Helen's day with Professor Jo Boaler
This post is from Helen Teal the Kaiārahi for Northland Maths Association. Helen was one of the 520 teachers who spent a day with Jo Boaler and Cathy Williams from Youcubed.com during the April break. "Jo & Cathy kept us engaged for the entire day as they shared ways of developing a growth mindset with students and setting up positive norms in the maths classroom . They inspired us to think about how we could teach maths in such a way that gives students mathematical freedom. Using low floor and high ceiling tasks was recommended as it makes mathematical learning accessible to all while providing scope for extension and the opportunity for students to seek connections and develop a deeper understanding of mathematical concepts. They suggested planning lessons around big ideas rather than methods. Ideas like Number Sense, Learning to Generalise, Maths as pattern seeking, Algebra as a problem solving tool and that you can teach the content/methods as