Dr Ange's Blog

Book Review: Math- Positive Mindsets: Growing a Child’s Mind Without Losing Yours.

Author: Dr Carrie Cutler

If I had a dollar for every parent who shared with me “I wasn’t good at maths” I would be much further along in our mortgage payments! I am sure you all feel the same. As teachers, we collec...

My thoughts on NAPLAN…

NAPLAN is something that I am asked about a great deal. And my opinion on the test may be somewhat controversial…

Interestingly, while I was on maternity leave with baby #1, 12 years ago, I wrote items for NAPLAN- so I would like to share the insights that process provided.

In this blog post I wanted to share some thoughts on Professional Learning Team (PLT) meetings.

Now they may be called something else in your school, but essentially as Numeracy Leader I had the responsibility of leading approximately 3 PLT’s per term. 

I remember always trying to rack my brain fo...

I applied for a Numeracy Leader position and I knew I wouldn’t be successful!

I had been working at my school for about 3 years when the opportunity came up to apply for the Numeracy Leader role.

In teaching, sometimes you have to take a bit of a leap and decide upon the path you would like to fol...

Dear English Number Naming System developer,

I write this letter on behalf of all the 6 and 7 year old English speaking children in the world, all those people learning English for the first time, and their hardworking teachers.

Firstly, I just wanted to start by saying thank you for all your hard...

If I could choose one thing to teach in place value it would be…Renaming

Over the years I have taught many Year 3-6 students who display a superficial understanding of our whole number place value system. This has not only held them back from mastering decimals, it has also hindered the development...

As you may know, my PhD research looked at the place value understandings of Year 3-6 students. In this blog I wanted to share with you an interesting discovery I made through my research.

I call it the "600 block misconception".

Basically students with this misconception look at the Base Ten thou...

When I work with students, I love to celebrate mistakes and promote a growth mindset (Dweck, 2016). I encourage all students to see that through mistakes comes learning. I like to label misconceptions as ‘thinking mistakes’. ‘Thinking mistakes’ are in direct contrast to ‘silly mistakes’- ones which ...

Thinking Mistake: Calculating

When I work with students, I love to celebrate mistakes and promote a growth mindset (Dweck, 2016). I encourage all students to see that through mistakes comes learning. I like to label misconceptions as ‘thinking mistakes’. ‘Thinking mistakes’ are in direct contrast t...

The six aspects of place value

My experience as a teacher, leader and researcher in Years 3-6 classrooms has led me to believe that many of our students can be described as ‘apparent experts’ in place value. These students appear to understand place value, yet often their knowledge falters with ...

The winter Olympics are an amazing sporting event that most Australian’s don’t know a whole lot about.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t use it as a great context for some maths investigations.

Here are 6 cool (pardon the pun) ways to infuse some Winter Olympics into your maths lessons.

1. Coin Curl...

In this blog post I wanted to explore the ‘100 days of school’ celebration so many of us organise at school.

I love 100 days for a few reasons:

1. It promotes counting
2. The Foundation students LOVE it (and look super cute dressed as 100 year olds!)
3. It can be provide a gentle introduction to the id...