PDHPE and TAS Professsional Learning Day - 9 March 2021
Identified need
Numeracy data for the middle school campuses was analysed and multiplicative thinking was identified as an area for development across Georges River College.
What’s happening?
Last year, the GRC Key Learning Coordinators participated in professional learning delivered by the Tailored Support Team with the view to facilitate subject specific professional learning for college teaching staff. The coordinators identified the numeracy components of their subjects across the Year 7 to 12 continuum as well as the skills required by staff to explicitly teach these components. Resource material was developed to support this initiative including the GRC Numeracy Nudges, a series of prompts to assist students to identify key information in graphs, tables and text.
PDHPE and TAS were selected as the faculties to commence this college wide program. Jason Rea (PDHPE Coordinator) and Jenn Donald (TAS Coordinator) collaborated with the Tailored Support Team to develop and deliver professional learning for a combined PDHPE and TAS learning day with a focus on best practice strategies to explicitly teach numeracy, in particular, number sense.
The first half of the day focused on developing staff confidence and knowledge (i.e. mastery of these skills) using Talk Moves and Number Talks. Both strategies are targeted at improving numeracy skills and will be a key focus across GRC within each faculty. Staff then applied their knowledge to their faculty context in programs for stages 4, 5 and 6. Staff have indicated that they increased their knowledge of both strategies and will share their experiences with campus colleagues in using and embedding the explicit numeracy strategies into programs.
Where to next?
The Science and HSIE faculties have been identified as the next faculty groups to participate in the Numbers 4 Learning, Numbers 4 Life professional learning and, hence, embed explicit numeracy strategies into their teaching programs.
Written by Leanne Larcombe and Jason Rea
