Materials to support accelerating learning in mathematics
In 2010 and 2011, schools were invited to participate in ALiM and MST pilot studies. These studies have been used to develop support materials that are available to all schools.
You can access resources, including school and theme stories, and teachers’ and principals’ insights, at the NZ Maths website under the headings “Intervention resources”, “School stories”, “Themes for success”, and “Teacher lightbulb moments”. This part of the Update briefly describes the resources that are contained in each of these sections.
ALiM resources
A series of ALiM teaching brochures has been developed to address common barriers to students’ progress in mathematics (two pages of one brochure are shown below). They are intended to help teachers plan intensive instruction for targeted groups and identify barriers or misconceptions that students may have. They provide a starting point for instruction, make links to other support materials, and suggest next steps and ways of making connections with the home.
School stories
This section of the NZ Maths website contains stories from 39 schools about their 2010–2011 ALiM pilot programmes. Principals and teachers describe the structure and content of their programmes, reflect on what worked and what didn’t, and explain what they plan to do next. Photographs, video clips, and quotations from teachers, students, and whānau support the stories and illustrate the impact of accelerating learning in mathematics.
Themes for success
This section uses the 10 effective pedagogical practices that are discussed in Effective Pedagogy in Mathematics (2009) and that inform all ALiM work as a way of grouping examples taken from the school stories.
“Lightbulb” moments
ALiM teachers have been asked to go back through their journals and their planning and assessment notes to identify “lightbulb” moments: moments when a specific action or way of demonstrating or describing a concept helped a student or group bridge a particular barrier to their understanding. This section includes short video clips and links to other materials and school stories.
