2024 MTLC Master Class Webinar Series

Presenter: Associate Professor Jill Brown (Deakin)

Date: Wednesday 16 October, 4.00–5.15pm AEDT

3.00 – 4.15pm AEST

Audience: Year 3 to Year 8 teachers, school mathematics leaders, mathematics coordinators

Webinar Synopsis

Mathematical modelling has shifted from being implicit in the mathematics curriculum F-10 to being explicitly included, requiring teachers’ engagement in assessment and reporting. In this webinar, Jill will lead considerations about what mathematical modelling is, why mathematical modelling should be part of every mathematics teacher’s focus, when genuine real-world situations and problems should be part of our teaching practice, and how mathematical modelling can be implemented successfully. Jill will share the importance of all teachers and students (the who) engaging in mathematical modelling and highlight several tasks and implementation advice in general and task-specific ways.

Presenter: Emeritus Professor Peter Sullivan (Monash)

Date: Wednesday 30 October
4.00 – 5.15pm AEDT, 3.00 – 4.15pm AEST

Audience: Primary and secondary teachers, school mathematics leaders, mathematics coordinators

Webinar Synopsis

Finding a balance in mathematics teaching is essential if we want to improve student learning outcomes in mathematics. This "balanced" mathematics teaching requires using a range of approaches. In this webinar, Peter will outline four different styles of lessons that can be used individually or in combination to offer students a broad approach to learning mathematics. The four types of lessons are practical investigations, games and activities, active teaching, and structured inquiry. The advantages and opportunities of each will be elaborated. Drawing on the topics of fractions, examples of each type of lesson will be discussed.

Presenter: Dr Ann Downton (Monash)

Date: Wednesday 20 November
4.00 – 5.15pm AEDT, 3.00 – 4.15pm AEST

Audience: Foundation to Year 2 teachers, school mathematics leaders, mathematics coordinators

Webinar Synopsis

Research suggests that young children’s drawing reveals the way in which they make sense of the mathematics underpinning a problem. The challenge for teachers in a mathematics lesson is to notice whether children are using drawing to solve the problem or creating a drawing after solving the problem mentally, and allowing time for children to explain their thinking.  

In this webinar, Ann will share her recent research using classroom examples that has revealed that children’s drawings combined with their explanations reveal a great deal about their intuitive ideas of multiplication and their understanding of the “equal group” structure.

Presenter: Professor Tracey Muir (ACU)

Date: Wednesday 27 November
4.00 – 5.15pm AEDT, 3.00 – 4.15pm AEST

Audience: Foundation to Year 6

Webinar Synopsis

Picture story books provide a great medium for engaging students in mathematical explorations. Appropriate and relevant children’s literature has the potential to engage and motivate students to learn mathematical concepts, spark an interest in mathematics, help students to see connections to their personal experiences, and provide a context for using mathematics to solve problems. In this webinar, Tracey will highlight how mathematics can be developed through children’s engagement with specific literature, particularly within a STEM context. Ways to develop lessons based on shared readings of picture books that are written to entertain and engage students in mathematical thinking will also be shared.

Presenter: Dr Matt Sexton (ACU)

Audience: Primary and secondary teachers, school mathematics leaders, mathematics coordinators

Webinar Synopsis

Recently, there appears to be more talk about the need for teachers to engage in explicit teaching as “the” way to teach mathematics. Effective mathematics teachers have always used explicit teaching, including the pedagogically thoughtful use of direct instruction and other forms of explicit teaching. In this webinar, Matt will highlight explicit teaching in mathematics as a set of practices that includes and goes beyond direct instruction approaches. Matt will share stories of practice highlighting how explicit teaching can be practised in several ways, focusing on the importance of impact on students’ mathematics learning.

Presenter: Dr Chrissy Monteleone (ACU)

Audience: Foundation to Year 6

Webinar Synopsis

Engaging students in mathematical reasoning is a requirement for teaching in Australian schools. Critical mathematical thinking (CMT) is an integral aspect of students’ mathematical reasoning.  There are particular types of questions that teachers can be presented to young students to assist mathematical dialogue during learning experiences, in particular, probing, factual and guiding questions. In this webinar, Chrissy will offer practical strategies for teachers to foster CMT in students. This includes utilising open-ended questions supported by research and evidence, aimed at enhancing students' reasoning skills.

Presenter: Dr Linda Parish (ACU)

Audience: Foundation to Year 3

Webinar Synopsis

Mathematical modelling is what mathematicians do in the real-world to solve the majority of maths problems faced in life. The new Australian and Victorian Curriculum: Mathematics have included mathematical modelling in all year levels from Year 1. So, what does this sophisticated way of applying mathematics look like in the early years of primary school? In this webinar, Linda will unpack mathematical modelling (and what it’s not), and discuss how mathematical modelling can be effectively embedded in a mathematics learning and teaching program – from learning a new concept, to extending this new thinking, to consolidating and building fluency. Plenty of modelling resources will be provided to take away and explore.

