Prof Soo Jin LEE, and Prof Jaehong SHIN

A number of secondary school students experience great difficulties in learning algebra including solving equations and graphing functions. For them, arithmetical knowledge learnt in their primary school seems to be a world apart, having little to do with algebra they encounter. Focusing on algebra as the study of relationships, the concept of ‘slope’ is a key integral part of graphing linear functions. In secondary school, the slope formula is typically introduced as the arithmetic operation of division forming a ratio. However, numerical calculation of a quotient in the slope formula does not guarantee students’ construction of slope as a ratio, or rate. What do students think they are measuring when they find the slope of a line? In this workshop, we will first highlight the importance of students’ understanding the concept of slope as the rate of change. Then, working in groups, participants will explore and discuss how differently secondary school students conceive of slope and what would be cognitive foundations from primary school mathematics supporting such different ideas.

Prof Berinderjeet Kaur

Teachers need to listen to their students – their questions, ideas, struggles, strategies of learning, their successes, interaction with peers, their outputs and views of teaching. Furthermore, monologue is less satisfactory for the struggling, the disengaged, and the confused but powerful for the brighter students. Dialogue enhances the language of the subject and empowers the learner to actively participate in the construction of knowledge. This workshop will engage teachers in examining dialogic teacher talk. It will also draw on the data collected by a recent research project about the various kinds of teacher talk that prevail in our secondary mathematics classrooms.

Ms Low Leng & Ms Wong Lai Fong

To help students develop deep and robust understanding of mathematics, the 2020 mathematics syllabus calls for teachers to “teach towards big ideas and make visible the central ideas, coherence and connections across topics, and continuity across levels”. Teaching towards big ideas in mathematics provide students with an opportunity to develop surface level knowledge initially before moving on to deep and transferable knowledge. The selection of a mathematical task is important for the teacher to make connections among the mathematical ideas within and across the levels. Teachers need to be able to facilitate productive mathematical discussions so as to make these connections explicit for students' learning. In this workshop, participants will experience a task and appreciate how appropriate mathematical tasks can be used to teach towards the big ideas. They will also explore how students through discourse can make connections of the different mathematical ideas at the different levels of the secondary mathematics curriculum and how these tasks can be implemented as alternative assessment.

Prof Toh Tin Lam

This workshop introduces the use of comics in teaching lower secondary statistics in the mathematics curriculum to facilitate students to develop a robust understanding of the subject. The speaker will introduce participants to the way to link various statistical and mathematical concepts together using comics for mathematics instruction, with an underlying emphasis on big ideas and connections across concepts. The speaker will also portray a mathematics comics classroom lesson on statistics making use of statistics package.

Prof Leong Yew Hoong

As mathematics teachers, we indeed focus on teaching each lesson well. But really, we do not plan merely with one lesson in view; we think in terms of a coherent unit corresponding to a broader topic (e.g., Quadratic Equations). This means that we need to attend to connecting big ideas – serving as glue to link the lessons together – that carry across the whole unit. This approach is better than viewing each lesson content as isolated from the others. But often, this ‘glue’ is elusive – it is not immediately apparent to us as teachers; or, it is not easy to translate it into a form that is accessible to students. In this workshop, we look into actual units and examine some potential glue that can tie lessons together.

Emeritus Associate Professor Barry Kissane

Mathematics is often interpreted as a ‘useful’ activity, with limited attention paid to its potential to be significant for other reasons. While utility is of course important, it is of diminished significance if students are not engaged with, interested in or attracted to mathematics. Many mathematicians and others over time have drawn attention to the beauty of mathematics and its deep aesthetic qualities, and mathematics is connected richly to our collective cultural heritage. One of the three broad aims of mathematics education in Singapore is to develop positive attitudes towards mathematics; while various Singapore Secondary Syllabuses make reference to this broad aim in different ways, it is hard to see how this aim is addressed explicitly in official documents. In this workshop, we will first consider a range of ways in which mathematics is connected to a wider world beyond its practical applications. We will explore a range of branches of mathematics and their connections with aesthetic features, cultural features, historical features and other ways in which the immense appeal of the discipline might be made available to students. Attention will then turn to experiences that might be used to help students appreciate some of these connections.

Mr Matt Skoss

We all carry a range of classroom images in our heads, reminding ourselves of a wide range of lessons. Just what is it that makes a mathematics lesson ‘hum?’ You know...those lessons when kids are challenged, excited, happy, on-task, …, and, behaving like mathematicians. No lesson happens by accident. How do we capture the subtle complexities and critical decisions that teachers make, minute-by-minute, in creating a rich and balanced mathematics lesson? How do we capture and codify this wisdom, and share it with the wider teaching community? Using a selection of rich and engaging mathematical tasks tailored for a secondary setting, we will scrutinise lessons through a range of lenses, and attempt to identify these critical moments.

Prof Padmanabhan Seshaiyer

In this talk, participants will have the opportunity to learn about a variety of pedagogical innovations that has helped to improve student learning of mathematics in the Secondary grades. Some of these include active learning, evidence based teaching, experiential learning, project based learning, challenge based learning, digital innovations and learning by doing approaches. Participants will learn through a shared collaborative experience with innovative pedagogical practices to advance mathematics teaching and learning in the 21st century.

Prof Tay Eng Guan

We will revisit simple geometrical transformations of contraction, shearing, translation, rotation and reflection. We will then work on simple VBA coding in the Excel environment to graph beautiful fractals such as the Sierpinski Triangle, the Koch curve and its fortuitous variant the Fire, the Barnsley fern and other creations of your own.