A very interesting day! So many ideas to bring back to school and try out. My highlight was the keynote from Anthony Harradine. He made me/us think about how we go about solving maths problems and how children need to "know" so much to do wit maths. He explained how he believed their was no silver bullet to "fix" students' maths knowledge.
I was lucky enough to go to the follow-up session to the keynote, where we tried a new website - www.numericalacumen.com - which is a website that Anthony has helped develop to try to help fill the gap in basic facts knowledge.
The second workshop I attended was on making connections with Basic Facts. Great handouts - with what basic facts are needed for year levels/stages. Also included was Peter Hughes' basic facts interview - can't wait to try this out with my class, it may be a good whole school assessment/evaluation of basic facts.
The second keynote was also very interesting. Bruce Moody was very inspiring and made some very good points. He made the challenge to show the high expectations we have for our students. He said that we may say we have high expectations, but the work we give students doesn't show that. We need to give the students a chance to show higher order thinking.
One other interesting thing about the symposium was that I "wrote" my notes on the Evernote iPad app. It worked really well, however I need to look into a drawing/art app for the iPad - you can't draw using the Evernote app!
Overall a successful, motivating day - well worth the early get up!
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