At the end of term 3 I set 150 year 7 maths students one piece of maths homework for the holidays. Their homework was to ask an "I wonder...?" question about anything, and then do some investigating to start to answer their question. Why did I set that homework rather than times tables, or algebra practice?
We are constantly talking with our students about growth. We are looking for them to grow and we want them to always be thinking and stretching. So....we finished the term with a fun 'unusual facts' kahoot and then challenged them to come back to school with some interesting bit of information or something they learned about over the break. I can't wait to see what they come back with, because then I am going to challenge my team of fantastic teachers to look for the maths in what the students bring back. I want my team to be growing too. We get comfortable with our curriculum in the contexts we like to deliver it in. But do we deliver curriculum in a context that is relevant to our students? I am hoping that we are about to find out.
I have been challenged this week to think about "If I was in charge of innovation, what would be the first thing I would do?". My response was to tear down the walls of our school, connect it to our community and start to tackle problems that matter to our students, their families, and our community. We can still have our physical location but I believe more than ever we need to engage our community and our students with each other. If we want to overcome apathy in the classroom, let's put our learning in contexts that matter to our students. Within my school, I would need to break down walls between faculties: genuine cross-curricular connection and learning would be needed. That requires time for planning, but not maybe as much as we think. What planning would I need to do, if I put students in charge of where they were going? I would need to plan provoking conversations: what questions do I ask, who do I connect students to, etc rather than how do I teach pythagoras' theorem in a way that is relevant to my year 9 class? If they were working on solving homelessness in our community, Pythogaoras' theorem would be part of designing efficient, affordable housing solutions.
I have not spent enough time yet wrestling with these ideas, but I am looking forward to meeting with my Principal next week and asking him some of these questions: What is our core business/goal as a school? If he was in charge of innovation what would he do? What is his "I wonder..." question for our school?
And most of all I am looking forward to seeing what my students bring to the table to direct our thinking for how we learn maths in 2020.
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