Bali Day 1 Part 2 - Toolbox stuff

Toolbox stuff
CORI - collect, organize, represent and interpret
The Knotted String
Provocations and Knowledge - Stand near a statement that provokes you. Stand near a statement that describes you.
Think Dump - on postits or programs like WallWasher. In our workshop the question here was, "A mathematically empowered student can ..."
"It is.../It is not..." Chart
A Kath Murdock site.
A series of books by Paul Swan and Geoff White - Developing Mathematics.
A Truth Line - students stand on a line between two polar statements, or between true and false on one statement.
A What I used to think, What I think now - exercise. Assessment stratagies to investigate - McTighe and ... - 6 facets of understanding

Bali Day 1

It looks like the IB expects that math that is not authentically integrated with a UOI should have it's own planner written on the IB's planner. I think tomorrow will be interesting at the workshop because we are going to talk about planners, both integrated and stand-alone units. From what the two workshop leaders have said so far, they don't 'do' math through investigations as we do them. The way they talk about 'doing' stand-alone units is to take one strand and develop a deep understanding of all of its facets. However, I've been able to talk to a few other teachers about what we are doing, and they are very excited. Should be interesting.

 Grade 4 teachers came up with a bunch of stuff-
McRel - I will need help with this one - I always have trouble navigating the site. I have this link and this document.
iMath - a Queensland textbook, inquiry based - has the sports stadium inquiry.
NZMath
maths300 (a website - on our wiki's resource page)
Scott also shared these with me
Studyladder (similar to Mathletics, but it's free).
iBoard - with lots of support for teachers
Lots of other interesting stuff. I had a bit of an insight when I was asked to put down some goals. As often happens when you write down a question, you come up with an answer. My question, or my goal, was to improve my ability to pre-assess. I came up with a solution immediately. Note down what we want students to learn and then work with Katy to find evidence. Katy should look at half of the class, and I will look at the other half. Other ways to pre-assess include Rocket Writing, Thinking Trades (although I'm not sure how that works, will have to view the video at IB's OCC Opening Classroom Doors) and Provocations (remember to include what I find difficult and what I do well)
The other goals, or questions, that I have include
Improving differentiation strategies - this was modelled well in our workshop when Glen and Bec set up a task to scaffold the learning where tasks of increasing complexity were given, and we worked on them as far as we could go, or wanted to go.
Using inquiry in math
integrating math into the UOI

Another thing we need to do more of in class is reflection, will have to look at that video from Edutopia. There are a sick amount of resources and toolbox items I have to include, but it's late and I'm going to bed.

Math stuff

Questions For the Central Idea

I will need to ask more leading questions to drive the questioning process. May use those questions I had in gmail. Why do we have government? How does the government affect us? What are the different political systems? How would my life be different if I lived in another political system?

Math Placement Tests

This site has tests for all grades.
This is the one for grade 2
Grade 6, 4 missing geometry, angles and volume
And another one, looks good.

Another Thing For Next Year

Instead of tests, maybe we perform pre-assessment techniques?

A New Year, A New Focus

I guess I will be using this as an area to put ideas for math. I think we should look at the mathematical concepts as our benchmarks ("The students should be able to ...") and the learning indicators as a bunch of content areas that we need to cover to get there. Also we should be looking at important mathematical and scientific skills that are included in many curricula world wide, including the Queensland "Ways of Working" These should be incorporated into our scope and sequence because there is a gap there. Just because our interpretation of the MOE curriculum doesn't have these "Ways of Working" doesn't mean the MOE doesn't explicitly state them. However, it is up to us to incorporate them into our curriculum. I am also interested in developing and incorporating inquiries into our curriculum.

The learning indicators are very important as this is were we will be assessed by Taiwanese parents as the point of comparison. Taiwanese parents aren't going to compare the students in our school with others in their conceptual understanding or their ability to apply their understanding with meaning. We will be compared on how well and how quickly our students can perform the mathematical computations. Above all parents do not want their students "falling behind." We are not at the stage where we can say, "They don't do as well on the test, but they have a better understanding."