Maths Staff Meeting

Kelly and I were privileged to take staff meeting last night with Dinah providing us feedback on our content and delivery.

As a Leadership Team in Term 2, we planned out the development necessary in maths. This was critical in ensuring that there has been coherence and consistency in our maths development - especially when we have been 'taking turns' in leading staff meeting throughout the term.

This staff meeting was a result of a couple of things - firstly, the SM that Ebony & Mel led, was all about making OTJ's. What we found were that people were very narrow in the data that they were using. No one used a rich task to help inform their judgement. Secondly, we have wanted to do a maths 'moderation' for over a year now. It was in the plan for a TOD last year, but that TOD was cancelled. We had not revisited this.  It was important for us to tell people where this meeting sat with relation to the big picture.

Having 2 hours to work with Dinah and Kelly in preparation was key.  Kelly and I had the bones, but Dinah helped us to flesh it out and tweak a few things for the biggest impact.

What did I notice?
  • Working with Kelly was great! She is a future leader in the making. She is such a natural when it comes to presenting.  
  • The engagement from staff was high.
  • The discussions were rich and vigorous. 
  • People (most) clearly saw the need to teach dispositions.
    • The first year of our development was about understanding NUMBER and becoming rich in content knowledge, the second year was about RICH TASKS.  We are now at the point, as we bring this all together, that the focus needs to be on the development of DISPOSITIONS.
  • Staff's reflections are right on the money!
What next?
  • At a team level, introduce a maths section - bring a rich task - what is a parallel task that matches?
  • Continue with the development of Mixed Ability groups across the school.
    • To successfully use guided, mixed ability groups, there are 5 aspects that are essential.


  • What comes first? (Closed to Rich)
    • Task selection
    • Maths content
    • Anticipation - what is the maths you are trying to get out of this?
  • Talk Moves Cards - Virtual learning network http://www.vln.school.nz/file/download/870205
  • 5 practices for orchestrating mathematical discussions
    • Mary K Stein (Support resources for leadership)
  • Launch/explore/summarise - article from 2015...
  • Things to use in the development of Rich Tasks with mixed ability groups
    • Chapter 7 - Jo Boaler - Mathematical Mindsets
    • Slideshow from Dinah about unpacking the task.
    • Slideshow from Dinah about Hattie's Mindframes.
Some things to remember for coaching:
  • Don't tell - ask a question.
  • Find a rich task then make a parallel task.

Dinah gave us the following feedback 

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