Monday 15 July 2013

Professional Development - Teaching Effective Numeracy Strategies

This is what I am reading right now.


Not exactly easy bed time reading, but very, very helpful. This year all teachers at my school have to choose two areas in which they want to develop their professional knowledge. Either the principal or the assistant principal mentors us and we do some research in our classrooms. One area I wanted to focus on was early number skills. I noticed that some of the little people in my class just weren't understanding the curriculum so I wanted to look at the developmental stages and see where they were truly at. I knew that I was teaching them out of their Zone of Proximal Development. As we all know, the curriculum doesn't fit everyone!

So I have assessed all my class (individually) using the SENA test which is part of the Count Me in Too program. Aussie teachers may know what I am talking about, but basically it checks numeral identification, forward oral counting, backward oral counting, counting objects with 1:1, addition strategies, subtraction strategies and multiplicative strategies. My next step is to analyse the results, put the children into focus groups and then teach according to their needs.

Easy? Yup. Haha.

I'll be sure to share my learning as I go.


3 comments:

  1. I am so pleased to see the WA 1st Steps Number book is there. I am a facilitator for this in our region and it was the best training I have ever had and I love presenting the units to schools.
    Paula from Paula’s Place and iSURF Maths

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  2. I used First Steps in QLD, so helpful to find out what the misconceptions children have in number. Used SENA in NSW and really loved the games from CMIT. Great holiday reading :)

    Tania
    Mrs Poultney's Ponderings

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  3. Thank you ladies! I appreciate the feedback!

    My plan is to get all the games organised and laminated into developmental stages.

    I loved First Steps for Writing and Reading, but haven't read the maths one until now. It seems that by the time the math book came out, First Steps was out of vogue and no professional learning was offered. Shame really!

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