An Assessment Day

Today, Ann is running a Maths Assessment Workshop at the Hindmarsh EDC and expects an audience of about 120 people. She has some very clear messages about the importance of formative assessment and the role it plays in planning differentiated units of work. Here is one of the slides she will be using during the day to stimulate discussion about where teachers are right now with their assessment and the direction in which they want to go.

“If you have clear intents about what you hope students will learn and what students will bring with them to the task then it is possible to give constructive feedback as the students work. It is also possible to engage them in conversations about what they are actually learning and what they think they need to do or know next.”

“If we want to develop responsible learners then we need to engage them in self monitoring, reflection and feed forward as well as feedback”.

During the day, a number of examples of problematised situations will be discussed with a focus on teasing out the information that this type of activity provides and how problematised situations can be used for assessment as well. Here is one example, which starts with a true lie:

You know my neighbour from down the road. Well, his dog has just had a litter of 9 puppies and he told me that half of them were plain and half were spotty. Do you know, I think he’s telling me a fib, but I’m not sure. Do you think you could tell me if he is telling a fib?

Ann also has two work samples that she collected on her travels and will open up a discussion about what could be gathered from these student responses.

Telstra Awards

It’s now 11 years since Natural Maths won the Telstra Business Award for a micro-business (a business with less than 5 employees). This week we were invited as alumni to the Queensland Awards night and what a brilliant evening it turned out to be. It was great to be reminded of the fact that to run any business is hard but rewarding work and that valuing the people that you work with and for is a key part of making and keeping your enterprise a success.

Thanks to all of you who have been part of our endeavour and to Telstra for supporting the annual Business Awards event for 21 years. It was great to be part of the excitement.

Back in 2001, when we first entered Natural Maths for an award, we were a very different business. All of our materials were photocopied and mailed out by us alone. We had just started the Naturally Mathematical competition which was our first venture into using technology – teams were encouraged to email their solutions rather than hand-write them. Now, 12 years later, we are moving towards being a paperless venture and have great hopes for the role of devices such as the iPad to bring fresh ideas to the teaching of mathematics. And we sometimes wonder what it will be like in 10 years’ time … all we can be sure of is that it will be different!

NAIDOC Week

Let’s take a moment to recognise Naidoc week and celebrate with an Australian counting book.

An Australian 1, 2, 3 of Animals by Bronwyn Bancroft (a descendant of the Bundjalung people of New South Wales) is one of my favourite books for introducing doubles and near doubles. It is illustrated using aboriginal-style designs and stands in its own right as a beautiful picture book. As a counting book it is also very clever, creating double page spreads of very clear double and near double designs. Every double-page spread has either a double or a near double associated with it as shown on the double page spread for eleven.

This makes it an ideal inspiration for students to create their own similar double page spreads for any number of their choosing, emphasizing doubles and near doubles.

Unlike many other counting books this one does not stop at ten, it goes to 15 providing opportunities for exploring some of those teen numbers that prove to be so difficult for students to understand. Teen numbers have been very much at the forefront of our thinking lately. Many students need more time to explore how numbers between 10 and 20 work and to partition them in many different ways. With this in mind we have a new eBook package available at our website - and it also features the number eleven.

http://naturalmaths.com.au/acm_hidden_creatures.php

An Australian 1, 2, 3 of Animals is published by Little Hare Books and is available from the iTunes store in a format that you can share with your class on your iPad.