Primary Matters

Primary Matters September 2004

extracted from Board Bulletin, volume 13, number 5

Contents

Parents and the community getting involved in Mathematics K–6

Over 170 parents and members of a local school community recently took part in a series of information sessions on the new Mathematics K–6 Syllabus at John Purchase Public School in Sydney.

The parents and community members received background information on the new syllabus and also participated in hands-on workshop activities for exploring a variety of strands, Early Stage 1 to Stage 3.

The school’s Mathematics K–6 team coordinated the evening using the Board’s support document Introducing the Mathematics K–6 Syllabus to Parents and School Community Members.

Heather Thomas, Mathematics team coordinator at the school said, ‘We really wanted parents to do the kind of maths activities and experience the mathematical thinking that our students use when they are working on a particular activity.

‘The utilisation of the overhead transparencies and suggested activities in the support document provided a useful and easy-to-follow format for the evening. ‘The Sample Units of Work provided additional activities to support the workshop and supplement the activities in the parent package,’ she said.

Introducing the Mathematics K–6 Syllabus to Parents and School Community Members contains a parent handout, which was distributed at the conclusion of the evening. This provided parents with practical suggestions to support their child’s learning in mathematics.

Parents made many positive comments at the end of the evening on how they could become more involved in their child’s learning, starting with simply being kept informed on the way Mathematics is now taught in schools.

One parent commented, ‘Students get to have a lot of fun with their maths, but they also get the opportunity to articulate their answers and think of the strategies involved in getting a solution.’

Another parent spent some time trying to find a solution to a problem.

‘It’s not just the answer that’s important, it’s how you get there and all the thinking and processes involved,’ he said.

Photographs of the activities conducted at the parent information evening and mathematics workshop are displayed opposite.

Stage: Early Stage 1

Activity: Handprint Detective. (Introducing the Mathematics K–6 Syllabus to Parents and School Community Members, page 21)

Strand: Measurement: Substrand: Area

Parents were given a prepared outline of a handprint. The question was then asked: ‘Can you work out if your hand is bigger, smaller or about the same as the handprint? Justify your answer.’

Stage: 1

Activity adapted from Alphabet Symmetry. (Mathematics K–6 Sample Units of Work, page 79)

Strand: Space and Geometry: Substrand: Two dimensional Space

Parents were asked to form words using only capital letters that are symmetrical.

Stage: 2

Activity: Creating Arrays

Strand: Number: Substrand: Multiplication and Division (Activity adapted from Mathematics K–6 Sample Units of Work, page 93)

Parents use counters to make an array for a particular number. For example, 36 can be 4 rows of 9 or 2 rows of 18.

Stage: 3

Activity: Views of Models

Strand: Space and Geometry: Substrand: Threedimensional Space (Introducing the Mathematics K–6 Syllabus to Parents and School Community Members, page 24)

Parents were given a side view and a front view of a model made with cubes. They made a model that conforms to these views on a 4 x 4 grid.