Having these online toolkits during lockdown I didn't think we would get as many participants with busy households and changes to distance learning. I choose to do another maths toolkit as they are very popular and have high turnouts. That alerts me to the lack of maths PLD currently and teacher concerns and need for ideas, pedagogical and content knowledge. It was a subject of Fractions the hardest area of maths to teach the area that students find hard to gain the conceptual understanding. So I unpacked the misconceptions of teaching fractions. This was nothing new, looking at the current research and websites like Youcube, nrich, and nzmaths. They are the same misconceptions and same concerns as to when I was a maths facilitator 4 years ago. I focused with a real emphasis on the language of maths and transferring what we do in literacy across the maths. Also starting of with understanding with multi representations using materials hands-on and technology manipulatives. Then introducing the symbols. Also context and real-life examples that relate to your students. They need to understand why we need to learn Fractions.
Unpacking the key ideas for the teachers and the progressions through the levels helps to see the big picture and the connections. Especially to multiplication and division. The feedback from the teachers was positive and they enjoyed lots of the resources that they can use in their distance learning.
As a Manaiakalani cluster, we have all these great resources for literacy and sites for teachers to refer to but we have nothing for Maths. I am looking at putting together a site for maths. With research, resources, exemplars for teachers.
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