2017 MANSW Annual Conference

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2017 MANSW
Annual Conference

Adjusting Your Altitude

PLATINUM SPONSORS

MANSW thanks the following sponsors for their support of the 2017 MANSW Annual Conference

GOLD SPONSOR SILVER SPONSORS

OTHER SPONSORS

Pre-Dinner Drinks

President’s Reception Sponsor

Presenter Gifts

Welcome to the
2017 MANSW
Annual Conference

2017 MANSW Annual Conference

A very warm welcome to the 2017 MANSW Annual Conference: “Adjusting Your Altitude”.

In deciding to bring the MANSW Annual Conference to the Blue Mountains this year, I wanted our theme to be related to the mountains in some way. In particular, the graphic that we have used this year stood out to me as a graphic that epitomises our work as teachers.

To teach effectively, it is not enough to explain our knowledge, experiences, to talk students through the journey they will go on, all the potholes they may fall in, how to navigate, how to plan for bad weather, how to

move up the mountain… you have to walk it with them,

and help them on the way, adjusting as you go. We are excited to be able to welcome many educators to our conference this year, and there are many notable events to look forward to. On Friday

morning we have two excellent speakers: Mark Harrison and Angela D’Angelo. Mark Harrison has a

background in Mathematics and Psychology and will speak to us about Growth Mindset, in particular how understanding student mindsets can deeply influence our effectiveness in the classroom.

Angela D’Angelo, one of the recipients of a Premier’s Teaching Scholarship in 2016, will continue

the conversation around Growth Mindset as well as discuss her journey over the last year. On Friday

evening we hope that you will all join us at our President’s welcome drinks to both meet new people

and/or catch up with old friends and colleagues. Following the presidents drinks we are again

running a trivia night, building on the success of last year’s which we hope many of you will attend.

Saturday morning offers the opportunity to learn about current curriculum developments in mathematics from Anna Wethereld, the Board Inspector for Mathematics and Numeracy at the NSW Education Standards Authority. Saturday night is the annual dinner with the opportunity to dress for the occasion if you so wish, our theme this year being “Blue”. Our dinner activities are

organised by Karen McDaid and will inspire you to get thinking, whilst the live band “Peppermint Jam” will inspire you to get moving! This year we are trialling Sunday morning as being our “practical sessions” where you can really get hands on with some mathematics and activities, before having

some stand up finger food and heading on your way. The most important contributors to the conference are the numerous volunteers who run our sessions and generously share their knowledge and understanding with everyone. We are very grateful to these colleagues who have put an incredible amount of time and effort into preparing their session for all to enjoy.

We are also incredibly grateful to our sponsors and exhibitors. We wish to acknowledge our very generous Platinum Sponsors: Casio and Manga High; our Gold Sponsor: Mathspace; and our Silver Sponsors: Maths Pathways and CSU Engineering. We are also grateful for the financial support of

2017 MANSW Annual Conference

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Nelson Cengage and 3P Learning for sponsoring the Presenter Gifts; Australian Mathematics Trust

for sponsoring the President’s Reception and Jacaranda for sponsoring the Pre-dinner Drinks. Do

please all take the time to look around the exhibitor displays and explore their wonderful array of reference materials and teaching resources.

Finally I personally would like to thank the incredible team from the MANSW Office: Zina, Darius and Zara for all their hard work and commitment. They do the majority of the organisation for the conference and I never cease to be impressed with the level of their dedication.

As mentioned above, our keynote speakers this year are focussing on the idea of a ‘Growth Mindset’. Of course, understanding and considering a growth mindset is a very different thing from living it. How many of us have a fixed mindset with regard to something in our lives… ‘I can’t cook’, ‘I’m always getting lost in the car’, ‘I’m not good in particular social situations’, ‘I don’t get on with

that particular person’, … the list can be endless. A quote from Pride and Prejudice springs to mind:

Darcy: “I certainly have not the talent which some people possess, of conversing easily with those I have never seen before…”

Elizabeth: “My fingers, do not move over this piano (sic) in the masterly manner which I see so many women’s do… But then I have always supposed it to be my own fault – because I would not take the

trouble of practising. It is not that I do not believe my fingers as capable as any other woman’s of

superior execution.”

