Info and Links from Mathematics Information Night with Dianne Siemon

Mathematics Information Evening with Professor Di Siemon

Thank you to all parents who attended the evening. There have been requests by parents to share some of Di’s work with the community. Attached is the extended power-point Di uses to present the key concepts behind mathematics teaching and learning. We hope that this will support you with how we approach learning here at PHPS and provide you with ideas to work with at home.

Research on teaching and learning and developments in our technological society have prompted considerable changes in how mathematics is taught. School mathematics NOW involves interaction and negotiation of the „big ideas‟. Contemporary approaches include: extended investigations, rich tasks, open-ended questions, games, discussion of solution strategies, mental computation, and visualisation.

These are the ‘Big Ideas’ that address key concepts which, if not understood, will undermine students’ capacity to engage meaningfully with core aspects of the Number Strand in subsequent years. The first four are largely addressed in Primary school and are introduced in Prep as initial concepts and developed throughout the learning journey to Year 6.

Big Idea	Description
Trusting the Count	Developing flexible mental objects for the numbers 0 to 10
Place value	Moving beyond counting by ones, the structure of the base 10 numeration system
Additive to Multiplicative thinking	Moving from a count of equal groups (eg 1 six, 2 sixes, 3 sixes, 4 sixes, …) to a constant number of groups (eg 6 ones, 6 twos, 6 threes, 6 fours, 6 fives …), the key to understanding rational number and developing efficient mental and written computation strategies in later years
Partitioning	The missing link in building common fraction and decimal knowledge, understanding and confidence
Proportional reasoning	Extending what is known about multiplication and division beyond rule-based procedures to solve problems involving fractions, decimals, per cent, ratio, rate and proportion
Generalising	Skills and strategies to support equivalence, recognition of number properties and patterns, and the use of algebraic expressions

Here are the links to the powerpoint presentation and resources (place value game and tens frame) 

DiSIEMON-Whole-Number-2

ten_frame_blank

Place-Value Game

Photos from Learning Agreement Week Four

We would like to share some photos from week four which illustrate learning agreement. Some children are being targeted at their point of need (this could be in reading, writing or mathematics depending on the session) while other children are working on their Inquiry projects which for most at the moment means developing products for the shop and writing gift tags and a procedural text.

Opportunities for you to help us in our Inquiry Learning during Learning Agreement

Dear Parents,

We would like to open up times throughout our week where you can come in and support the learning in the Neighbourhood.

Firstly, we would like to invite family members to come and speak with the children about what happiness means to you and ways that you try and maintain or increase your happiness. If you can stay after roll call and speak with the children on a Monday, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday at 9.15am please let a neighbourhood teacher know.

Through performance and the shop we are exploring how we can make positive changes in other people’s lives. Gift giving and making objects intended on making someone happy to sell at our play shop are some ways we are exploring happiness. We are also writing cards to other members of the neighbourhood to hang on our Friendliness Tree. 

The following are aspects of our Inquiry that we are seeking help for during Learning Agreement on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays from 9.15-11am.

·      Performance skills: improvisation, dialogue development, expression and audience awareness.

·      Writing (procedural text, cards for the Friendship Tree)

·      Making products for our ‘Happiness shop’ (friendship bracelets, DIY clay beads, creative cardboard toys, felt toys)

·      Helping photograph the children’s work for their procedural text.

·      Helping run the ‘Happiness Shop’ (sign-writing, assisting children to add money and calculate change, and assisting children to record sales and purchases (starting end of week 5 or week 6).

Any amount of help you can provide would be appreciated and valuable. We will have a calendar on the pin board outside the neighbourhood rooms so that you can indicate a morning when you might like to come in. We will also have a sheet with the times we require assistance so that you can indicate if you would like to volunteer regularly. If there is a specific activity you would prefer to help with, you can also record this down on the sheet.

Please don’t forget you are welcome on Thursday and Fridays 2.30-3.15pm to help with our mini project clubs (animation, science and gardening).

Please let us know if you are going to be joining us.

Warm Regards,

The Year One Neighbourhood Team

Help us prepare for Assembly by practicing Moonshadow

Hi lovely parents,

Year Ones are presenting at Assembly next Tuesday 25th February. We hope many of you can join us. One component of our short presentation is a song we have been practicing called 'Moonshadow' by Cat Stevens. This relates to our major concept of positive personal change as the underlying message is that when things go wrong you can still see the positive side.

Please help by reading through the lyrics with your child and helping them practice. Some children are still getting familiar with the verses.

