What's the chane?

 Well another MPI day has flashed passed in front of me. As I walked into the staff room at morning tea time, I sighed, a big heavy sigh. Another teacher commented 'Oh, another grumpy day at school'. I was quick to correct them and let them know I wasn't grumpy and that is was more a positive sigh as my head was filling up with more ideas about maths. I have always loved maths but this MPI course has supercharged that love and now, as a not so smacked on maths minded human, I can confidently say I don't only love maths I am beginning to live, breath and devour maths! I have always been a "I could teach art all day every day" kinda teacher. Now I am a 'I want to teach math's all day' kinda teacher with the underbelly of "Let's do it through art!" Now if that class was outside, I would be happy!

I had lots of fun over the last couple of weeks doing the maths talk in my class, I did target number and what doesn't belong. The children and well into the rhythm of how they work and we are blogging about it each week which tick that other box. The engagement has been great to watch, especially from those who at the beginning of the year firmly believed that they hated maths. Maths talk has opened a world to them that involves them and they succeed at.  When I presented Choral Counting at the latest MK Summit, it was a bit of a disaster as my slide show didn't work, so I winged it! It was great to hear the teachers say they loved the idea and were going to use it in their own class the next day. A number of them took away my examples to and genuinely  seemed to enjoy the session. I was chuffed, not because of me, but because of the enjoyment they saw in maths and how something so simple could help them. Thanks MPI!

Anyway - today - so much once again. Love the idea of data cards and the nz census site - I have already shared that with my staff and can't wait to get them into my class. Today was such a refreshing look at the statistics and how it can be in the class, I loved the slow reveal and the questioning, the PPDAC (which I had never heard of) and interactive sites and all the rest. Farewell to the simple bar graphs of how we get to school - they are as bad as the pizza and fraction nightmare!  

Thank you again ladies! You deserve a wine!