Eddie Woo Talk at Macquarie University PDF

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Summary

a few days ago Eddie Woo came in to give a talk and I'm just sharing my notes from it here...

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Eddie Woo Talk at Macquarie University 30/05/2018

YouTube channel - https://www.youtube.com/user/misterwootube

Mathematics – the study of patterns, thinking about maths in this viewpoint can make it a lot more fun to teach and learn. Numeracy – mathematics in relation to a problem, practical/applicable maths. Numerate students – logical and critical thinkers. Able to ask why things happen and how, they have confidence in their ability to work out a problem, they have a disposition for using mathematics in a wide range of situations including incidentally in everyday life. -

A lot of maths was invented purely out of people playing around with it and discovering new things Mathematics is dynamic It is good to motivate the idea of internationalism in the classroom as maths is one of the global languages and holds significance all over the world The most important thing for a mathematics teacher to do is to instil in students a desire to fix something when they make a mistake and understand the mistake and how to solve it instead of giving in

The top four important mathematical dispositions to have according to Eddie Woo Playfulness -

Children always have energy to play and harnessing the idea that mathematics can involve play will lead to higher engagement Maths should at the bottom line be fun e.g. number games and problem solving in context such as pirate finding treasure (primary example) etc. e.g. teaching triangle congruence, let children explore on their own by providing kids with pipe cleaners and telling them to each make a unique triangle, then when everyone fails you can explain the principle of triangle congruence they all just witnessed (secondary example) etc.

Exploration -

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humanity has a need to know and want something, we see innate value in exploration e.g. our quest to go to the moon despite it not having any financial gain or much purpose focus on how you arrive at the answer than on the answer itself – focus on the discoveries you make whilst trying to find the answer and how they make sense in maths finding an explanation by yourself leads to far better understanding than being taught the process

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feeling lost is an essential part of maths and trying to overcome that is how we find mathematic principles etc.

Storytelling -

the purpose of storytelling is to bring joy you can make mathematics into a story – specifically with younger years through riddles and other interesting ways of placing maths into a story structure or you can include storytelling through maths by focusing on the history of maths and the interesting stories that are part of that e.g. Euclid founding geometry

Self-ownership -

you need to act the way you want your students to about your classes, always be prepared and interested in your subject matter craft your environment to support this mindset Woo suggests doing this by: o Reading or listening to a large variety of books and podcasts about your subject area and constantly discovering new things about it you can share with your students o Using technology and social media both in your classroom as part of your teaching style but also to learn from other people and take advantage of the resources already available

The I Notice / I Wonder approach -

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Typical worksheets are set up with two main parts; there is the subject/data/source/excerpt being studied and then below this there is the questions to be answered about this This approach instead suggests only providing children with the first part and then asking each child to view it and think of their own questions they would create about that data The teacher then collects all of these questions and can discuss them all with the class before asking each student to pick and answer a certain amount of the questions they asked This is great for building engagement and really getting the children to notice something about the data instead of just following instructions, the class discussion also involved in this is really great for active participation and understanding where student’s ideas are coming from and what they derive from certain activities By getting children to write up their own questions it also gives teachers a better approximation of the level of learning they are currently at as it is suggested that there is around a 7-year span of intellectual ability in one classroom...