Dr Ange's Blog

Wednesday afternoons are my favourite hour of my work week.

For the past two years I have had the pleasure of working with a delightful Year 6 boy on developing his maths skills.

I have watched him make amazing progress over this time and I every week I walk out of our session smiling and remember...

Last weekend my husband and I travelled (kid-free!) to Syndey to take part in the 'City 2 Surf' Fun Run. 

The 'City 2 Surf' is a 14km course from the Sydney's CBD to the iconic Bondi Beach. Approximately 77,000 people took part in this year's event (!) making it the world's largest fun run. It was ...

Our household has been LOVING watching the Paris Olympics!
Every night we have sat together watching and listening to the athletes and their families react as they experience the highs and lows of sport at the highest level. The resilience, grit, compassion and humility shown by the athletes has been...

One thing on the agenda for almost every school in Australia at the moment is transitioning to the new maths curriculum document. While every State and Territory has a different timeline for implementation, and a slightly different curriculum, for most schools, 2025 will be a year of change.

Transi...

I recently read an article in the newspaper and explaining how a team at Monash University are researching a link between children developing asthma and them being prescribed antibiotics in the first year of their life. When I read this article I immediately thought about my own children, and tried ...

Last week was my birthday and I popped around to mum and dad's house for lunch. Over toasted cheese sandwiches dad and I caught up for a lovely chat. All of my children were at Kinder/School, and I quickly realised how unusual (and lovely) it was to sit down and spend some uninterrupted time chattin...

Recently I wrote a blog explaining how reading an article about Taylor Swift made me reflect on the importance of skill fluency in Maths. If you missed this blog, you can read it here.

This week is another 'Taylor' inspired post!

On the February weekend when Taylor was in Melbourne for her concert...

Have you ever unpacked what ‘place value’ actually means? What does the ‘place’ mean, what does ‘value’ refer to, and when we put them together what are we actually talking about?

I think about place value a lot (and by association so do my family)!

This became very apparent to me as we watched 'P...

As we head into winter here in Melbourne, the days are getting shorter, the weather colder and there is a spike in the number of viruses going around! ❄️

It is certainly not my favourite time of the year! 

This week we had the first 'winter bug' enter our house. At one point 4/6 of the family had ...

My PhD research into place value identified the need to focus our teaching around six key aspects (you can read more about this here): Count, Calculate, Compare/Order, Make/Represent, Name/Record and Rename.

While each aspect is important, for me, the most critical is renaming.

When I work with te...

If you have been following my work over the past few years, you will know that my PhD research focused on the assessment and teaching of whole number place value.
Part of this work has been, and continues to be, helping teachers to develop a deep understanding of their student’s knowledge of whole nu...

During Term One I have been doing some personal reflection. One truth in life is that each day only has 24 hours! As my children get older, their lives are becoming busier. My eldest daughter is starting part-time work (!) and driving her to her first shift made me realise how fast little ones grow ...