News

Task 35, Crosses

Task 13, The Frog Pond

Sweden

In the last three weeks of April fourteen 3-4 hour workshops and five full day programs built around working like a mathematician were presented to teachers from F to Year 12 in cities across Sweden. This included sessions for pre-service teachers at Högskolan Malmö (Malmö University) which has been a strong supporter of Working Mathematically for more than a decade. A public thank you to all the teachers in big and small groups who so generously welcomed our framework and activities and participated with such enthusiasm. Thank you also to the 100+ who have added your names to our eNews lists. Välkommen till ... your first message from Mathematics Centre. The enduring memory of these wonderful weeks is surely represented by the three teachers in this photo. It was taken at 18:00 - the workshop had begun at 15:00 after a full day at school - and these three didn't want to stop working in their non-native language to sort out the puzzle about an Australian football code they knew absolutely nothing about. Why? Because they loved the challenge of working like a mathematician.

Theres, Erica and Lotta working with Task 122, Football Ladder.

As promised in some of the workshops a Swedish translation of the Working Mathematically process has now been added to the Working Mathematically page. Look for Arbeta Matematiskt, when you take the Working Mathematically page in the Link List below. In the process of adding this link, the whole page has also been freshened up.

England
In the first week of April we presented four sessions at the annual conference of the Association of Teachers of Mathematics, UK, which this year was held at Sheffield. Gillian Sears and Glenn Dudley, Pymble Ladies' College, Sydney, also presented on the extensive work their staff have been doing in recent years to rebuild and document their curriculum around learning to work like a mathematician. All our sessions were well attend and we welcome the 40+ teachers who added their email to our lists to their first eNews from Mathematics Centre.

Similar to the popular lesson Multo, Addo offers opportunity for students in Years 2 - 7 to explore Number, Statistics and Probability and Reasoning. The lesson involves play a 'Bingo' type addition facts game using two piles of cards. Each pile has eleven cards numbered 0 to 10. Players create their own boards by writing nine different numbers into the squares of a 3 x 3 grid. The challenge is to find the 'best' board and software is available to support the search.

Calculating Changes members will find this lesson adds a new dimension to their activity of the same name. See Link List below.