Dear Parent/Guardian:
Change. Whether we like it or not, change is an aspect of life that we all deal with. The same is true of education and schools. We don’t use slide rulers any longer, globes have given way to GoogleEarth, and keyboarding is now a skill all students need. Yes, some things in education have remained virtually unchanged over time (we still have teachers and principals, we still have students organized in grades, and recess is often the best time of day for our students), but other aspects of educating our children have changed or are changing.
Take math, for example. In my day, as in many of yours, we learned math mostly by our teachers “telling” us what to do. He or she would provide us with examples of how to get the right answer, and then we would sit quietly at our desks, get our pencils out, and begin the “drill and practice” exercise of the day. This model of math instruction held firm for decades, but research about how children learn math, or develop their number sense, is changing what we do in classrooms.
The B.C. math curriculum underwent significant change a few years ago. B.C. joined forces with the other western provinces and northern territories to create a singular math curriculum, based on how other places, that were getting better results in math, were organizing and delivering their math programs, and on current research about how children best learn math and develop their innate number sense. Schools in our province have implemented the new curriculum from Kindergarten to Grade 10, with new Grade 11 courses starting in September, and new Grade 12 courses starting in the fall of 2012.
Fundamental to our new curriculum are the following notions:
• that students need time to explore and develop a deeper understanding of math concepts; as a result, there are now fewer learning outcomes that teachers need to teach to, allowing more time for students to explore and learn concepts more deeply
• rather than teachers “telling” students what way is best to learn a concept, they now provide time for students to explore a concept, and to develop their own personal strategies and ways of understanding which is critical to the overall development of their math sense
• students need to use “manipulatives” (think blocks or macaroni or any other item they can interact with in order to explore a number concept) in order to build a concrete understanding of math concepts
• exploring math concepts with a partner or in a small group provides a more powerful learning situation than on one’s own
• assessing a student’s understanding of math can be achieved through a variety of means beyond a test (a reflective journal, a performance task, a demonstration, and so on)
The math class of our day has been replaced by a learning environment where the teacher now takes on a role of facilitating student learning, where textbooks have changed (practice is now embedded in real life math problems), where the curriculum has changed, where research has an impact on what is taught and how it is delivered, where math classes are noisy now. But some things remain the same and constant: teachers continue to work hard to ensure your child, their student, learns and masters the concepts they need to learn and master at their grade level, and parents always want their children to be successful at learning.
Please watch for and attend a Math Learning Session sponsored by your Parent Advisory Council.
For more information about math, please talk to your child’s teacher, school principal or vice-principal, or contact me at your convenience at bford@sd20.bc.ca or 250-368-2230.
Thank you.
Bill Ford,
Director of Instruction
School District No. 20 (Kootenay-Columbia)