In essence, a growth mindset could be defined as having a positive approach to whatever we are

asked to try. A student who is able to approach a topic with “yes, I would like to learn that” will

frequently do much better than the student who approaches with trepidation, expecting to fail. As teachers, it is vital that we practice what we preach and lead by example, and every year the conference is filled with such positive people having such positive experiences and conversations that I feel very confident that we will all leave able to help our students up their mountain to the best of our ability.

Becky Lovelock Conference Convenor 2017

You will find a MANSW Annual Conference Evaluation form in your conference bag. Please use this form to provide us with your feedback and return it to the MANSW desk prior to leaving the conference.

Your feedback on individual workshops will be collected within each session.

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2017 Conference Timetable

Friday 15 September 2017

8:00 am 8:45 am 9:00 am 9:45 am 10:30 am 11:00 am 12:10 pm 1:10 pm 2:10 pm 3:10 pm 3:40 pm 5:00 pm 6:30 pm
Registration and Sign-on Introduction and Welcome Keynote 1 – Mark Harrison

Keynote 2 – Angela D’Angelo

Morning Tea Session 1 Session 2 Lunch Session 3 Afternoon Tea Session 4

President’s Reception

Trivia Night - Explorers Unite (In the Golf Club)

Saturday 16 September 2017

8:00 am 8:45 am 9:30 am 10:30 am 11:00 am 12:10 pm 1:10 pm 2:10 pm 3:10 pm 3:40 pm 6:00 pm 7:00 pm
Registration and Sign-on Introduction and Welcome – Award Ceremony NESA Update – Anna Wethereld Morning Tea Session 5 Session 6 Lunch Session 7 Afternoon Tea Session 8 Pre-dinner drinks for Dinner Guests Conference Dinner - Blue (In the Marquee)

Sunday 17 September 2017

8:00 am 9:00 am 10:30 am 11:00 am 12:30 pm 1:00 pm
Registrations and Sign-on Session 9 Morning Tea Session 10 Prizes and Finger Food Conference Close

Attention

If you are seeking accreditation you must sign the attendance roll at the beginning of each day between 8:00 am and 9:00 am at the MANSW desk.

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Presentation Summaries

Keynote Address

9:00 am – 9:45 am

The Influence of Growth Mindsets on Student Motivation (and Everything)

Room: Combined Blaxland, Lawson & Wentworth rooms

Mark Harrison

When Mark was a maths teacher he noticed something profound: that students were divided up into two

distinct groups. Unlike the old idea that the class had only ‘smart’ and ‘dumb’ kids, he realised they were fundamentally divided by ‘learners’ and ‘non-learners’. He discerned that many students spent huge amounts

of time avoiding work they could actually complete if they just focused on it. He awakened to the fact that a large majority of students in his classroom were not reaching their potential because of a belief that maths

was not ‘their thing’.

This lead to his investigation into the research of Growth Mindset by Dr Carol Dweck. His thesis investigated this idea using students transitioning to high school in the domains of maths and reading. It was a deep dive into the fundamental classroom divide. And for over ten years, he has devoted his professional life to this new way of looking at the way people learn. This keynote speech will focus on the influence that Growth Mindsets have on our lives and especially the students. How they have a crucial influence on motivation and behaviour. And, he believes, without understanding mindsets it is hard to really change student motivation at all. This keynote will stress the need for a new way in education motivation. Today and moving forward educators can no longer ignore this important psychological mechanism. Because of the ever-changing job market, it is even more important to teach this new way of how students can reach their full potential and become more flexible thinkers.

Biography of Mark Harrison

Mark is on a mission to help educators and students change the way they view learning. Trained as a Mathematics and Psychology teacher, he has a unique background in Psychology, Growth Mindsets and Mathematics education.

Mark has helped schools develop whole-school cultural change using Growth Mindset philosophy. This has been achieved working in the role of a senior psychologist supervising a group of psychologists and counsellors, as a Principles of Learning and Teaching P-12 whole-school coordinator and also working with principals as part of the welfare team to implement dynamic new ways to transform teaching and learning practices.

