Critical Agendas

Presented by Charles lovitt

Event Information   6 + 6 PD HRS

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Monday March 5th, 2012
How to Have Happy Healthy Cheerful Productive Mathematics Classrooms!
Happy is rather self-evident – learning should be an enjoyable experience for students.Healthy means educationally healthy – we should be able to defend and justify the choices we make as we orchestrate learning environments. Cheerful – because  Happy deserves to be in the title twice. Productive means the students must learn something and we are accountable to this.
You are planning tomorrows lessons – “I wonder if I can make this lesson…more visual...more concrete...more kinesthetic
...based on a relevant meaningful context
...include history, humour or aesthetics
...connect to a social or local issue
...exploit the benefits of technology
...use a storyshell framework
...have multiple levels of success,
something valuable for all students
....reflect a vision of working mathematically.
The more of these considered by the teacher, the greater the probability of their inclusion in the lesson and the greater the probability that any observer might say “That’s a creative way to construct the lesson!’
The day will workshop and analyse many such lessons selected from across Australia.

Tuesday March 6th, 2012
How to Create Rich and Balanced Units of Work
It is one thing to have the occasional creative lesson, but something else to build a sequence of such lessons into units of work or courses that are both ‘rich’ and ‘balanced’.
There are many balancing acts in creating rich courses or units of work. Not least is the balance between skill development and the equally important thinking, reasoning and communication aspect of mathematics.

The day will be built around presentation of sample units of work and the analysis of how these units may deserve the descriptor ‘balanced’. What are the principles that underpin such units and how do we ensure they are all represented appropriately?
An examination of units of work collected from Across Australia has led to the recognition of eight generic types of unit plans. It is these that will be presented and workshopped.

About the Presenter

Charles Lovitt has been involved in Mathematics Professional Development for many years. He has directed several Australian National and State projects such as MCTP, RIME, Initiative 5.4 for Maths and Science. He was director of Maths projects for the Australian Curriculum Corporation and generated such projects as The Maths Task Centre Project, the Chance and Data project and more recently the Maths 300 project. He is now a consultant and a regular keynote and workshop presenter both in Australia and internationally.Charles strongly believes that the wisdom of our profession is held by practicing teachers. It is tapping into this wisdom via captured images from classrooms that allows us to all grow and learn from each other for mutual benefit. Charles’ workshops explore extremely practical immediately useable classroom activities – but their real purpose is to engage teachers in discussion about the role of such teaching and learning ‘ingredients’ as non-threatening learning environments, open-ended investigative approaches, meaningful contexts, technology support, concrete materials, catering for the ‘7-year-gap’ of students abilities, unit planning, alternative assessments – indeed all those elements that collectively contribute to ‘happy, healthy, enjoyable and productive’ classrooms.

Event Details

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March 5th & March 6th, 2012.

9.30am - 3.30pm.

Darebin Arts and Entertainment Centre,

Cnr Bell St & St Georges Rd, Preston, Vic.

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For Primary and Secondary Teachers (Yrs 3 - 10) and Teacher aides

Price (inc. GST) Day One - $279.

Both Days - $399.

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