Many thanks!

Calling any avid animator, gardener or scientist parent helpers for our Mini Projects

Hi all,

Every Thursday and Friday afternoon from 2.30pm-3.15pm we will be running mini project groups. The three areas of interest expressed by the children have been animation (Rita), gardening (Luisa) and science experiments (Simone).

If you would like to offer your regular or sporadic help during either of these times we would love to hear from you.

Please speak with the neighbourhood teacher who will be running the project you are interested in if you are able to help.

Thank you,
The Year One Neighbourhood Team

Postponement of Welcome Picnic!!

Dear Parents,

Due to the unfavourable weather forecast, the welcome picnic will be postponed until next thursday 27th of February. Time and venue remain the same.

Kind Regards,

Keith McNeill

On Behalf of the Community Relations Subcommittee 

Please come to the Mathematics Information Night Monday 24th February.

MATHEMATICS INFORMATION NIGHT

MONDAY 24^TH FEBRUARY

6:00 – 7PM

SCHOOL GYMNASIUM

PRESENTER: DIANNE SIEMON

Dianne Siemon is a Professor of Mathematics Education in the School of Education at RMIT University (Victoria). She is involved in the preparation of pre-service teachers and the supervision of higher degree students. Di has been responsible for a number of State and Territory-wide numeracy research projects involving Prep (Transition) to Year 9.  She is a popular professional development presenter whose interests include the development of the ‘big ideas’ in number, the teaching and learning of mathematics in the middle years, and the use of rich assessment tasks to inform teaching. Di is a past President of the Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers and the Mathematical Association of Victoria.

Di will present to parents what they can do at home to support teachers build mental objects for numbers (looking at strategies such as part-part-whole, doubling etc.) She will discuss strategies for mental computation and importance of these, link briefly to 'algorithms/processes' and then spend some time unpacking multiplication and strategies for learning number facts based on understanding.

 AS THIS IS A FORMAL PRESENTATION WE DO ASK THAT THIS IS AN ADULT ONLY EVENT.

CHILDCARE ARRANGEMENTS CAN BE MADE FOR SCHOOL AGE CHILDREN THROUGH MANDY AT OHSC.

Parent Representatives for Year One

Hi parents,

If you are interested in being a Parent Rep for Year One we ask that you speak to one of the teachers in the Year One Neighbourhood.

Parent Reps help to keep the communications flowing amongst the parents of the neighbourhood and help to muster up volunteers for school-related events, activities and excursions. Please talk to a neighbourhood teacher if you would like more information.

Generally there is one parent rep per roll group.

Cheers,
The Year One Neighbourhood Team

Borrowing from the Junior School Library

Hi families,

It is wonderful to see that most children are borrowing from the Junior School Library in the mornings or afternoons. From next Monday, we ask that borrowing take place through the electronic system. There are two computers in the JSL which will be on and ready to scan your books in and out. Parent helpers will be assisting. Books being scanned in can be done so quickly and books being borrowed go under your child's name.

If you would like to offer your help for 10-15 minutes for scanning in the mornings or afternoons please see Rita.

Thank you!

The Year One Neighbourhood Team.

Safer Internet Day

Hi all,

Today the Year One Neighbourhood took a very fun quiz about cyber safety as today is International Internet Safety day.

The kids loved it and made some very smart choices.  

Here is the link if you would like to finish the quiz with your child.

http://cybersmart.gov.au/Kids/Have%20Fun/How%20cybersmart%20are%20you/Kids%20Quiz.aspx

Our Weekly Communication to you and copy of our timetable

Hi everyone,

Here's what's on in the Year One Neighbourhood this week.


Inquiry Concepts:

Our school-wide Inquiry is on change. Each neighbourhood is listening to the children's responses to provocations in order to direct the Inquiry in a way that is unique, connected and relevant to them. From initial conversation, the year one children identified change as related to natural changes in nature and humans (growth etc.) and changes that we can impact like our choices, our mistakes, our actions. 

This week our major concept within our Inquiry into change is How can you create positive personal change through your choices? 

Today we workshopped personal choices regarding our feelings through the Kimochis and we explored a song called "I Choose" by India Arie which talks about being true to yourself, being the best that you can be, letting go, and making your own decisions. 

Many of our learning agreement provocations have been designed for children to explore this concept further by developing a performance (song, dance, play, skit) and creating masks, storyboards, comics, lyrics, and garageband soundtracks to illustrate what they know about positive personal choices. The children are given many opportunities to explore these big ideas through writing, speaking and listening and reading. 