Mark is a highly regarded presentation and oration expert. He has delivered his distinctive Growth Mindset presentations to staff and students across NSW, including: at the Hunter region school counsellors’ annual conference; to staff at Biddabah Public School; to Itinerate Support Staff - Hearing Support staff in the Hunter region; and at bespoke events for high school staff interested in Growth Mindsets and neuroscience. He has developed and presented his Growth Mindset programs to students across all school stages, including a program on Stage 6 study stress, a six-session Mindset program for Stage 3, and a Stage 1 Mindset program with the assistance of his “angry friend” Bucky the Puppet Monkey. As part of a five-week rural and remote program on Growth Mindset, Mark delivered an online presentation to students from six remote primary schools. He is also passionate about gender, age and cultural differences with regard to how individual context influences attitudes to learning.

Mark has been obsessed with this question for 10 years: How can students reach their full potential?

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Keynote Address

9:45 am – 10:30 am

Oh The Places We Go……

A mathematical learning journey in search of the ‘Theory of Everything’ about learning mathematics in the

21st Century

Angela D’Angelo

Room: Combined Blaxland, Lawson & Wentworth rooms
Angela was afforded the wonderful opportunity as the inaugural recipient of the Sydney University NSW Premier’s Scholarship, to go on an exploration of ideas and cultures. Finding the experience thrilling and invigorating, she is delighted to be able to share her experiences.

The physical journey took Angela from various parts of the United States, to Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver in Canada and then to the United Kingdom. More important was the associated journey of inquiry. She explored questions around the implementation of growth mindset strategies and how this has been done in mathematics classrooms. She also investigated the effect of 21st century teachers and 21st century parents and what could be going awry with the development of resilient students of mathematics.

What can be done to engage students, in particular girls in the areas of STEM? These questions have arisen from conversations with research academics from Universities such as McGill and Stanford, educational jurisdiction representatives as well as observations of teachers in action, implementing innovative practices.

The overarching question is of course, where do we start to get it right? Some, like Jo Boaler, believe it requires a complete reset of what we, as classroom practitioners, do and how we do it. Some of the answers

could lie in the concept of a student’s “math identity”; how such an identity develops and the effect it has on a student’s resilience and efficacy in the learning of mathematics. An adjustment of our attitudes may be

required in order to equip our students for current and future success.

Biography of Angela D’Angelo

Angela D’Angelo has a Masters in Education (majoring in Research Methods) 2013 and has been a mathematics educator for over 30 years, in both the State and Catholic sectors many of those as a Head Teacher of the Mathematics KLA . She has been a member of mathematical associations for most of that time and is the president of the Met East Mathematics Head Teachers Association, this year she was the recipient of the inaugural Sydney University Mathematics NSW Premier's scholarship.

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Session 1

11:00 am – 12.00pm

K- 4 Masterclass (11am-1.10pm)

Charles Lovitt

Stages ES1-2

Room: Blaxland
A masterclass in any field of endeavour is a chance for participants to peer into the subtleties and nuances behind ideas of quality and in a way that benefits all of us. I am a lesson collector – aiming to collect the most ‘interesting’ lessons I can find from across the country. Some of these have been so well received and used by teachers as to have become

almost ‘iconic’ i.e indicators of the directions to which our profession aspires. The session will have the hopeful luxury

of both experiencing the lessons but also peering more seriously and deeply into the structures of each. In this way we can distil out elements of quality which can then be transferred into other lessons.

Re-responding to the ALARM

Lee Hyland

Stages 4-5

Room: Lawson
Follow up session about our progress along the ALARM journey, how we are implementing into Stage 4/5 and success in Stage 6 from implementation.

Vertical Whiteboarding: Riding the Wave of Student Activity in Maths

Tricia Forrester

Stages 4-5

Room: Wentworth
In 2014 we commenced working on the Inspiring Mathematics and Science in Teacher Education (IMSITE) project, aimed at improving mathematics and science education in Australia. We undertook a range of activities, the most exciting of which was the introduction of vertical whiteboarding as a tool to actively engage high school students with mathematics. In this workshop, we share our journey of taking whiteboarding from a university setting and into secondary school maths classrooms, sharing teacher and student perspectives of vertical whiteboarding. Whiteboarding has potential as a tool to engage students across a range of school settings. Participants will engage in vertical whiteboarding, discussing benefits and practicalities for them and their students.

