We had an awesome day at Anderson's Bay School on Monday with our nearby schools (Portobello, Broad Bay, Anderson's Bay, Grants Braes) with Math teaching/learning expert, Rob Proffit-White

Rob Proffit-White is the Executive Director of Maths New Zealand for a company called 'The Learner First' and he has been working in this space with many schools nationally and also internationally over the last 5 years. See below for a little bit of background about Rob's philosophy...

"Investing in teachers’ subject pedagogical knowledge is key for initiating and sustaining effective whole school approaches. Instructional materials, pedagogical frameworks and moderation processes all require teachers to have this knowledge in order to observe, monitor and provide feedback to their students “in the moment. Together we grow teachers’ knowledge of how children learn mathematics. Teachers are empowered to optimise existing resources and integrate high impact routines, creating an effective blend of teaching styles and a varied and inclusive repertoire of tasks. We empower teachers to translate research into everyday classroom practice and become confident, creative communicators of mathematics. Teachers will learn to create and implement balanced and high impact routines that have demonstrated capacity to improve both student performance and disposition as they explore mathematical skills, processes and competencies. All our mathematics work builds a schools’ capacity to nurture the self-understanding, connection and competency needed for every student to access mathematics and develop the capacity and confidence to fully contribute."

We were very lucky to work with Rob and this has been in the pipeline for a year or so now and he is a busy man! It was very timely with the New Zealand Curriculum refresh in motion and the Draft Maths Curriculum recently being released. We, as a school, achieve well overall in Maths and we feel confident in implementing the new Draft Maths Curriculum as 90 percent of it has not changed. It was great to work with Rob as he has been involved in the Draft Maths Curriculum and all his approaches, ideas and activities are in line with the refreshed curriculum. We are excited to implement the wonderful things Rob taught us on Monday and look forward to seeing the growth in our tamaraki but also in ourselves as teachers/learners. Watch this space! Make sure you have a go at some of Rob's Maths challenges in a seperate article.