Dr Ange's Blog

I have written before about how as a Numeracy Leader I often felt like an imposter. I felt like I didn’t have the knowledge, experience and leadership qualities I needed to be successful in the role. Looking back I can see that this is a very common feeling to experience, and one I have observed in ...

Every night, my husband, children and I each share one thing we are grateful for from our day. This ritual started many years ago when I was lucky enough to listen to an amazing presentation by Hugh van Cuylenburg from the Resilience Project. Hugh shared the importance of feeling and acknowledging g...

If you have been reading my blogs this term you may remember that I wrote about a great family night out playing Bingo at the local bowls club. if you missed it, you can read this blog here.

Bingo has always been one of my favourite maths games to play with F–2 students in the classroom. It provide...

Yesterday was a very hot day in Melbourne. It reached 41 degrees. I have recently purchased from Facebook marketplace 2 hydrangeas. They have to be one of my favourite plants… they can produce pink, white or purple flowers depending on the soil acidity! Pretty amazing!
Another thing I have noticed a...

My six year old daughter has been going through the right of passage that is learning to ride a bike. People use the phrase “it’s like riding a bike” meaning that you never forget it once you learn the skill. This may be the case, but every time one of my children goes through the process I am remin...

This summer we have been playing a few games of backyard cricket. Everyone gets involved and it is lots of fun! We have a wide range of abilities in our cricket game. From my 3 year old son who is lucky to hit the ball in 1/30 attempts, through to my husband who seems to take great pleasure in hitti...

I believe that having an explicit focus on vocabulary in our maths teaching is of critical importance. There are so many words that we use in our descriptions and explorations of maths concepts and more often than not these are words that the students would have never come across in their life. In m...

On the holidays, my 14 year old had a photography assignment where she was required to take a number of different photos. There were different requirements: one had to include people, one needed to be at night, one was a landscape and one needed to involve symmetry.

I found this to be a really enga...

In January my husband and children packed our bags and headed on a lovely holiday to Queensland. On the first day we drove past the local bowls club and my ‘Maths Eye’ was drawn to a sign stating:

 “Bingo 7pm this Thursday night, all welcome”.

I was very excited and suggested to everyone that Bing...

On the radio this week I heard a fact that really shocked me. It mentioned that it can take on average 17 years to turn research into practice.

I decided to have a little dig into where this research came from, and it appears to have been completed in the health field. So this means it takes a long...

Have you ever been to an athletics sports and seen a student slow down and walk as they approach the finish line? It rarely happens, most of them are busting to ‘finish strong’. Each year in teaching is a little like a race, we start full of enthusiasm, but sometimes by the time we reach December, w...

When I was a teenager, my Christmas job was in a cake factory. I would count 10 shortbread biscuits (I now consider myself 'elite' at counting to ten😂- perhaps this is what led me to my research in place value🤷‍♀️!). I would put the 10 shortbread in a plastic cello bag and seal the bag with a heat s...