Number Agents is a concept born from Mantle of the Expert. Unlike a normal Mantle, Number Agents stretches out for a whole year. Other than this it does follow the traditional steps of a Mantle.
1) Hook - this year we did this with a message in the bottle (there is a post on this on this blog if you would like to know more)
2)Building Belief - spending time setting up our company...this is where Head Agent starts to come in.
3) Clients and Commission - Number Agents happens to have a new client each day and the commission is our daily problems.
4) Professional Tasks - this is where you math teaching comes in :)
5) Tensions...added by the villains each day.
6) Closure...at the end of the year it is important that Number Agents officially closes so that we can open a new agency the following year.
My book spells out more of the ins and outs of Number Agents and can be found here. I do sell hard copies but only have a few left, so if you want one please email numberagents@gmail.com. When the hard copies are gone, I wont have any more for a little while.
The beauty of agency is the tensions you can add along the way. Just out of the blue the other day while I was telling one of my stories to the agents the idea of Head Villain was born. This villain leads villain school and is focused on making the villains smarter and smarter. He fits beautifully with our concept of growth mindset and gives the agents yet another reason to want to develop their number sense and concepts about math.
The beauty of this guy is he is multidimensional he can pose problems that have various mathematical strategies required and has that all powerful aura, like Head Agent. I can see that a quite a story will be woven and I am totally looking forward to it.
The other beauty of this new 'all powerful' villain is of course he will have villain contacts...these villains might in fact pose problems that do not involve maths, but involve other curriculums allowing me to weave my Mantle wider without having to start another company.
Introducing Head Villain....looks like he has got math mischief on his mind.
I have yet to work out what his big debut may be, but am thinking along the lines of another hostage situation...this time it may be ther professor. The agents will have to solve a range of problems that each correspond to a letter, if they can work out the mystery word, they rescue the professor....or something like that anyway.
I guess the point of this post is to show how broad Number Agency can be...an also how much fun! It is far more than an approach to teaching maths, it captures imaginations and promotes imaginative play through math.
I am considering at some stage leaving my puppet heroes and villains out as an invitation to play...just to see what happens :)
I hope all of the other agencies are having as much fun as I am. If you have purchased the book and are not sure where to start this post may help.
I also posted at the beginning of the year a series of posts about my setting up journey. Post one here.
There are a series of posts on this blog after those two that detail what I have done etc, but I am more than happy to help, just message me through my facebook page Number Agents or email me on numberagents@gmail.com.
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