(instrumental music and clapping)
[Speaker]- Emma Sandford, Forrest Primary School.
(audience claps)
- There's 321 amazing people
teaching maths in schools who are
champions of reSolve Maths By Inquiry.
- [Speaker] Mark Ward, Urrbrae Agricultural High School,
South Australia.
And today we get to hear from 10 of them
who've got something really special to say
about the impact in their school,
what they have done and how great it's been.
(upbeat music)
- All the secrets of nature
are written down in that magnificent book
which is continuously before our eyes.
I refer to the universe.
One kid just put up his hand
and he just, said, he was in complete amazement.
He said, "Maths is everywhere."
And he just had that sense,
you could see it in his eyes.
He was just looking around the room
like this, just going,
"It's everywhere", you know. (laughs)
It was really cool.
(upbeat music)
- I like doing maths with Ms. McCarthy because
she makes it a lot more fun
and she puts everything kind of in a game.
- It's not too hard but not too easy.
Everyone's giving it a go.
- One of the parents said to me one day, she goes,
"How do you teach maths from Kindergarten
to year six? Do you do all the maths lessons?" (laughs)
I went, "Yeah, no." (laughs)
I wouldn't be able to do them all.
But she goes, "They just come home
and they talk about your lessons."
I'm only in there sometimes once a week or something.
So it's sticking with the children which is good.
- Two of these young men, fourteen-year-olds,
who had been so disengaged with mathematics,
who after this particular session opened the door
and skipped out of my classroom, down the corridor
past the 'too cool to be cool' guys
without any fear of repercussion
because they'd finally got it.
And one of them turned around and said to me,
"You know Ms. van der Schans
I really get this algebra stuff.
Thank you." (audience laughs)
(upbeat music)
- I guess reSolve having low floor, high ceiling activities
means that they're challenging and accessible
for all students and they gain an awareness
and confidence in their own abilities
when they realise that their answer is correct,
and that it might be different to the person's next to them,
but they're still tackling the problem-solving together.
- [Emma Sandford] What are we doing right now
that mathematicians do?
- [Student] Justifying and explaining answers.
- Justifying and explaining answers.
(upbeat music)
As I'm a classroom teacher, I had to really get the support
of my executive teachers and my principal
who have backed me completely
and have allowed me to go into other classrooms
and model reSolve lessons.
And I think through modelling and showing the difference
it can make it's got all the teachers on board.
(reflective music)
- I think the biggest advantage of having these materials
is that they're directly linked
to the Australian curriculum,
which is what we're required to work against in our school.
And so, um,
I could pick exactly where
a material or a resource
was going to fit into my teaching program.
(reflective music)
- What I've learned from the students was that
students see themselves now as mathematicians,
students want to be engaged and challenged,
students are no longer worried about making an error,
there are many different ways to solve one problem.
Teachers are no longer just giving us out the answers,
we learn from each other,
and we all have different entry and exit points,
and maths is fun.
(upbeat music)
- With the staff, I think predominantly
it's been risk-taking. So the willingness
to actually try new things,
particularly in regard to the inquiry approach.
(upbeat music)
- It's enabled us to get a group of schools together,
and to share resources and look at the reSolve,
so because the resource is quality,
we don't have to go to different sites and wonder
is that good enough
does that have problem-solving and reasoning in it.
(happy music)
- One of the lessons we came up with
that's now up on the reSolve website
is called cartoon counting,
and it came about with exploring the base-10 system
and we spoke about that in a classroom.
We kind of wonder why is 10 such an important number?
And you look down at your hands and say,
"Well, I've got 10 fingers,
maybe it has something to do with that."
We start to talk about The Simpsons,
who only have eight fingers,
and we wonder if they might
have a different counting system.
So, now there's a lesson out there exploring
what a base-eight system might look like.
(upbeat music)
- The thing that moved me so much was that
it stopped me having to do anything to convince
these pre-service teachers about inquiry.
'Cause once they started doing these tasks,
they moved themselves.
This particular girl said, "Ah, well,
I'm not scared of algebra anymore.
I know I can go in and teach it."
So I mean, that's pretty fabulous,
you know, for a pre-service teacher who
maybe previously would have gone into a school
and been scared and maybe taught algebra from the back
of a text book because that's all they knew how to do.
She's now doing it by inquiry.
- I would hope that the champions have confidence now,
that they can get up and organise events.
They've got some resources to support them in doing it.
But importantly, they've got a whole network,
a whole community of fellow champions
to seek advice from, to help co-present.
That would be my dream,
that they keep sharing their experiences
and ultimately making a difference with
what the kids experience in the classroom.
- [Group] reSolve!