When was the last time you learned something completely new? More than just a fact or a formula? How did you find the experience? One of the persistent criticisms of much teacher professional learning is that it doesn’t meet the needs of teachers, either in content or in application. This session explores what it takes to make professional learning, particularly of mathematics, as effective as possible. With insights from the physicist Richard Feynman and Barbara Oakley, the author of “A Mind for Numbers” and “Learning How to Learn” participants will develop their own strategy for learning and then use it to begin learning a new topic in mathematics that is of relevance to their own teaching. The session will also introduce participants to AMSI’s online interactive professional learning environment.

Many teachers have been told at some point that teaching using a textbook is unprofessional, because it results in limiting creativity, variety and engagement. But the alternative approaches of creating one-off activities, rich learning tasks and worksheets for an entire curriculum seem overwhelming and inefficient. Alternatively, entrusting educational decisions to a computer algorithm reduces an expert teacher’s ability to lead the learning within the classroom. We are three authors of the Cambridge Mathematics textbook series who have spent the last decade creating textbooks that aim for the best of both worlds: enabling high quality teaching, with the efficiency of centralised resources. As authors, experienced teachers and heads of department we want to share what we consider the best features of the series and how we use them in our contexts. We will talk about how the books have evolved to support teachers, students and even parents in secondary mathematics education.

EFFECTIVE CLASSROOM TEACHING OF SECONDARY SCHOOL MATHEMATICS You have just got a job teaching maths – what do you do now? Things I know and use now, that I wish I knew 31 years ago. In this session, the presenter will outline a number of strategies and philosophies, that he has found since finishing university, that he uses while planning and teaching class. He uses them because they work. They are from a wide variety of sources, and have all been effectively trialled. They are not just based on avoiding pitfalls, they are based on maximising learning success and creating the environment in which this can happen. The format will be a lecture, but with an emphasis on being interactive with a lot of attendee input. This session is aimed at beginning maths teachers – both inexperienced teachers and teachers who are teaching outside their area of training. It is delivered by a very experienced teacher and presenter.

In this session, we will discuss our journey from traditional Maths not working to a fully differentiated curriculum in years 7-9. We will share our learnings, tips and tricks. This will include how we organise and create units, got teachers on board, measured improvement and incorporated the Scaffolding Numeracy in the Middle Years into our curriculum. We will give you the opportunity to work through a differentiated lesson and give you a year 9 differentiated unit of work (with lesson resources and plans). We would like to acknowledge Sunshine College in helping us to get started in our journey. We would love to hear where you are on this journey and how we can support each other.

I found that in my time as a General Maths teacher, that I got frustrated that there were things that my calculator just wouldn't do. Two things changes and I learned to really love my CAS. The first is understanding My Widgets, then understanding User Defined Functions, but where the ah-ha moment occurred was when they started working together. This session is to get together and talk about strategies to use the CAS to it's fullest potential, how we run it in our classes, and share ideas and most importantly .tns files.