Reggio-Inspired Mathematics

Reggio-Inspired Mathematics Spring Saturday Event: Connecting Math and Story Outdoors

We are bringing back our seasonal outdoors Saturday events!

Join Lauren MacLean and Janice Novakowski on Saturday, April 30 from 10am-12pm at Garry Point Park in Steveston. We will meet at the south end of the main parking lot - look for a group of educators with wagon/s. Open to any interested educators. Children are welcome. No cost, no formal registration. We will be meeting rain or shine (or thundersnow? - whatever weather joins us that morning!). 

As we make a loop around Garry Point together, we will think about opportunities for connecting math and story in different outdoor settings. You are welcome to bring your own resources and ideas to share with the group.

There are many wonderful restaurants just steps away in Steveston if you are planning a day trip to join us!

~Janice

cross-district meeting: November 9 2021

Educators from across six districts gathered on Zoom after school on November 9 to re-connect and share a little around how each district planned to take up this professional inquiry project this year.

Some districts are looking at revitalizing this project in their districts while others have a specific inquiry question developed related to our overall focus on story and math. Examples include investigating math and story in everyday experiences, storytelling on the land inspiring emergent experiences in mathematics, the use of data to tell a story of place or community and connecting math, materials and the outdoors.

We discussed and shared ideas about some big ideas related to connecting story and math.

We brainstormed different ways to connect and think together through this professional inquiry project and used mentimeter.com to collect "votes" from those attending. The following is how the group thought we should concentrate our group's efforts this year:

So look forward to some upcoming events and projects! Information will be posted on this site or you could contact your district contact for this project.

Slides from our meeting can be viewed here:

Download BCRIM_November_2021

~Janice

Reggio Children Online Atelier: Mosaic of Marks

On October 28, I set my alarm for 5:30am to be up and ready for another live online atelier experience from Reggio Children in Italy. This atelier was focused on a Mosaic of Marks, Words and Materials and we were asked to gather mark making tools and surfaces in preparation.

The atelieristas shared some of their thinking and then asked us to select four mark making materials and four surfaces and to just spend some time investigating those materials sensorially before making any marks. We were then invited to share three concepts or ideas that came to mind as we explored the materials. Two of my words were connections and residue. 

We were then invited to begin mark making, thinking about the concepts and ideas that were inspired by the materials. I played with the idea of connecting circles and spirals and the different residues left by the tools on different surfaces.

The atelieristas watched as we used the materials and providing feedbacks and prompts to provoke our thinking and nudge our investigations in a deeper or new way. I was reminded of the importance of providing learners (adults, children, etc) with time to immerse themselves with ideas and materials.

The Vancouver Reggio Association, in collaboration with NAREA, will be hosting Reggio Children's Mosaic of marks exhibit here in Vancouver, beginning in the fall of 2022.

~Janice

 

Northwest Mathematics Conference 2021

The Northwest Mathematics Conference is being held virtually this year instead of at Whistler. The BCAMT hosts this conference every three years, alternating with Washington and Oregon. Our BC Reggio-Inspired Mathematics Project is happy to be sharing some of our work together in a session called "Learning Mathematics Outdoors and Through Stories" featuring Lauren MacLean from Coquitlam and Michelle Hikida from Richmond. Outdoor learning and storytelling has been an area of professional inquiry with our group for the last few years. 

 

The theme of the conference this year is CONNECTING which is such an important part of the pedagogy of The Reggio Emilia Approach. We can think about mathematical connections - math to self, math to world and math to math as ways to create meaning for learning mathematics. Connections between colleagues across districts, provinces and countries also inspires new ways of thinking about teaching and learning. We are looking forward to connecting with teachers on Friday, October 22!

 

You can find more information on the conference website HERE.

Thanks to all the teachers from across Canada that attended our session on Friday. The recording will be available till Nov 14 and information will be emailed to you about how to access it from the BCAMT.

Slides we shared are here:

Download NWMATH_BCRIM_2021

Download HIkida_Northwest_Math_Conference_Oct2021

Download What math lives outdoors.pptx

~Janice

Reggio Children Virtual Atelier: Geometries of Paper

On June 18, I attended a virtual/digital atelier with atelieristas from Reggio Children in Reggio Emilia Italy. This atelier was titled: "The poetics of paper between geometries and transformations" which intrigued me. It was amazing be with educators from all around the world, playing with materials and ideas together. I represented BC with my friend and colleague and BCAMT president Sue Robinson from Salt Spring Island where she is a secondary math teacher. 

The ateliers are interactive and you are sent a list of suggested materials and tools to have prepared. This is how I had my dining room table set up for the 6am PST start (time zones!!). 

The two hours went by so quickly and when I reflected on this, it was because the majority of the time I was so immersed in investigating paper and seeing what I could make it do as I thought about shapes, size and symmetry. The atelieristas invited us to tilt our laptops at 45degrees so they could see what we were doing with our hands and materials. It was intrigued by playing with the idea of transformation which I think paper is such an excellent material to use for this. I ripped, cut, and folded different papers to transform them, often focusing on 2D to 3D transformation. 

What mathematical connections might you make as you play with paper? What are the possibilities of paper for thinking about mathematics? What memories and stories does paper evoke for you? What metaphors do some shapes hold for you?

I am looking forward to hosting a paper atelier with teachers and/or students this fall!

E-Learning opportunities with Reggio Children can be found HERE.

