Professional Learning Goals

Through this project, we achieved the following goals:

• Built our professional understanding of how to implement a math workshop in the primary grades (K-3)
• Investigated how students develop early numeracy skills
• Created and implemented math mini-lessons
• Developed our knowledge of effective assessment/instructional strategies for teaching mathematics
• Developed Operational Sense Assessment and Continuum
• Shared our new learning with our colleagues
• Examined the curriculum to determine scope and sequence of expectations
• Developed materials to support student independent work (play-based activities)
• Developed numeracy assessment tool

Activities and Resources

Session 1

• Read articles on the math workshop
• Shared current numeracy assessment tools and student assessment data for number sense
• Examined curriculum to determine scope and sequence of strands and expectations (K-3)
• Identified key areas of the curriculum (number sense) that we wanted to focus on
• Created an assessment tool to look at big ideas (e.g., cardinality, subitizing, decomposition of numbers)
• Reviewed number sense continuums and created a continuum to track student progress

Session 2

• Student work moderation using assessment tool created in previous session
• Placed target students on number sense continuum and discussed next steps
• Listed ideas for mini-lessons and guided groups
• Created a planning guide for the math workshop
• Reviewed resources for creating independent, play-based tasks and games

Session 3

• Created and shared materials to support student independent work (co-operative games, play-based activities, investigations)
• Make and take session

Session 4

• Reviewed elements of the math workshop
• Created lesson plan based on learning goals
• Established criteria for observations (look-fors)
• Implemented the math workshop in a Grade 1/2 class
• Collected data on students (anecdotal notes, assessment tool)
• Debriefed observations
• Discussed new learning and challenges
• Determined next steps for students and teachers

Resources

Conklin, M., Sheffield, S. (2012). It Makes Sense! Using the Hundreds Chart to Build Number Sense. Math Solutions. California, USA.

Fosnot, C., Uittenbogaard. (2007). Minilessons for Early Addition and Subtraction. Heinemann. USA.

Parrish, S. (2014). Number Talks. Math Solutions. California, USA.

Small, M. (1987). Open Questions for the Three-Part Lesson (Number Sense and Numeration). Rubicon Publishing Inc.

Early Childhood Assessment in Mathematics Manual. NYC Department of Education. (2015).

The Ontario Curriculum, Grades 1-8, Mathematics. Ministry of Education. (2005).

Unexpected Challenges

• The creation of an assessment tool based on a continuum of learning and the investigation of the components of a math workshop was a comprehensive project
• It would have been beneficial to have had more time to delve deeper in each area
• More time would have been appreciated to help build on the math workshop lesson planning (e.g., plan follow-up lesson to first workshop, more time for independent work)

Overall, we felt that the activities we planned challenged us and helped us to broaden our math program.

Enhancing Student Learning and Development

We feel that this project has helped us to improve our math program in order to enhance student learning and development in several ways:

• By having a deeper understanding of the foundational concepts of number sense, we can have a broader understanding of our students’ needs and strengths so that we can better plan guided and whole class instruction
• We have a better awareness of look-fors as students progress along the continuum of learning
• As a result of creating these assessment tools, we are becoming more explicit in our teaching of these concepts and have a better awareness of when further interventions are needed (i.e., Tier 1, Tier 2)
• The continuum we created has allowed us to scaffold student learning in developmentally appropriate ways

Sharing

We plan to share or have already shared our project results in the follow ways:

• Continuum, baseline assessments and math workshop structure shared with SLP
• Continuum, baseline assessments, games and independent activities and components of a math workshop will be shared with primary and kindergarten teams at each of our schools (in staff or team meetings, with examples of student work)
• Continuum, baseline assessments, games and independent activities and components of a math workshop will be shared with the math coach

Project Evaluation

We feel that our project was a success and was very informative for us as primary math teachers.

Our next steps:

• We would like to pursue more education on how to properly consolidate math workshops
• We would like to better investigate different ways to manage the independent task portion of the math workshop to ensure all students are working in their zone of proximal development