Maths Week Preperation

This term I have been given a unit to take on Maths as a curriculum leader while our DP is on Sabbatical.  When discussing as a school if doing mixed ability groupings would work as a maths week approach (similar to what we do for Matariki days and a few other days we have throughout the year) and it was agreed that we would do this.  The trick with doing this however was how to cater  for the mixed ability groups that we would have in our rooms.  BUT ... I HAD A PLAN!!!

So rather that just do the normal thing for maths I had an idea that this might be a great opportunity to trial some of the ideas that I have heard other schools using.    So like with everything in teaching you need to do a little research and a little investigation as to what approaches and ideas to utilise.  So onto the web I went.

Here are some helpful links I found

• Bobbie maths - Raising pasificia achievement, 
• Mathematics inquiry communities, 
• DMIC - Developing Mathematical Inquiry Communities, 
• DMIC Best Evidence Exemplar, 
• Videos series on DMIC in NZ schools, 
• Another book chapter about DMIC.  

That same week an article was also presented about "stunning results from cultural responsive maths".   Talk about perfect timing.  So I shared this with the rest of our staff.

This research highlighted the sorts of problems that needed to be asked and how they needed to have scope to support and extend students within the problem.  It also highlighted the need to use authentic context to engage and provide a challenge.

As I continued to look into this I formulated a planning template and added this to my ideas presentation to take to the staff.  From here we came up with contexts to investigate but as staff meeting was full that week I took these ideas home and worked on them until I had the makings of some good questions.  At staff meeting the next week we reviewed them and added a few extra details that I didn't have that would make the context/problem all the more authentic (e.g. how much Team Moana still needed to raise for their ski trip).

The next step was to make these problems user friendly - so to google sites I went (was my first real play on the new google sites - as I'm an Old Sites kinda gal).  Below are links to the sites I ended up creating.