It is with a sense of disappointment and disbelief I learned that the Department’s literacy and numeracy coaching program was to be scrapped in schools. I have been fortunate enough to work with both literacy and numeracy coaches in my classroom over the last few years and can attest to the value of this program.

Another post I've been meaning to finish off for a while. This topic came about following a conversation I was having on twitter with another teacher about creating online bank accounts for students.

Earn and Learn is a financial awareness program developed by Rob Vingerhoets. This program sees students operate in a way similar to a small town or community.

Earlier this year, I posted about some challenges and frustrations I was having with the way I, my team and my school was going about the teaching of Mathematics.

To summarise:

“We teach Contiki Tour Maths”, I proclaim.

I go on to explain. “The way we teach maths is just like travelling on a Contiki Tour. We climb on a bus, travel around, take a look round and the good stuff and before you know it, we jump back on and move on to the next town. That’s how we teach Maths. We pick a topic, do stuff with it for two weeks then move onto the next topic.”

It’s a Thursday morning and I am working with my numeracy coach.

It’s nearing mid-year report time and I want to confirm my judgements about students on the topics we have covered earlier in the year.

I run my eyes over the students assessments. Many of areas are blank. Many of the areas we had “covered” Topics we had covered early in the year.

“We teach Contiki Tour Maths”, I proclaim.