My name's Penny Kalogeropoulos.
I've been at Wooranna Park for a long time,
approximately 10 years in total.
This year my role has been mainly a maths specialist role
and that's working with fellow teachers and students
in helping to develop innovative and creative mathematic programs
and to increase motivation and engagement in the children
and to increase confidence
for teachers to plan really good mathematics learning
and creating an interest in mathematics.
And the theme of our workshop today is estimation,
but we will be talking about what messages we want you to get
out of our maths workshop throughout the lesson, OK?
Some of the session is going to involve you working on your own
and using your own ability to answer some questions,
but then there will be times in the workshop
where you'll be using other resources
such as your friends or the person next to you or a visual image
to help you answer some questions, OK?
So the question we want to ask you today -
how many states of Victoria
fit into the other states of Australia?
PENNY: I'm at the finishing stages
of completing my PhD at Monash University
and my topic is
'Engagement and Disengagement in Mathematics Education'.
So one of the things that I'm really trialling in my classrooms
is, "How do we create an environment
"which engages children in mathematics learning?"
The biggest trick with running workshops, in my opinion,
is creating open-ended activities,
creating an environment
where children feel that they can answer to the best of their ability.
GIRL: I would prefer working with a partner
because then we can work together
and then we can expand it out together.
Well, guess what.
You are going to work with a partner for the next part
so I'll make your life a bit easy.
This time what you're going to do is work with the person next to you
so you might want to shuffle your table
closer to the person next to you.
And what we want you to do this time
is we want you to show your work to your partner
and there's probably going to be a bit of giggling,
going, "What? You wrote seven? No!"
And we want you to have a discussion with your partner
and see if you want to change any of your results
now is the time you can do it
and you're going to fill in your second estimate.
So using your partner's information,
this is your opportunity now to change your answers.
Now, in the workshop room, obviously you saw we had the chairs and tables
and the children were quite lined up, facing the front,
which appears to be quite traditional,
however I'd like to believe that it was innovative and creative
because the children were provided with numerous opportunities
to work with each other,
they were provided with the message that I hope I was clear about
that their answers are estimates and they're only approximate
and, of course, the workshop ran in such a way
where I not only tried to give them some mathematic skills,
but also some just good learning skills.
I just want to talk a little bit about this.
Hands up if you found that much easier
when you had an opportunity to talk to the person next to you.
I found it easier with a partner
because with the partner you can think about it
and then you can easily change your idea
because they might have a better idea than you had before.
So we have proven mathematically
that when we work with other people
and when we use instruments like maps and stencils and calculators
that we get closer results, don't we?
So keep that in mind
when you're doing your maths work independently, OK?
Always look out for help, ask each other.
When you provide these opportunities
and children don't know if they're right or wrong until the very end
I think they feel less threatened
to engage in a mathematics learning activity.
One of the things that has really worried me in the past
in my experience as a maths teacher
and something I've been researching quite extensively with my PhD
is maths anxiety in children.
And, unfortunately, in this world, many of us declare publicly,
"Oh, I was never good at maths, I hate maths,"
and, unfortunately, that is said so commonly in parents
that it filters through to the children,
but children need to understand
that everything that is done in mathematics
is created through wonder and through interest.
And that's how mathematics began in ancient Greece
and I'd like to bring that back into the mathematics classroom
where children - and I'm hoping every child in that workshop -
felt like, "It didn't matter what I wrote down as an answer,"
because that answer was refined by working with people and understanding
and that is life.
And today was an example of children working together to reach an answer
and I hope that what they did is walk away with thinking,
"Now I know how to get an answer closer
"when I'm just not sure what to do."