Local math teachers honing skills

More than 50 local elementary math teachers will be put to the test themselves in a series of workshops organized by the Schulich School of Education, the Near North District School Board (NNDSB), and the Nipissing Parry Sound Catholic District School Board (NPSCDSB).The workshops are running October 10 – 12 at the Annex (15 Janey Street in North Bay) and in local schools. The focus on developing teachers’ numerical reasoning through challenging and engaging problem solving using content from the junior level Ontario mathematics curriculum. The emphasis is on collaboration, support for, curiosity about, and encouragement of diverse problem solving strategies, all with an eye to transfer the skills learned into effective in-class teaching techniques.
On October 11, participating teachers will return to their own classrooms to engage their students in problem solving tasks learned in the previous day’s workshop. Their experiences delivering this task will then be reported on and discussed when they return to the Annex on October 12.
The workshop is led by Dr. John Mayer, professor of Mathematics, University of Alabama and Principal Investigator, of the Greater Birmingham Mathematics Partnership (GBMP); and assisted by his co-worker, David Cosper of the University of Alabama. The workshops will be facilitated by Schulich School of Education professors Dr. Doug Franks and Dr. Tim Sibbald, with Sean Meighan of the NNDSB and Melanie Courchesne of the NPSCDSB, as well as Doug Robidoux and David Overholt, student achievement officers with the Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat.
Funding for the workshops is provided by a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) grant from the Schulich School of Education and by the NNDSB and NPSCDSB.
Mayer’s work with the GBMP is supported by National Science Foundation grants.?