Monday 13 August 2018, 9am – 3pm
G09, Goldstein Hall, University of New South Wales, Sydney NSW
This one-day professional development workshop is designed to help teachers give their students an authentic experience of ‘doing maths’ while at the same time supporting success in tests and examinations.
Enabling your students to work in a way that is similar to the way a research mathematician works can dramatically change the classroom experience, for the better. Would you like to find out how, for example, a topic like Pythagoras’ Theorem could be approached a little differently?
In their work, research mathematicians do not generally:
- Sit competitions
- Have daily lessons or lectures
- Study for tests and exams.
So what do they do? Among other things, they use previously learned facts and know-how to solve problems, problems that they initially have no idea how to solve.
In this workshop you will be tasked with solving various ‘simple’ problems, and in doing so, a way of working will reveal itself that offers an alternative to teaching just the calculations associated with mathematical ideas. You will learn how to give your students an authentic experience of ‘doing maths’ in much the same way that professional mathematicians do.
Contact: Anita Ponsaing <anita.ponsaing@unimelb.edu.au>
Cost: Free (morning tea and lunch by own arrangement)
More about MathsCraft - the project - can be discovered here
Learning Goals:
- Practical strategies for analysing problem-solving experiences in mathematics
- The ability to create ideas (conjectures), work on them, and try to prove or disprove them
- An experience that simulates mathematical research
AITSL standards addressed in this workshop:
2.1.3 Highly Accomplished Standard - Content and teaching strategies of the teaching area
3.6.3 Highly Accomplished Standard - Evaluate and improve teaching programs
6.2.3 Highly Accomplished Standard - Engage in professional learning and improve practice
6.3.3 Highly Accomplished Standard - Engage with colleagues and improve practice
About Anthony Harradine
Anthony began teaching mathematics in 1984. He has spent the last eleven years trying to better understand his ‘failures’ of the previous twenty-one. His many mentors have taught him lots about mathematics and statistics, problem solving, and research. He likes nothing better than sharing ideas with anyone silly enough to listen. He really likes mathematics.
In the recent past his professional time has been filled with a variety of tasks that include: facilitator of problem-solving workshops, mathematical-person in residence, leader of a unique STEM project (eduKart), Advisory Board Member (The University of Adelaide, Faculty of Engineering, Computer and Mathematical Sciences), Prime Ministerial working group member (Transforming Learning and the Transmission of Knowledge), consultant, web application developer, curriculum writer and teacher.
Anthony is the Director of the Potts-Baker Institute operating out of Prince Alfred College.
About Anita Ponsaing
Dr Anita Ponsaing is ACEMS' Outreach Officer and the coordinator of the MathsCraft program. After completing her PhD in mathematical physics in 2011, she spent three years in research positions in Europe before returning to Melbourne.
She loves helping others to see the beauty in maths, and is fascinated by the way people interact with mathematical questions: particularly the role that intuition plays and how it can be developed. In 2015 she attended her first MathsCraft session, and since then has become the program's in-house mathematician.