Primary Matters

Primary Matters June 2005

extracted from Board Bulletin, volume 14, number 3

Contents

Rural primary and secondary schools explore Mathematics in Indigenous Contexts

The Mathematics in Indigenous Contexts project for Years 6–8 students has operated in several Primary and Secondary school sites in rural NSW over the past three years. The project encourages the establishment of a team at each school – comprising teachers, the Aboriginal Education Assistants and members of the local community – to develop a contextual multistage Mathematics unit that suits the particular learning needs of local students.

The innovative Years 6–8 project was successfully trialled in 2001 with Crawford Public School, a large western Sydney school, and Walhallow Public School, a small rural school situated in the Walhallow Community at Caroona, south of Tamworth. The project is documented on the Mathematics in Indigenous Contexts website.

In 2002, the project was conducted in Gilgandra and Coonabarabran before being broadened to include schools in Gilgandra, Quirindi and Warren during 2003 and 2004.

Gilgandra Public School, Gilgandra High School and Quirindi Public School are currently involved in the 2005 project. Following the success of the activities at both sites, on the final day of the project in 2004 the teams identified aspects of the curriculum that engaged the students in learning mathematics away from the classroom. Curriculum aspects included the context and relevance, connectedness and hands-on nature of the activities, cooperative groups and explicit mathematics content. The 2005 Mathematics in Indigenous Contexts project focuses on translating these elements into measurement lessons in the classroom.

At Quirindi Public School each Stage 3 teacher has chosen a substrand for the unit of work that will be documented this year. Initial lessons will include time, area and volume, and capacity. The ‘time’ activities included developing several timing devices: a candle marked in 1cm divisions, a sand timer, a water timer and a pendulum tested against a stopwatch. Once the timers were made they were used to time a range of different activities to establish the most accurate. Activities included reciting the alphabet, 15 sit-ups, and counting to 50.

The ‘area’ activities began by establishing how to estimate length, and finding things in the classroom that had a specific area, such as labels, notepads and books, and working out the area of particular images. Later, the students used grid paper to create a range of specific areas but with different shapes. To understand ‘volume and capacity’, students used water to measure the capacity of different shapes and created shapes using centicubes. This was followed up with the students creating metre squares.

The lessons from Gilgandra Public School and Gilgandra High School will be featured in a future Board Bulletin article. For more information on the Mathematics in Indigenous Contexts project please contact:

Kevin Lowe ph: (02) 9367 8198

or

Suzanne Ziems ph: (02) 9367 8274