A B.C. school district is developing a new teaching strategy it hopes will mitigate the "trauma" that can afflict students learning math.
According to a staff report, Nanaimo Ladysmith Public Schools is crafting a numeracy framework with practices centring on "cognitive, social and cultural aspects of numeracy instruction" and Indigenous philosophy. The aim, said Justin Green, vice-principal for teaching and learning, is to increase numeracy success rates.
One of the elements of the framework is number sense, or the ability to comprehend numbers and use it in more sophisticated ways, Green said.
"We begin with counting strategies, we evolve into additive thinking and from there on into multiplicative thinking," he said. "This nested model of numeracy thinking is at the heart of the work that we're doing."
He said staff have been engaging with principals, vice-principals and Indigenous elders as part of the process and have found that there is a need to identify instructional practices that advance numeracy work.
"There are the two big, heavy-lifting parts, which are the learning progressions," said Green. "What does learning look like for number sense from pre-[kindergarten] through to Grade 9, how does that evolve over time and then how do we assess that to see how our kids are doing and then make decisions for instruction?"
More work will take place as the school year progresses, with a smaller team working with district staff and a larger team that provides input and feedback.
"This is a process that's going to be a quite a few months in the making and our plan is, by June, to have this ready for moving out to the community itself," Green said.
Trustee Chantelle Morvay wondered about higher grades and incorporation of technology, and Green said work is being done in that area.
"The door is open," he said. "I think we need to engage the community in that work 鈥� The capacity-building is going to be much more and so we're being very intentional about how we target that. We don't want to leave secondary behind, but we have to be very strategic in how we approach it; it is on our minds absolutely."
The "notion of math trauma" was also a talking point.
"That's not a wellness thing, that is a tragedy in a lot of ways, and so what our work also encompasses is ensuring that educators, students, feel connected to mathematics, to numeracy, and they see themselves as mathematicians when they're learning," said Green.
