Number Agents

  My son recently completed a math 'test' ...it was easy he said, but with forty questions to be completed in an hour, not achievable.  The results of this test will hardly be evidence of his understanding and perhaps evidence of his understanding would have better been gleaned by talking to him.  That is how I feel about worksheets! I frequently hear of people that struggle to teach maths and are after the next great worksheet to guide their teaching.  Or the next manual, or workbook...put very simply and in my humble opinion, this is not teaching maths. If I was to get rid of one thing from classrooms it would be worksheets.  They are used far too often, without real purpose and have limited cognitive impact.  In fact just navigating a worksheet for some children is more of an issue than the maths itself. I yes I hear the wail from the corner... "My children love worksheets, they are great for reinforcement."  In some cases yes this may be true, for ...

 I felt it was a good idea to just put down on the page where we are currently up to in our play-based space with literacy development. I feel like I have learned so much in the last two years, but particularly in the last year regarding literacy acquisition. If you have followed my blog you will know that we have been on a journey with reading.  Embracing decodable books and individual reading a few years ago now.  The use of decodable books came about after a search for books that would cater for year 4 boys and their 'lower levels' but also inspire them to read.  To do that we discovered project x code by Oxford and we have not looked back!   Project X made a real difference!  You can find them and the superhero series along with Alien adventures through: Edify Ltd www.edify.co.nz Fiona van der Hor - fionav@edify.co.nz We use the Superhero series and the Alien adventures in our class along with the Little Learners from Liz Kane Literacy. Decoda...

"...And so it was here, the unknown future they’d talked about preparing students for...but were they themselves ready? This was a thought going through my head while out walking my dogs, looking out upon my current surroundings, my place, my home. This time of isolation only reinforces why it is dispositions we need to be fostering in school, not narrow academics. It is so apparent right now what dispositions will be important for our children, as they are right now for us. Empathy, kindness, patience,resilience, innovation, flexibility, trust, the ability to know when to lead and to know when to follow, creativity, independence, humour ...I could go on and on. Human beings with these dispositions will always seek understanding and knowledge, but human beings raised amongst a culture of competition, measurement and knowledge may not necessarily develop these dispositions. Play all the way! Arts all the away! Relationships all the way! When we get back to our schools let...

The start of the year always brings into strong focus for me the true power of play.  The reason for this is simple, I remember what was, and reflect on what is. Looking back I remember myself and the expectations I had for children and their learning.  I remember the structure I put in place, thinking I was doing the right thing.  I remember the inappropriate way I expected children to engage with learning, how developmentally inappropriate it was of me to expect them to embark on the 'traditional' learning that I so strongly valued. Reflecting on this, I regret the stress and anxiety I caused children by doing what I was told to do as a new entrant teacher, what I was trained to do, what I was programmed to value. I remember the struggles I had managing 'behaviour' enforcing routine and settling children into school.  I remember the deficit thinking I applied to children entering school that I didn't think were ready, to their oral language, their readiness ...

This whole topic is so important to me right now.  Actually I think assessment and the very traditional way we still use it in most of our schools is one of the biggest things standing in the way of real time to engage in the teaching and learning process.  It is the hurdle for teachers that want to truly engage with their students, but lack the time to do so because of outdated expectations for assessment.  In fact I believe it is one of the biggest hurdles standing in the way of many truly embracing play based learning. I believe most of the assessment currently used is redundant when we think about all the research that tells us about how children learn best.  In fact the way assessment is used completely contradicts what we know about the learning process.  Let me ask you, do you perform well when put into a stressed state?  If asked to do something that was challenging for you, without the opportunity to clarify or to collaborate, or to have a go a...

There have been a few articles shared recently around concerns of the fact the arts are dying in school.  I have to say it has made me really happy to see this finally out there as it has been something of great concern to me.  If you have read my blog to the 'system' or listened to my conversation with Kate Webber, you will know that my daughters schooling journey, since she left the shelter of primary has really given risen to this concern. Contrast this with my highly sporty, people pleasing son, and their experiences are night and day. You see, my daughter is a creative.  She thrives on this, it is what makes her heart sing.   Not only that, the performing arts have been a bright light helping her through a deep dark tunnel of anxiety. Around the country, the Arts have been shelved, and if they have not be shelved, the way they are taught have become so product driven that any essence of what would or could be called creativity has been drained out of ...

