Model the Learning

This morning, as I try to get back into a routine ahead of Monday's return to work from March Break, I started reading Kathy Richardson's How Children Learn Number Concepts - A Guide to the Critical Learning Phases . This was a book that was given to me earlier this year after my role was expanded from working with grade 7-12 mathematics teachers to a full K-12 mathematics co-ordinator role. With only a background in intermediate & senior math, I've learned so much from primary and junior math teachers this year, and I'm eager to learn more about how students acquire concepts of number, relation, and computation. In her introduction, Richards describes what she calls Critical Learning Phases - "crucial mathematical ideas that students must understand if they are to find meaning in the mathematics they are expected to learn." These crucial ideas are "insights, rather than facts or procedures," meant to be carried forward as students engage in ...

Students often come into grade 9 faced with a number of transition challenges ( I previously wrote about these here ). Teachers, too, face challenges in preparing to teach grade 9 math, not the least of which is determining the skill level of students coming from a variety of backgrounds and experiences, all with different identified strengths and needs. The more information we can gather about our students, the better we can serve them. As our team of math co-ordinators works with teachers to determine how we can help our grade 9 students that need the most help, there is always a lot of talk of determining benchmarks in math. With respect to math skills, at what level are our students now?  Where do we want them to be?  And then how can we get them there? This year, we decided to design a new diagnostic assessment to compliment the existing  EduGAINS gap closing resources , and help us mark those initial benchmarks, as well as help us measure growth over t...