Family Math Night

Last night I was fortunate enough to give my first keynote address to a group of over 200 parents and at a Family Math Night at St Gregory's. The staff and parents were amazing and really passionate about exploring Play-based Learning. The presentation is below and really focuses on how we need to highlight students natural curiousity and making learning tangible for students.
I argue games are a rich starting point that helps students develop a growth mindset around their learning. Students play games and are more likely to take risks, try different strategies and make strong connections to the work. Games must be supported with higher order and meta cognitive questions if we want our students to consolidate their learning. Without these questions games can be great activities, but the learning doesn't last if students are not able to communicate and process their learning.
Take a look see the power of what Play-Based Learning really means.

Student Conference Math

As part of our Student Conferences, I had students look back at their learning. All year students have been responsible for playing Prodigy Math, Reading texts of their choosing and using their agenda.
As part of their math this week students were working on mean, mode and median. As a class we created Google Sheets and shared it with everyone in the class. Students input their data for each area and then were responsible for determining the class mean, mode and median and then graphing all of it. This information was powerful in helping students discover their strengths and areas where they need help.