Change is also being explored through science plant growth experiments and through construction by repurposing recyclable materials. 

This week year four students will be coming to our neighbourhood to teach us how to podcast. We will use podcasting and video recording to record our feelings, opinions, reflections and for recording our reading.  

The children are exploring change in mathematics by looking at Australian money. Through this unit, the children will be targeted on their number counting skills, place value, number knowledge and number facts. Money provides a wonderful opportunity to apply skip counting by 5s and 10s and using strategies such as doubles and counting on from the higher number.

During Learning Agreement, one teacher will be taking a target teaching session with a small group of children. The timetable indicates on which days various aspects of the curriculum will be targeted.


What's On:

• Thursday 13th February, 5pm-6.30pm: Parent Information Evening in Gymnasium and neighbourhoods.

• Thursday 20th February, 6pm onwards: Welcome Picnic at Princes Park (near the playground) 

• Monday 24th February: 6pm onwards: Parent Information Evening MATHEMATICS with Dianne Siemon in Gymnasium.

How you can help: 

• It would be wonderful for families to have conversations with their children about how you have made positive personal changes to your lives whether it be through good choices when you have reacted to situations, or what you have learnt from poor personal choices, making big decisions that have helped you be true to yourself, making choices and changes to fix a mistake, etc. You might like to write in your child's Reader's and Writer's notebook for them to share your ideas with the neighbourhood.

• Because we are looking at money, ask your child if they can tell you what coins you could use to buy small items such as lunch order items, stationary, food etc. See if they can create the total amount of money using different combinations of coins. Help your child to count by 5s and 10s around the home or work on counting small collections of items and counting on from the larger number to develop the building blocks prior to skip counting. Your child could work on this in their Reader's and Writer's notebook. 

• Please speak with a neighbourhood teacher if you are interested in being a parent representative this year. 

See you during the week,
The Year One Neighbourhood Team :) T1W3 timetable

Week Two Learning Agreement Photos

Hi all,

We'd like to share with you some photographs of the Week Two Learning Agreement. This learning agreement was designed to encourage the children to explore all of the neighbourhood spaces and resources. As teachers, we used this time to observe the children's learning language preferences, the spaces that they seemed to be drawn to, how and with whom they collaborated, and we documented observations of the children's number, writing and reading concepts and skills in order to establish some target teaching groups for next week.

We encourage you to attend the parent information evening next week to hear more about how Learning Agreement, workshops and target teaching are developed in each neighbourhood.

The children are settling in nicely and we hope to be able to share a song with you after the parent information night when you come back to the neighbourhood.

Sending you cool thoughts on this very hot day!

The Year One Neighbourhood Team :)

Curriculum Day Monday 24th February

MATHEMATICS PARENT INFORMATION SESSION

MONDAY 24^TH FEBRUARY

6 - 7pm in the school gymnasium

We are very excited to have the opportunity to have Dianne Siemon booked in to run a curriculum day with the teachers on ‘The big ideas in number’ but also to run a parent information session from 6-7pm on Monday 24^th February.

Di is a Professor of Mathematics Education in the School of Education at RMIT University (Victoria). She is involved in the preparation of pre-service teachers and the supervision of higher degree students. Di has been responsible for a number of State and Territory-wide numeracy research projects involving Prep (Transition) to Year 9.  She is a popular professional development presenter whose interests include the development of the ‘big ideas’ in number, the teaching and learning of mathematics in the middle years, and the use of rich assessment tasks to inform teaching. Di is a past President of the Australian Association of Mathematics Teachers and the Mathematical Association of Victoria.

In this parent session we hope to provide parents with a broad understanding of what is involved in the teaching and learning of mathematics in contemporary Prep to Year 6 learning environments.

CHILDCARE PROVISION: Aftercare provisions will be made available from 6-7pm for school age children only. Please note that aftercare staff are notlegally able to supervise pre-school age children. Please complete the curriculum day child care form and return this to Julie in the office  ASAP and no later than Monday 17^th  February so that we are able to determine the level of staffing required. A copy of this form can be obtained from OSHC or can be downloaded from the neighbourhood blog.

Aftercare will begin as usual in the gymnasium foyer on the curriculum day but will move to 3/4 Neighbourhood 1 from 11am – 7pm.   

Please stay tuned for further updates on specific content.

Any queries can be directed to Kerri Gibson (Assistant Principal)

CURRICULUM_20DAY_20_20-_20February_202014.doc