Math Teachers Becoming Math Leaders
Almost 900 math teachers from across the province are training this spring to become math leaders. These leaders will share their new expertise with colleagues in their schools to strengthen the provincial math program.
"More support for our math teachers will result in improved learning for our students," said Education Minister Jane Purves. "Teachers asked for this kind of training and we know they'll put it to good use in the classroom."
The Department of Education is working with school boards to provide 34 two-day workshops for Primary to Grade 9 teachers as part of the provincial math strategy. A team of 16 Nova Scotia math teachers is running the sessions, which began this week and continue until early June.
The series of workshops is the largest scale professional- development opportunity the department has ever offered for math teachers. As a result, there will be at least one math leader in every elementary and junior high school.
Through the workshops, teachers are learning how to plan for a full year of math instruction that will help students achieve all of the curriculum outcomes.
Jerome Kelly, a Grade 8 math teacher at Breton Education Centre in New Waterford, attended a workshop on May 13 and 14. He said that it can be daunting to try to meet all the learning outcomes -- things students are expected know and be able to do -- in one year. Through the workshop, he learned how to plan activities that teach more than one learning outcome at a time, which makes it much more manageable to meet all of the outcomes.
"That will really help me and I know it will help the teachers in my school," he said. "This workshop is giving us practical help and it's also spreading a common vision among the province's math teachers so that we're all heading in the same direction to help our students learn."
Workshop participants are also learning from each other by sharing resources and recommending education Web sites.
The team of teachers presenting the workshops is also working on other parts of the math strategy, such as teacher resources that include sample lesson plans, homework and learning activities.
From May 7 to 17, about 270 junior high math teachers are attending sessions to help prepare them and their students for the first junior high provincial math assessment. The test will be administered to Grade 8 students this June.
Also in May, an in-depth analysis of the elementary math test written by Grade 5 students in the spring of 2001 is being distributed to all elementary school principals and teachers. The test results showed that students are struggling. The analysis provides ideas and teaching methods for helping students achieve the learning outcomes that are most challenging to them.