A Short History of Time - From Babylon Until Today

Andrew Ferch

Stages 4-6+

Room: Bligh & Macquarie
The sexagesimal number system was developed by the Sumerians and then used extensively by the Babylonians throughout their empire to measure time. The Egyptians also added to this the measure of 24 hours in day. Who were these pioneers of time measurement and what legacy have they left us today? The presentation will trace the measurement of time and angles over 5000 years of history. We begin with the Sumerians and identify who they were and what remains of their highly developed civilization. We then move onto the Babylonians and examine what impact they had through their empire. We look at what mathematical knowledge the Egyptians contributed in their own way to our current use of time measurement. The presentation assumes no prior knowledge of history. Time lines and maps are used to identify these different civilizations. Further, archaeological evidence and ancient literary sources are used to enrich our understanding of these ancient cultures.

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Session 1

(Continued)

11:00 am – 12.00pm

Unpacking the Mathematics STEM Pathways for Stage 5

Danielle Karis

Stage 5

Room: Mistys
This one-hour session will allow participants an opportunity to unpack the Mathematics STEM Pathways for Stage 5. The pedagogy presented in the sample Programs will be examined and participants will discuss how this compares to the way Stage 5 Outcomes are currently addressed in their schools. This discussion will assist teachers in evaluating the appropriateness of the two new Pathways for their own students.

Unpacking the New Mathematics Standard Course

Robert Yen & Judy Binns

Stage 6

Room: Pioneers

What’s new in HSC Mathematics Standard 1 and 2, other than the name? This workshop will outline the changes to the

2012 syllabus, examining the new themes and big ideas. We will identify the topics that have changed or been moved, and focus on new topics such as Pareto charts, target heart rates, blood pressure, Herons formula and networks. We will also look at teaching two pathways from Year 11, in both graded or mixed-ability classes.

A Deep Dive into NSW 2018 Senior Curriculum Changes

Nicola Wall & Andrew Crisp

Stages 5-6

Room: Norman Lindsay
Over the next two years, maths teachers across the country will be overseeing the biggest changes to the NSW senior mathematics curriculum in more than three decades. The new curricula are modernised, streamlined, and while familiar in parts, also incorporate some new material, technological integration, and assessment standards. The curriculum team at Mathspace will guide you through the motivation behind the changes and the goals of the new syllabuses, before

diving deep into the details of what’s new, what’s been moved and where, and what’s out. These changes will be

showcased alongside the comprehensive e-textbook created by Mathspace, which is free to access for all Australians and will help both teachers and students master the new curricula.

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Session 2

12:10 pm – 1:10 pm

K-4 Masterclass (Continued)

Charles Lovitt

Stages ES1-2

Room: Blaxland
A masterclass in any field of endeavour is a chance for participants to peer into the subtleties and nuances behind ideas of quality and in a way that benefits all of us. I am a lesson collector – aiming to collect the most ‘interesting’ lessons I can find from across the country. Some of these have been so well received and used by teachers as to have become

almost ‘iconic’ i.e indicators of the directions to which our profession aspires. The session will have the hopeful luxury

of both experiencing the lessons but also peering more seriously and deeply into the structures of each. In this way we can distil out elements of quality which can then be transferred into other lessons.

Paper Power

Maree Skillen

Stages 3-5

Room: Lawson
Explore, imagine, experiment, create! Paper folding can provide a particularly accessible, visual means of inspiring and exciting students about mathematics. This hands-on workshop will provide active mathematical experiences for participants to engage with geometrical concepts and ideas in fun, thought provoking, and creative ways using paper. Participants will have the opportunity to explore, question, and take away simple ideas to build an experiential base necessary for further learning in the 21st century mathematics classroom.

Three Years Later: An Experiment to Remove Streaming in Year 8 Mathematics Classes

Nordin Zuber

Stage 4

Room: Wentworth
The decision of whether to stream (grade) students into different classes based on test results, and if so, how to grade them, is perhaps one of the most controversial issues for secondary school teachers. In 2015, after much analysis and discussion, North Sydney Boys High School removed grading for Mathematics in Year 8. Now in our third year of nongraded classes, this presentation will look at the questions and the analysis that led to the decision to try something different, the tools developed to monitor student progress and to inform the ongoing faculty dialog. While our school, like all schools, has a very unique context, we have developed strategies, faced new challenges and learned many lessons which should be of interest to any school wishing to evaluate or examine their current grading policies.