Session 2 2016/17

Our second session began with a check in on our Northern Lights Assessments and our "What is Math?" activities. 

Notes from our session can be found here: Math Inquiry Notes Dec. 1

Next we explored the instructional routine "Which One Doesn't Belong?" starting with the example below: 

Take a look at this website to find some more examples to get started with: Which One Doesn't Belong? 

Another great resource is the original book: 

Homework:

• Try out WODB in your classroom (in many different variations, etc.) and share out your observations/thoughts/ideas next session.

• Read Chapter 2 of “Mathematical Mindsets”

Jim will present on “spirolaterals” next session which is Thursday, January 19th!

Session 1 of 2016/17

We had a wonderful first session in our Math Inquiry Project! Lively discussion and some good laughter as well!

Here are all of the resources from today*:

Invitation and Program for 2016/17

Agenda and Notes from today (Oct. 27, 2016)

A couple of one (or two) pagers from two awesome math teachers:

Marion Small - this resource has tons of interesting open-ended questions to promote curiosity in math class. She also has some great recommendations and tips on teaching math.

Fawn Nguyen - these are Susan's notes from Fawn's keynote at the BC Math Teachers Association conference this fall. Some excellent thoughts and important considerations for teaching math!

We discussed the inquiry process we could use to examine our professional practice. Here are some notes on the Spirals Of Inquiry, as well as some thoughts on making math meaningful for our students.

• We will begin with "scanning", so to start us off we are all committed to doing a simple assessment from this resource: Northern Lights Numeracy Assessment .

We also decided to do a check in with our students on their attitude and feelings towards Math: 

• One idea was to have a class discussion about math focusing on "what is math?" and "where do we find math?" This would be followed up with asking students to answer these questions: What causes you to feel successful when you are doing math? What causes you to struggle in math? and What learning environment makes you feel comfortable in a math class? 
• Another idea was to have students create a web about math (same questions as the class discussion above). 

We decided to order Jo Boaler's book "Mathematical Mindsets: Unleashing Students' Potential Through Creative Math, Inspiring Messages and Innovative Teaching" as our book study book. Hopefully these will arrive before our December 1st session!

NEXT SESSION: Plan to report back in and bring samples from doing an assessment with your class from the Northern Lights Numeracy Assessment and from your check in with students about their attitude and feelings towards math.

*I've also added all of these resources to our shared folder. This folder has been developed over three years of our Math Inquiry Projects. You can save it to your Google Drive and access it easily that way (if you are not sure how to do this, I can show you!).

Math Inquiry 2016/17

Math Inquiry Invitation and Overview for 2016/17

Interesting Articles

Gail suggested this might be a great post to add to our blog. Looks like a great read with some ideas to keep the enthusiasm up as we transition into "end of year" time:

Teaching Channel: Featuring Jo Boaler and Math Mindsets


Enjoy!

Wednesday, May 18th

It's our last Math Inquiry session of this school year!

Here are links to two templates for reflection questions about your math class throughout this year:
Math Inquiry Reflection 1
Math Inquiry Reflection 2

We would also really appreciate feedback about our five sessions. Please fill out our "exit slip"!
Math Inquiry Exit Slip 

Thank you very much!

Resources from our April 20th session

Here are some of the resources we looked at during our April 20th afternoon session:

Geoff Krall led the PBL session, he is on twitter @emergentmath and he writes a great bloghttps://emergentmath.com/

Here are some links that we refered to: 

Play different versions of KenKen puzzles, or make your own:
http://solveme.edc.org/mysterygrid/

Wooden number blocks:
https://www.sumblox.com/index.php

Open Middle Problems: 
http://www.openmiddle.com/

Which One Doesn't Belong
http://wodb.ca/index.html

Running the Numbers: 
http://www.chrisjordan.com/gallery/rtn/#silent-spring

Check out #mtbos on twitter, or me @orangeparachute, or jess at @willowsjess

The perfect circle guy from Ottawa is Alex Overwijk and is blog is
http://slamdunkmath.blogspot.ca/ who is also on twitter @AlexOverwijk

Here is the Depth of Knowledge worksheet from Robert Kaplinsky (it is in our shared resources folder on our Google Docs Drive):

Depth of Knowledge

Susan's one pager on Depth of Knowledge (also in our shared drive folder):

Open Middle and Depth of Knowledge

Jo Boaler's article on finger perception and connection to number understanding:
http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/04/why-kids-should-use-their-fingers-in-math-class/478053/

Also, here's an article about assessment and mathematics: 

https://www.youcubed.org/think-it-up/aligning-assessment-brain-science/

Action Planning

We had a great session yesterday! Thank you Gail for your "Number Talks" demonstration!

There were some rich conversations going on all over the room as we delved into representing various math concepts concretely using this handout:

Differentiating with Manipulatives 

Here is a quick view of some of the fun!

We also shared ideas/quotes/thoughts from our book club book and shared other resources we have found super useful. Thank you Janisse for giving folks some great primary focused resources! 

Next is ACTION PLANNING! Please let Susan or I know what supports you might need for you and your classroom as you enter this next step in your professional inquiry!

Also: I've posted the "Process of Multiplication" video under Resources. 

Next Session: Wed, Feb 10

Just a reminder that our next Math Inquiry session is next Wednesday, Feb. 10. Please fill out your LOA forms if you haven't already done so.

Here is the plan for the day. 

1. Number Talk

2. Play with manipulatives

3. Book Discussion *

4. Resource Sharing **

5. Check in on inquiry questions and time for action/planning.

* Book Discussion: We hope you've started reading our book, Creating Cultures of Thinking. If you could bring a question, idea or quote from the book, that would be great.

** It's always a good idea to share resources with each other. If you have anything that you would like to share with the group, bring it along.

As always, we're looking forward to our time together. See you Wednesday in the Career Centre room @ GISS!

Workshop: "Building Thinking Classrooms"

Here are the links to the resources he shared at our workshop: Gulf Islands Presentation