Contact Penny to discuss how she can personalise any of these topics to meet your objectives and needs.
Open-ended Learning
Many teachers say they are doing ‘open-ended learning’ but there are some questions they can ask themselves to work out if they are doing it well:
- Do my learning activities really invite learners to respond to questions in a range of ways?
- Are my learning activities truly suited to all abilities and learning styles?
- Am I ensuring that each individual learner is being challenged at a suitable level?
- Have I clarified the key learning intentions for the range of learners in this class and ensured they are central to the activity?
Some of the sub-topics you can include in professional learning on open-ended learning are:
- What is open-ended learning?
- What are the benefits for both learners and teachers?
- Types and examples of open-ended questions
- Sample lessons using open-ended learning
- Developing your own opened-ended questions and lessons
- Using 'stations' in conjunction with open-ended Maths learning
- Using Problem-Based Learning (PBL) to deepen student understanding of learning concepts
- Assessing open-ended learning
Gifted and talented education
- Key definitions
- Research about gifted students – Characteristics, myths and truths
- Why do we need to focus on gifted children?
- Gifted children’s needs
- Underachieving gifted children
- Catering for gifted students in the classroom (More details below)
- Identifying gifted students
- Running withdrawal programs for gifted students
- Building sustainable and in-house capability for supporting gifted learners
Differentiating the curriculum for gifted students in the classroom
- Evaluating the current situation
- Setting goals
- Key definitions
- What do gifted students need?
- What does it look like when you’re not differentiating?
- What does effective differentiation look like?
- A framework for differentiating
- Evaluating and planning for the gifted students
- Working example
- Some useful tools and references
- Implementation plan
Differentiating for mixed abilities in the classroom
- Why is it necessary?
- What it doesn’t look like
- Using a ‘Tool Box’
- Student Ability Identification
- How to turn things around - Adapting a lesson to cater for all abilities
- Using Multiple Intelligences
- Implementing the concepts
- Practical examples
- What works or doesn’t work?
- Other ways to cater for mixed abilities
- Developing Open-ended questions
- How to use these during planning
Implementing school-wide Gifted Education
- Roadmap for designing, planning and implementing school-wide Gifted Education
- Building a shared vision; Understanding why the school is focusing on Gifted Education
- Guide to Implementing School-wide Gifted Education
- Using the Transformation Planner™ to evaluate and plan your school’s journey
- Components of a quality Gifted Education program
- What do gifted students need in order to learn and reach their potential?
- Identification procedures and methods
- Models of curriculum instruction for gifted students
- The benefits of implementing school-wide differentiation for all students, including the gifted
- Using the Know Your Kids Principle ™ to plan differentiation for gifted students
- Writing and implementing effective Differentiated Learning Plans (ILP)
- How to build a great Policy for Gifted Education
- Setting a realistic timeline for the School’s journey
- Setting up a withdrawal program
- Cultural Change: Operating on your school’s DNA
- Eight Steps to Systematic Organisational Change
- Communication: Key Relevant Principles
- Sustaining the momentum
- Evaluating your progress (Using the Picture of Success)
Implementing school-wide cultural change
- Clarifying the starting position
- Designing what the cultural change will look like
- Planning for implementation
- Mobilising everyone into action
- Sustaining the momentum for the long term
Differentiated Learning Plans* (DLPs) for gifted students
- Key terminology
- Rationale for differentiation
- What effective differentiation looks like
- Preliminary information gathering
- Features of a DLP
- Setting goals that lead to success
- Putting it into practice
- Implementing and managing DLPs
*Similar to Individual Learning Plans (ILPs)
Teaching problem-solving in Maths
- Why teach problem-solving?
- What is problem solving?
- How to teach the steps of problem-solving
- How to teach strategies for problem-solving
- How to troubleshoot when students struggle
- Tips for effective teaching of problem-solving
- Assessing problem-solving
- Including problem-solving in the curriculum
- Time to practise solving maths problems
- Useful resources
Encouraging curiosity and creative Ideas for problem-solving
- Encouraging curiosity:
- Key terminology
- What blocks curiosity?
- How to encourage curiosity
- Putting it into action
- Creative ideas for teaching problem solving:
- Benefits of teaching problem solving
- How to teach problem solving
- Workshop activity
- Sharing ideas
- Encouraging curiosity:
Numero* in the classroom
- How to play Numero
- Teaching Numero to a mixed ability class
- Adapting Numero to every ability level
- Using Numero to support Maths skills and concepts
- Using Numero cards for a range of other activities
*Numero is an educational card game that helps develop a wide range of maths skills and concepts such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, process strategies, fractions, decimals, percentages and mathematical thinking.
Professional Development in Mathematics Education
Penny loves maths and problem-solving! Here is a small selection of topics that she can provide professional development sessions on:
- Working with and developing maths problems that children can work on at their own level of ability
- Group work challenges. Set a maths problem for students to solve in groups and adapt each group’s challenge depending on their level
- Developing problem-solving strategies for use by a range of ability levels
- Developing and using open-ended maths questions in a mixed ability classroom
- Card games that develop a range of maths skills and can be easily adapted for all ability levels
- Real life maths questions that will allow students to work at their own level and will keep them busy all day (or for as long as you’ve got!)
- Fraction games that will build and practise concepts at different levels
- Maths tricks that engage students, practise maths processes and develop mathematical thinking
- Maths puzzles designed to develop mathematical thinking
- Running a code-breaking challenge with a class. Students work at their own level to come up with maths questions that are put together to solve a code. Adaptable to most maths topics. Perfect for practise or consolidation of a topic
- How to facilitate a learning environment in which students make up and answer their own maths questions. Can be adjusted to most maths concepts
- Providing choice in maths classes