Professional Development Programs

Taste & See

Use the ideas, activities and principles in the Free Tour. Look for any influence they have on your children's learning. Try to establish the environment described in Calculating Changes in Brief. You probably already have calculators and if you don't have Poly Plug you will be able to adapt.

Mini-PD

Arrange a short professional development session (~2 hours) so your staff can experience the materials and ideas. This will provide the basis for staff discussion about future involvement.

Alternatively, purchase site membership and/or Working Mathematically with Infants then arrange this workshop to stimulate staff involvement.

One Day & Six Day Programs

Programs that support schools to gain full benefit from their Calculating Changes membership are part of the Maths on the Move workshop library. This is accessed through the links below. Please review the possibilities and discuss your needs.

• Engineering 'aha' Moments in Number
  Designed as a one day, student free session for the whole staff. Hands-on, stimulating, exciting with time for planning classroom trials. Poly Plug purchase is essential for this course and Calculating Changes membership is desirable. More information in the link.

• Engineering 'aha' Moments K-8
  Designed for clusters of schools and systems, the program develops key teachers (at least two from each of infant, middle and upper school works well) who become in-house leaders of curriculum shift and teacher change. This program can be used very successfully by two or three neighbouring schools with a common objective. It links the work of Calculating Changes, Mathematics Task Centre & Maths300 through the framework of all students learning to work like a mathematician in best practice classrooms. Purchase of Poly Plug, Tasks and Calculating Changes membership is essential for this course. More information in the link.

  Advantages of this approach are:

  • a focussed key team to keep the project 'bubbling' in the school
  • professional development occuring as close as possible to the teachers' work environment
  • professional development independent of the availability of an external consultant and therefore more easily integrated with other demands on the school's time
  • reduced professional development costs per school
  • key teachers able to take their leadership expertise with them when they move schools

  Nic Dale's Story: describes the affect this program had on one teacher and his school

Discussion Lessons

Programs above can be supported and enhanced by Discussion Lesson days.

In a Discussion Lesson our leader:

• teaches the class for one session while at least 2 teachers observe the children learning
• debriefs with the teachers immediately after the session to draw out and expand on the learning in the session and how it occurred
• challenges the teachers to run the same lesson with another group and organise a reporting back session with each other

It is usually possible to organise 3 Discussion Lessons per day, assuming each lesson is 50 minutes with the children, followed by 50 minutes with observing teachers.