**Before you start reading, the great thing about agency is how you deliver the mathematics is totally up to you, the crucial part however is that it is a collaborative problem solving approach.  My only plea is that you leave worksheets where they belong, in the recycling bin and make your maths visual, oral and hands on. **Also your villains, the names you give them and what they look like, are up to you.  When I first started they were simply still images that I acted out. **No video needed for this one as I think it is pretty straight forward :) ----- So the next step after developing the narrative is thinking about what maths development will look like within agency.  Specifically what are the mathematical foundations you are aiming to develop, build on and consolidate throughout the year. For me, this is all about number sense, no matter what level you teach.  Our aim, in my opinion should be to give children the gift of fluidity and flexibility with ...

The important part of this approach is a strong narrative.  My narrative is based strongly on the Sci-Fi movies and shows I was forced to watch as a child, with a touch of batman and a sprinkling of any other good vs evil story I have ever read or watched.  The narrative needs to be open enough to allow children to add their own voice to it, and obviously doesn't have to make much logical sense.  It just needs to capture the imaginative play of children. This section of the planning builds on to the blog I posted earlier today and is part of the same step in the planning.  Basically it is a little like my storyboard.  It sets the parameters of the story that are agreed to by the 'actors' working within it.  Your narrative does not have to match mine at all, and a lot of the narrative that will be built on this year, was introduced by last years agents. The hooking in stage will be fleshed out more when I get to that stage, with specific problems to deli...

So it took me a couple of days to get this done.  I like to handwrite this stage of planning, I find my creativity flows a lot better this way.  It makes it a little harder to read, but I hope you get the idea.  My intention in sharing each stage of my planning is not for you to copy, as your agency will be up to a different stage than mine, but to give you an idea and a framework to sit yours on if this is new to you, or you just want to try something different. I start with mindmapping the world.  The characters, main, supporting and cameo roles.  I think about the setting and about the nuts and bolts of our agency.  The things that make it tick on a daily basis, the gadgets, the artefacts, how we will check in and out, our ritual etc.  I call this production management.  You will see from my planning that I think of agency very much like a tv series or chapter book.  Number Agency to me is a narrative. In the next post I will sh...

This video details the first step I go through in my yearly Number Agent journey. Basically it is all about creating a skeleton of the world, your vision for the world you want to bring to life in your classroom, who will be the characters, who are the goodies, who are the baddies, who will the bit players be, how will the agents be symbolised (numbers, initials etc) how will the agents move in and out of this world? How will children be hooked into this world, what will be the very first clues, the steps into agency.  Who will be the key players in this world?  What symbols and gadgets will be used.  How will belief be built once children are hooked in?  What rituals will be established? I map this all out as it helps me to further develop ideas, the process of recording for me really feeds my creativity. I really hope this video plays ok, you may need to play it full volume if it is hard to hear, but it seems all good from my end. I will check in with you...

Before I start detailing my journey in 2020 with Number Agents.  I think it is important that you know what it is so you can decide if it is a journey you want to take with me. I have created this 13 minute video describing what agency actually is.  If you have not read the book, you can grab the PDF copy from Teachers Pay Teachers, just search my store Number Agents. I no longer produce a hard copy. I will post my first video in this years journey tomorrow for you so you can follow along with me.

Ok, so this post is going to deviate from my normal.  However it is absolutely connected to the everything that I stand for. Bullying is rife in our society, it is absolutely everywhere, in fact, it is very sad to say that for many of us, even as adults it is part of our day to day life. Does it have to be?  Well I don't think it does, but I think if we are to banish the bullies to the fringes of humanity, we must start with our children. And yes, that does mean it comes back to education to step up.  Sadly if we are to continue to make it an issue of parenting, the problem will just continue to grow and our beautiful children will continue to live anxious lives where there really are monsters around every corner. Too many schools say loudly that bullying is not a problem in their school.  This is an absolute nonsense, bullying is an issue in every school and in every fragment of society, and until we can accept that, we just won't move forward or make a diff...