~Janice

cross-district meeting: June 16 2021

Several educators came together after school via Zoom on June 16 2021 to share and reflect on our very unique school year. Our collaborative inquiry focus this year was on story and because of the year we had we decided as a group to continue this focus next year, with hopes we will be able to gather together in person to share ideas, materials, resources and documentation.

In 2019 we published our first issue of a magazine series. It is currently only available through blurb.ca and because of the high costs of postage for individual copies we have decided to pursue other publishing options to make it more accessible. This summer we will be re-publishing our first magazine as a "trade book" with some added content and edits and it will be available through various sources online. Once we sort out the logistics with the first issue, we will publish our second issue/book which focuses on outdoor learning and mathematics. 

 

 

A group of educators from our project will be presenting a collaborative session at this year's virtual Northwest Mathematics Conference in October 2021. Our areas of focus will be outdoor learning and storytelling. More information is available HERE. Registration is available HERE. 

We have started a monthly e-newsletter this year - make sure to subscribe in the right sidebar!

Have a wonderful summer,

Janice

cross-district meeting: February 9 2021

Educators from several districts came together after school on February 9 via Zoom to check-in and share some ideas about this year's focus area: storytelling and math. We shared our new monthly twitter post idea which is to provide a prompt to spark spatial reasoning. Follow our hashtag on Twitter #BCreggiomath to find the prompt at th beginning of each month.

We also shared our new monthly newsletter which you can subscribe to here on this blog (see the box on the right) and will be sent to you via email mid-month. 

We discussed this year's focus question: How does story help student make meaning of mathematics? and connected this question to ideas of perspective, identity, language, place and culture. We shared our thinking around how all these ideas contribute to the Story of Math...and how representation matters in how we share the story of math with our students.

Drawing upon the words of author Amy Alznauer, how might childhood biographies of mathematicians help contribute to students' mathematical identity and understanding of who does math and what counts as math?

Ideas for a Story of Math project percolated and were shared - more to come on this, but here is what what some of our group shared during their breakout small group meetings today. 

We are looking forward to compiling and sharing our ideas around storytelling and math this spring.

Take care,

Janice

cross-district meeting: November 18 2020

On November 18, several teachers representing districts participating in our project joined together after school via Zoom to debrief the BCAMT fall conference, make plans for this school year and share ideas. 

We also shared some resources and webinar shared by Reggio Children:

We spent some time in breakout rooms choosing some of the following questions to discuss as a way to connect to our current teaching contexts:

Our professional inquiry focus for 2020-21 is storytelling and math. 

In Zoom breakout rooms, cross-district groups of teachers shared their ideas and then we posted these ideas to menti.com which has lots of ways to visually represent information.

We look forward to connecting and collaborating in new ways in 2021! More information to come soon.

~Janice
 

 

BCAMT Fall Conference 2020

Our group was honoured to be invited to share some of our ideas and thinking at this year's BCAMT Fall Conference. We appreciate the support we have received from the BCAMT over the years and are happy to continue to collaborate with this BCTF Provincial Specialist Association. Our session is called Reggio-Inspired Mathematics: Connections, Collaboration and Community and being true to the principles and practices of The Reggio Emilia Approach, is a collaborative session with ten teachers in our project. Some sections include dialogue and reflection while others share ideas from the classroom and home and school connections. We have tried to be mindful of our current context and consider new health and safety protocols with the ideas we share. This pre-recorded session will be airing at 9:30am and there will be four teachers from our project available in the Chat box to answer questions, etc.

Social media contact information for the teachers that shared during the session is in the image below.

Here is a slide sampler from the presentation:

Download BCRIM_BCAMT_Conference_2020_slidesampler

Update: Thank you to the over 200 teachers who joined our session and a special thank you to Michelle, Lauren, Annie and Alana who monitored the chat and stayed after the session to chat with attendees. We do apologize that some attendees had audio issues. We are providing a link to the recording below, and it will only be available for a limited time. The link will be taken down on October 30. Please adjust the volume on your device, try a different device or check your network connection if you are having audio issues.

Recording of BC Reggio-Inspired Mathematics session at the BCAMT Fall Conference (link still available)

 

(resin numbers from Tansy and Bee)

Here are some ideas that 2020 has helped us to think about:

What does it mean to feel safe? 

What does it mean to belong?

How does working together as a community help everyone?

How do we nurture home and school relationships?

How can mathematics be experienced in different contexts? at home? outdoors?

How can technology help foster connection, collaboration and communication?

Take care,

Janice

new ShareEDBC resources

During the summer of 2020, a small group of teachers from our project collaborated on creating two collections of lessons for ShareEdBC. ShareEdBC is a BC platform for curating and sharing vetted resources that are directly linked to the BC curriculum. Drawing upon Reggio-inspired principles and practices, we created two collections: Investigating Patterns and Investigating Shapes. Each collection contains background information, curriculum connections, detailed lessons with photographs, assessment prompts and proficiency indicators and a page of resources. Lessons are intended to be used across primary grades and extensions and connections to the grades 4&5 mathematics curriculum are included. Each lesson includes suggestions for at-home, outdoors and online teaching and learning.

 

   

We have permission to share these resources publicly so teachers outside of BC or who don't have access to ShareEdBC can access them. You can download them below:

Download BCRIM__Investigating_Shapes_2020_FINAL

Download BCRIM__Investigating_Patterns_2020-FINAL

~Janice