Are they going to feel a part of a class or feel like a separate individual? How are you going to establish  manaakitanga  (values of integrity, trust, sincerity and integrity)  What are you going to do to build  whanaungatanga  (relationships based on high expectations)? To build whanaungatanga: The string activity: In groups of 4, students are given two pieces of string and some post-its. They are to use the string to make the North and South Island. Individually students write on a post-it a pl

Kia Ora Koutou Welcome everyone With so much information coming at us from so many directions it is hard to keep up. This blog is a trial in keeping our maths & statistics related information together on a continuum and in one place. It is also be a learning experience for me having never used blogs before despite them being around for a number of years. Have you trialled blogs with your students?   How could they be used to improve teaching and learning in maths & statistics?  How might  a blog be used to create opportunities for natural reading and writing?  Could a blog be used to collect evidence for assessments?