Professional Learning Goals

As a school, we have spent the last year focusing on growth mindset in math. We did a teacher book club using Jo Boaler’s Mathematical Mindset text. This year, we wanted to delve deeper into the text, specifically on the chapter of Rich Mathematical Tasks. As such, our learning goals were:

• Implemented the five steps of teaching rich mathematical tasks
• Began teaching math through inquiry to encourage conceptual understanding
• Focused on the big ideas in mathematical and learned how to cluster expectations so that students can make connections between expectations

Activities and Resources

• We participated in professional development on big ideas and how to incorporate them into three-part math lessons.
• Through the big idea, we helped each teacher identify which mathematical curriculum expectations they focused on to create their design
• Teachers co-created and co-taught three-part lessons to meet the expectations that connected with their big idea
• We supported teachers in creating learning goals/success criteria with their students
• Staff participated in moderated marking of student work samples

Unexpected Challenges

• There were some staff members who had trouble with implementing the concept of a student-driven inquiry. They were resistant to letting students try to solve the mathematical problems without front-loading information.
• Although we left the prompt very open-ended, some teachers struggled to find a way to integrate the math into their long-term plans
• Collaboration continues to happen amongst some teachers and many staff saw the value in the co-planning and co-teaching, but some did not take the initiative to continue the process

Enhancing Student Learning and Development

Focusing on “big ideas” when teaching math helps facilitate student understanding by concentrating student attention on key concepts and procedures. The linkages and connections between math concepts are made explicit by linking previously learned big ideas to new concepts and problem-solving situations. By emphasizing the big ideas in each lesson, teachers can build students’ acquisition and use of key conceptual knowledge across lesson content. Since this was an authentic, real-life problem that we presented to students, we saw increased motivation to complete a project that may actually be implemented in our schoolyard.

Sharing

• Proposals were shared on a trajectory wall which also demonstrated the math continuum (specifically in geometry and measurement)
• Teachers shared learning at a debriefing professional development session
• The project was shared with parents at a council meeting
• Social media (class/school web pages/Twitter)

Project Evaluation

Things we’ve learned:

• The opportunity to experience what happens when students are given a math question before actually teaching the math
• We can integrate multiple strands within a lesson
• Provided opportunities for students to demonstrate their understanding in a variety of ways (e.g., visually, orally, hands-on)
• Provided opportunities for rich student talk, large and small group as well as individual
• Provided enduring understanding as the problem was an authentic real-life problem
• Demonstrated that math is all around us
• Grouping students in smaller groups allows us to gain a deep understanding of their learning and misconceptions
• Understanding the concept is fundamental to being able to apply the procedures

Next steps:

• Continue to use open-ended questions so that students are provided with opportunities to  solve math problems at their individual level
• Provide a balance between student exploration and teacher-directed instruction (guided inquiry)
• Continue to use procedures in conjunction with a rich inquiry task that focus on big ideas  

Teacher feedback:

“Seeing students so excited to go outside and do math.”

“Having the opportunity to integrate the strands.”

“Being able to deeply understand my students’ learning.”

“My students were more engaged as they could physically see what had to be done.”

“The students were enthusiastic as it was an authentic task.”