Professional Learning Goals

• to enhance our own confidence in carrying out inquiry-based, open-ended mathematical programs
• to develop a new and updated resource to support the professional learning goals in our school
• to support the multiple intelligences and diversity of students in our every changing classrooms
• to encourage student voice when solving mathematical problems
• to collaborate and share resources and best practices with colleagues

Activities and Resources

Our team met several times to create three-part lessons and develop inquiry-based problems for students to solve. First, we referred to the mathematics continuum provided by our school board and the Ontario Curriculum Mathematics Document to determine the Big Ideas and curriculum expectations that we wanted to focus on. Then we began creating each lesson. We used a variety of resources to help us create the problems, including:

• Nelson Mathematics resources (1-5)
• Math Makes Sense resources (1-5)
• Big Ideas from Dr. Small: Creating a Comfort Zone for Teaching Mathematics, Grades K-3 by Marian Small
• Good Questions: Great Ways to Differentiate Mathematics Instruction by Marian Small
• Making Math Meaningful To Canadian Students, K-8 by Marian Small
• eqao.com

Unexpected Challenges

We found that the time frame was too short to create as many problems as we wanted to create and include technology. Therefore, we did not include the use of technology in our resource.

Enhancing Student Learning and Development

Students will engage in inquiry-based learning and will be exposed to open-ended mathematical problems throughout the year with the use of manipulatives. The questions will allow students to broaden their understanding and to demonstrate their knowledge of mathematical concepts by using multiple ways to solve problems and connecting these problems to real-world experiences. Teachers will use differentiated instruction and assessment to promote student voice. Students will improve their confidence and be more comfortable taking risks when solving mathematical problems. They will develop an understanding that there are multiple ways to solve mathematical problems.

Sharing

We will share our resource by making it easily accessible and comprehensive. We will make it available online on our school Academic Workspace page so that teachers can easily modify it for their own use. We will also make our resource available in hard copy in the Math Room for teachers to sign out as needed. We will conduct Lunch and Learns to help promote and explain our resource.

Project Evaluation

The focus for Professional Learning Communities in our school this year was to plan and implement three-part lessons in mathematics. As a team, we were able to achieve our goal of developing a new and updated resource to support the professional learning goals in our school. Our resource includes inquiry-based, open-ended mathematical problems to support student voice, the multiple intelligences and the diversity of the students in our classrooms. Through this project, we were able to collaborate and share resources and best practices with our colleagues and enhance our own confidence in carrying out three-part lessons and inquiry-based, open-ended mathematical programs. Our resource will provide the teachers in our school with a framework to begin developing their own three-part lessons and inquiry-based, open-ended mathematical problems.

If we had more time, we would enhance our lessons and problems by including technology such as the Interactive White Board and software.