Presenter: Dr Aylie Davidson (Deakin)

Audience: Foundation to Year 8

Webinar Synopsis

How do you respond to a student when they say “I don’t know”, “Is this right?”, or “I’m finished”? When teaching mathematics, it can be tempting to ‘rescue’ students and tell them the answer or offer some busy work when they finish quickly. However, the planning practice of anticipating equips teachers to notice what their students understand and can actually do and use that information to respond ‘in-the-moment’. In this webinar, Aylie will explore the various aspects of anticipating that will help teachers make sense of their students’ thinking during a lesson and make decisions that will advance the mathematical understanding of the whole class.

Presenter: Associate Professor Jodie Miller (University of Queensland)

Audience: Primary school teachers

Webinar Synopsis

Recently, computational thinking has become more explicit in the Australian Curriculum: Mathematics documentation. For many teachers, this is a “new” concept when considering how to support students to develop computational thinking through the application of its various components: decomposition, abstraction, pattern recognition, use of models and simulations, algorithms and generalisations. In this webinar, Jodie will share her research undertaken with Year 2 to Year 4 students (n=154) who participated in a 6-week computational thinking intervention. Jodie will also provide insights and practical implications for fostering mathematical knowledge and computational thinking alongside each other.

Presenter: Dr James Russo (Monash), Toby Russo (Fitzroy North Primary School)

Audience: Foundation to Year 8

Webinar Synopsis

Whole class games are central to mathematics instruction in many Australian primary schools, with the typical teacher using those class games to support the majority of their mathematics lessons. In this webinar, James and Toby will detail some of the different types of whole-class mathematical games that are potentially available to teachers. Through being explicit about the mechanics that characterise each type of game, James and Toby will support teachers and mathematics leaders to contemplate the affordances and constraints of particular game types, thereby supporting them to become more deliberate in their choice of game for use in a given context.

Presenter: Dr Karen McDaid (ACU)

Audience: Foundation to Year 8

Webinar Synopsis

Self-efficacy impacts students' academic outcomes and teachers’ pedagogical choices. It has the potential to transform mathematics learning and teaching. In this webinar, Karen will lead an examination of Albert Bandura's self-efficacy theory and its impact on motivation, self-regulation and learning and teaching in mathematics. Strategies that bolster confidence, cultivate resilience, and foster a growth mindset in the classroom and with school colleagues will also be explored. 

Presenter: Professor Vince Geiger (ACU)

Date: Wednesday 28 August, 4.00 - 5.15pm AEST

Audience: Late primary to secondary teachers, mathematics coordinators, curriculum developers and policy makers

Webinar Synopsis

Critical mathematical thinking (CMT) is emerging as an important way for students to reason mathematically in response to many challenges that face societies across the globe. In this webinar, Vince will outline and discuss ways that CMT is a requirement for active citizenship to such challenges. In particular, Vince will focus on the critical capability of reading, understanding and evaluating public communications which make use of mathematics evidence-based when making claims or for supporting opinions and arguments. This webinar is based on the initial findings of a school-based project funded by the Australian Research Council and offers important pedagogical advice for teachers who wish to foster this form of critical reasoning in classrooms.

Presenter: Dr Claudia Orellana-Farias (ACU)

Date: Recording only

Audience: Year 3 to Year 8 teachers, school mathematics leaders, mathematics coordinators

Webinar Synopsis

Statistics play a crucial role in making informed decisions in our everyday lives. It allows us to be critical of the way data is presented in various media, such as advertisements and news articles. However, while school students can generally calculate different statistical measures, their conceptual understanding has not always developed strongly enough to be able to make sense of the data they are analysing. 

In this webinar, Claudia will share how student-led investigations can help provide meaning to statistics through practical examples linking to ‘real world’ contexts.

Presenter: Dr Carly Sawatzki (Deakin)

Audience: Year 5 to Year 8 teachers

Webinar Synopsis

The Victorian Curriculum v2.0 emphasises teaching mathematical modelling – that is, the process of using mathematics to understand and make decisions about real-world problems. While financial contexts offer a meaningful way to do this, teachers struggle to identify modern examples that might be explored through mathematical modelling lessons. In this webinar, Carly will share research and curriculum insights, together with practical ideas to try in your classrooms. Come along and learn ways to mathematise pocket money apps, in-game currencies, and buy now pay later services.