A Collection of Cameos

When something special happens with tasks and kids, it doesn't take much to write a paragraph or two to share the moment. This is your place to record those moments. Send an email, add a photograph if you wish, or a scan of a kid's work to Doug. Williams: doug@blackdouglas.com.au

I have definitely found the Maths300 resources very useful - they certainly tick all the boxes from a pedagogical point of view - well done with everything there! ... It's not just the richness of the tasks that has been transformative in the classroom for me - it is the approach from the teacher that they call for. I used to be a very 'controlling' and content-oriented educator, but I think I am achieving a better balance these days. One thing that particularly struck me was observing Charles Lovitt deliver a PD session in Tennant Creek at the start of the year, showcasing a variety of tasks. Just the way he was able to lay down the challenge, to conjure intrigue and interest with a softly spoken approach with few words - inviting us to 'come and have a look at this' and 'come and have a go', just as he would with adolescents but just as effective with the adults that were present. Anyhow, I look forward to learning more about what you guys are up to - in particular for Indigenous education - and I am sure we will be in touch in the future.

I have to say that since your 2 days at St Mary's there has been a change in the way Mathematics has been presented in the classroom. The learning centre tasks are being used and there is a great deal of professional discussion and sharing that is occurring between teachers about what has worked, what has not and how to dig deeper with the tasks to get the most out of them. We still have a long way to go, but the early signs have been encouraging.

Personally, I have enjoyed completing a number of whole class investigations, especially with the Grade 6 children. I recently completed the make me a million investigation with them. I was shocked to learn how few of them had a meaningful concept of how big a million actually is. They believed that it was possible for a person to live a million days and it took a lot of convincing to get them to accept that you really have to live over 2700 years to achieve that. Of course, that lead to how old for 1,000,000 hours, minutes and seconds and they decided that in order to be told to do something 1,000,000 times it would require 11 solid days of nagging. None the less it was fun. I also introduced the game Nim to them. As they are chess nuts at the moment, this strategic game was right up their alley and they wanted to start a Nim tournament.

I also ran Row Points (one of your Discussion Lessons) with Grade 3/4. It was a wonderful session. In the end (we could only manage a high score of 40) I was asked by a Grade 4 girl What would happen if we had 14 counters? Would our top score only go up to 41 or would it be much more? It is questions like this that make me believe that we are on the right track in getting our children to think like mathematicians.

Some of the staff have had a go at Eric - I had a conversation with Irene who has the Senior Special Learning Centre today, and we commented on how flexible these tasks are. She was only able to scratch the tip of the iceberg in her session on Eric but we were both very happy with the way it went. For those students it was enough, for now, to look at the different strategies you could use to solve the problem.

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