Teaching maths to junior high school students or essential maths students is tricky at the best of times, let alone when you have limited experience or training in that area. Feeling frustrated or overwhelmed is very common. This course has been designed in consultation with heads of department from across Australia to support you.
This single-day course will help you to:
- Develop confidence in your own understanding and teaching of the connections between: integers, fraction operations, exponents, algebra, multiplicative and proportional reasoning, probability and relative frequency, area/volume formulas and Pythagoras
- Learn simple strategies to connect different areas of content, including how to use hands-on materials to help
- Know what to look for in student answers, including common misconceptions, and know how to help when kids just don’t seem to get it
- Differentiate for students without driving yourself crazy and re-engage those who hate maths
- Real-life application for all concepts, suitable for an Essential Maths course
This course is suitable for:
- All out-of-field mathematics teachers (e.g., trained in PE, accounting, science, HAS who are now teaching a maths subject)
- Years 7-9 teachers who want to understand why their students struggle and learn strategies to help
- Year 11-12 Essential Maths teachers looking for strategies to help students who have always struggled with mathematics
- Primary teachers who would like to advance their own understanding
When: Thursday 17th October 2024
Where: St Ursula’s Toowoomba, 38 Taylor St, Newton
Cost: $300
After the course: you will be sent “how to” instructions for the concepts covered and diagnostics to use with your students.
Course outline:
Session 1: 8:00-10:00, Thinking in lines and using physical materials
- Gathering questions, concerns and priorities
- Setting out and steps for building clear communication
- Integers: including addition and subtraction
- Rounding and leading-digit estimating (including with fractions and decimals)
- Converting fractions, decimals and percent easily
- Converting between units of measurement easily
- Introducing algebra using tiles: variables, substitution
Session 2: 10:30-12:30, Thinking in rectangles and squares
- Mastering multiplication and division facts (includes games)
- Understanding the commutative, associative and distributive law for both arithmetic and algebra (demonstrated using tiles)
- How order of operations relates to lines, squares and cubes
- Indices and roots
- Area: parallelogram, triangle, trapezium, kite, circle
- Volume: prisms and pyramids
Session 3: 1:00-2:30, Thinking in proportions
- Understanding all four operations with fractions from an area model
- Applying the area model to probability and statistics
- If time: two-event probability
Session 4: 2:50-4:00, Generalising
- Linear equations and the Cartesian plane, including applications to budgeting
- Pythagoras
- Strategies for building retention
- Resources to help
