Early Years (Pre K-K and K-1)
To support students, parents and teachers during the pandemic, Early Math resources were created by educators for educators and parents by participating CoP members. These resources include: Roots of Coding for educators (Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board) and Early Years Home Math Activity Calendars for July and August with engaging activities for parents to do with their young children (Queen’s University and Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board).
The Early Years Math at Home Learning calendars posted to the MKN website had a combined 519 visits. As well, the Roots of Coding resource was distributed to approximately 1,320 individuals (1,100 teachers, 120 administrative staff and 100 Elementary Math Educators at Faculties of Education, OAME Executive, Ontario Mathematics Coordinators Association).
The CoP worked with early math researchers from five universities across the province (University of Calgary, Simon Fraser University, University of Toronto, Western University, and Queen’s University) and one school board (Kawartha Pine Ridge District School Board) to develop a video series about early math education for educators and parents. Each video contains information about researchers’ areas of expertise and practical tips for educators and parents to help support early math learning. The video series is posted to the MKN website. The CoP will collect data about website traffic to determine the usefulness of the videos.
The CoP is also finalizing a monograph on early coding skills for young children. This monograph will help support the new strand of Spatial Sense just added to the new math curriculum that includes coding as a skill.
Primary (K-3), Junior (4-6) and Intermediate (7-8)
Lesson plans by grade level for Primary, Junior and Intermediate were developed from a collaboration between the MKN and London District Catholic School Board to support students, parents and teachers during the school closures due to the pandemic. In total, 12 weeks of lesson plans were published on the MKN website.
Count on MKN resources were set-up and provided to support the lesson plans through weekly 15-minute drop-in video sessions to help teachers and parents understand how to implement the lessons and filmed videos for a teacher to go along with the lesson plans.
- Primary (K-3) example lesson plans:
- WEEK 1 – Probability Game
- WEEK 2 – Measurement Olympics
- WEEK 3 – Grocery Shopping Math
- Junior (4-6) example lesson plans:
- WEEK 1 –My Friend Robot Geometry
- WEEK 2 – Angle Game
- WEEK 3 – Budget a Dream Vacation
- Intermediate (7-8) example lesson plans:
- WEEK 1 –My Friend Robot Geometry
- WEEK 2 – Dream Trip Planning
- WEEK 3 – Flying Carpet Game
The Lesson Plans and Count on MKN resources posted to the MKN website had a combined 446 visits.
High School to University Transition
This year, the focus was on the development of new problems and projects, of Python-based simulations that give the students new insights into the structure of the mathematical concept or system and a coding platform that can be widely shared with manuals and templates.
During the year, a full set of Grade 12 activities were developed by Dr. Peter Taylor, including both functions and calculus. With MKN and Callysto support, Dr. Taylor’s teams developed Jupyter notebook resources.
As well, Dr. Taylor (Queen’s University) and his team are developing HS math activities with wonder, beauty and creativity through the RabbitMath program.