Professional Learning Goals

• Determined the best practices suitable for our students for promoting and teaching mathematical thinking and understanding
• Developed and enhanced educator knowledge of best practices
• Created an inventory of materials for educators to access to support teaching in the area of mathematics
• Created a community environment within the kindergarten team that provided a support system to educators which promotes collaboration and co-operation
• Provided opportunities for educators to meet as a team and participated in a learning community that focused on early learning mathematical skills and strategies

Activities and Resources

Some of the activities that helped us achieve our goals were:

• Team meetings to determine the strategies that were the most successful in our classroom (i.e., small groups, extended outdoor exploration with a mathematical focus, large group meaningful instruction, provocations with teacher guidance, provocations that were student directed)
• Resources that helped us in our project:
  • Messy Maths: A Playful, Outdoor Approach for Early Years by Juliet Robertson
  • 50 Fantastic Ideas for Maths Outdoors by Kirstine Beeley
  • Reggio-Inspired Mathematics by Janice Novakowski in collaboration with teachers from the Richmond School District
  • Loose Parts: Inspiring Play in Young Children by Lisa Daly and Miriam Beloglovsky
  • “Teams” documentation platform
  • Funster portfolio app – students would document and record their own learning

The best practices that helped us promote mathematical thinking and learning within the classroom and during outdoor learning time were:

• Small group instruction – teacher or ECE would sit with different small groups and introduce a particular mathematical concept using loose parts
• Mathematical Provocations – teacher or ECE would set up mathematical provocations, which related to a particular concept, in the morning before the students arrived. We found both teacher-guided and self-directed provocations to be the most helpful with our students.
• Create a learning environment that supports mathematical thinking and learning among students. We were able to help provide this learning environment by integrating math in our everyday activities both indoors and outdoors, that were both direct and indirect (e.g., gathering dandelions from the grass in groups of 10 and then using chalk to draw a ten frame to help students count their collections or using prompting questions such as, “I see you haven’t filled up your ten frame, how many do you have?” and “How many are you missing? Count the empty squares.”).

Unexpected Challenges

One unexpected challenge, which was not due to the activities planned in our classroom, was the lack of supply teachers available for coverage of our meeting and planning days. It made it difficult to try and meet as a team to plan and discuss our progress and next steps.

Another unexpected challenge was being able to find affordable materials for our large class sizes. We found it more cost-efficient to make most of the materials versus buying them already pre-made.

One final unexpected challenge was finding materials and inquiry activities that would reach our students who don’t usually enjoy exploring without teacher prompts and guidance.

Enhancing Student Learning and Development

By developing and enhancing mathematical thinking and learning in the students’ critical developmental years, they will possess skills and strategies necessary to engage in mathematical inquiry. The students will develop their independent mathematical critical thinking skills, be able to demonstrate their understanding of mathematical concepts, and be able to demonstrate their thought process. In addition, the students will be able to extend their knowledge and continue to develop it throughout their learning journey and utilize their mathematical thinking in other areas of development.

Sharing

Our target audience for the sharing of this project would be with other Early Years Educators and teams. Our forum for sharing would be through small group meetings and discussions where we would have the opportunity to share our findings through our electronic documentation (Teams, One Note and Funster). We have also begun to talk to our school daycare about ways they can integrate some of our findings into their Early Years Program.

We began to share our mathematical journey with our students’ families through our online format of communication, Teams. The parents loved seeing their child’s learning happening in such a unique and hands-on way both indoors and outdoors!

Project Evaluation

Overall, we believe our project to be a success. We have been able to create a toolbox of strategies and materials for our kindergarten teams to access in the years to come. We were able to create purposeful play-based and inquiry environments, both indoors and outdoors, that promoted and enhanced mathematical thinking and learning. As educators, we also feel more comfortable and confident in our abilities to promote and encourage mathematical thinking and learning in our play-based and inquiry environment. We believe this was a measure of success because we were able to see our students succeed in their growth and development in being able to express and explain their mathematical thinking both inside and outside of the classroom. Now that most students have demonstrated an enhanced and expanded mathematical skill set, we feel that this a great measure of our success with this project.