Some key updates to the planner include:

While collaborating with Sam, we came to the conclusion that the ‘Making connections’ activities that I had initially planned might work better as launch activities. The context of making gingerbread houses was engaging and demonstrated the purpose of our work, so better to launch with it rather than add on at the end. This proved to be a good decision with students instantly hooked and engaged in exploring the properties of shape.

Maths focus: This proved to be useful to share with students and staff in order to know what understandings we wanted the students to have. Reflecting, this area on the planner seems to have been overlooked previously, and was really useful opening the dialogue for our teachers to understand ‘why’ the activities have been set. This understanding would allow teachers to modify the lesson depending on the needs of their students, while still being clear on the purpose of the lesson.

Critical friend

Reflecting on the term ‘critical friend’ has made me realise how lucky I have been in my career. Not only this year, but throughout my time at Castlemaine North. The culture has always been about collaboration, acknowledgement of personal strengths and celebrating success and genuinely being in awe of the skills of the people around you. I noticed this in my first year, seeing these amazing legends of the North School, running ‘perfect’, engaging lessons, and when you go to compliment them, they point out all the things they wanted to do better. While I think we can all get better at the balance between accepting praise and being too critical of ourselves, but the message of striving to learn more and valuing those around you are a special part of my work place.

Having a team of two Primary Maths Specialists is invaluable. Sam and I developed a set of ‘norms’ very early about being open, honest and robust in our discussions with each other, knowing the feedback comes from a place of trust and respect. This has been the key to not only developing our personal practice, but also in our strategies when implementing ideas to our school community of learners. Students and teachers don’t really bat an eyelid when Sam or myself walks into a classroom to see the other deliver parts of lessons. While this is common for us, it only works because we want a ‘critical friend’ to be part of our learning journey and want to talk about strengths and uncertainties. At times, the ‘critical friend’ part can become frustrating as you passionately talk about potential half ideas, trying to explain your ‘big picture thinking’ with your ‘friend’ who is giving you tricky questions, like ‘What do you mean?’ I have enjoyed this process as it has helped refine and structure the ideas into a logical sequence, weed out ideas that look cool but are a just an activity and communicate them to others in a way they can understand.

Being in a special position this year has enabled me to make another ‘critical friend’ in my teaching partner Sarah. I am so grateful to be paired with Sarah. While I’ve never brought up the terminology of ‘critical friends’, that relationship has formed and progressed while working together to create the best learning experiences for our students. Again, the complementary strengths and uncertainties means we can view the task from different perspectives and I think this benefits our students and provides a constant form of professional development. I look forward to discussing how the maths tasks (I usually plan Numeracy and Sarah plans Literacy) are going and enjoy the tweaks that Sarah makes. Often utilising a better set of instructions or slowing down to develop the understanding, or making a valuable display that showcases student thinking. From these experiences, I do wonder how we can utilise our colleagues better within schools? The process of discussing, clarifying and debating has enhanced my implementation of the maths program. It is such a luxury to have another person to give honest feedback on how the activities are going with students you both know really well and are invested in helping. This is my first experience sharing a classroom and have grown to really appreciate and look forward to the discussion and time spent together working on ideas.

Providing time to make connections

I can’t seem to find this in the notes, but I definitely have thought of this as I have been implementing the lessons, ‘planning needs to be flexible’. The gingerbread themed sequence of activities had the intention of keeping the ‘problem first’ model to enable students to build a deep understanding of shape and geometry. Looking over the sequence, we found that most of the lessons planned ended up going for more than one session. The activities involving making nets, drawing or manipulating required more time for students to explore – students were engaged and working, but it just took time. The best example was a deviation during the activity involving making nets for 3D shapes. What was originally an extender activity, how many ways can you make a cube, became a whole class investigation. The class really wanted to find all the ways and were busy drawing, making and then justifying if it would work. The best part was the students sharing their designs and having to explain how the net would form the shape. Students were explicitly teaching each other strategies for visualising and checking. The learning was obvious the next day in our consolidating task that requiring students to visualise and solve problems using nets of 3D objects.