Educators from eight districts came together on May 8 2019 at Grauer Elementary in Richmond to share this year's collaborative professional inquiry projects, reflect on our work together and to think ahead to next year.
We were fortunate to have the BC Association of Mathematics Teachers (BCAMT) Vice-President join us for the evening. Sue Robinson is a secondary mathematics teacher and curriculum coordinator from the Gulf Islands School District and will be coordinating our Reggio-Inspired Mathematics mini-conference at the BCAMT Fall Conference on our PSA day on October 25 2019.
This past year our professional collaborative inquiry has been focused on how materials inspire mathematical thinking. Each participating district chose a material of focus such as clay or wire and considered questions such as:
How do encounters with materials help us connect our thinking about mathematical concepts?
What mathematical concepts come alive for us as we work with materials?
How might materials help us enhance a sense of identity or place?
How could we use materials to think with and through and use to share our thinking?
How does using non-mathematically structured materials support student's mathematical thinking and connection-making?
Districts shared their findings and resources they used to support their inquiry through table displays which are always a highlight of these events - so much thought and inspiration laid out before us.
As district teams share their documentation from their projects, they will be posted here.
After a lovely dinner together, our professional learning for the evening focused on the potential role of storytelling to enhance mathematical understanding. Drawing upon the Cognitively Guided Instruction research and the mathematical structures embedded in number operations, we considered how story contexts and actions can create connections and meaning for students. With so many teachers in BC exploring the assets of Story Workshop and the power of story as considered in the First Peoples Principles of Learning and embedded in the K-12 Mathematics Curricular Competencies, this is a natural intersection with the work our group is doing.
An excerpt from a draft of a publication around storytelling and math can be downloaded here:
Download JN_Storytelling_and_Math_2019_short
This year we have added a monthly slow chat on Twitter as a way to reach out educators beyond our districts. We met in cross-district groups to share our ideas around one of these discussion prompts that have been posted to Twitter:
And then we began to think ahead to next year and this visioning is always an important part of our spring meeting. Some of our ideas for nurturing and growing our project include continuing to have cross-district event three times over the school year, host regional meetings, bring back our Saturday institutes, consider a webinar series and focus on different types of documentation. Areas of focus for next year include outdoor learning, storytelling, and Indigenous ways of knowing and being.
As we put together a publication for this year's professional inquiry, we will also send out a survey for educators in our network to contribute ideas for our focus for next year. Follow educators in our network share their learning through Twitter and Instagram using the hashtag #BCAMTreggio. We are looking forward to pulling together our ideas for our Mini-Conference in October and will be sharing more information here and on social media as it comes together.
~Janice