26 – 28 March 2019,
Port Edward, Eastern Cape
Dedicating three days of the holiday to improving their teaching of mathematics, 30 Grade 2 and 3 teachers travelled to Port Edward for the first inaugural Magic Classroom Collective Mathematics “Boot Camp”.
The camp focused on additive relations – developing a “deep in our bones” understanding for how to teach addition and subtraction in Grade 2 and 3 — providing children with strong legs for future math success. We focused on fluency of addition and subtraction at low number ranges. We focused on the “ten’ness and one’ness” of numbers, and working with numbers at high number ranges. We focused on the strategic relationship between addition and subtraction. We discussed and confirmed the design principles for the redesign of the math materials for 2020.
Across the three days, we focused attention on bringing math games into the classroom. The goal was to assist teachers to fall in love with math again, while at the same time helping them to make mathematics more interesting and meaningful in classrooms. Across the camp, we played over 30 math games. We played with tangrams, blocks, bingo, clip addition, puzzles, patterns, cards, dice and with oral games suitable for larger classrooms.
The days started at 6:00 in the morning with a beach walk, and ended late into the evening with game nights. Teachers never asked to stop.
In early grade math, we are working with a partner organisation. Thanks to Ingrid Mostert and the Axium team for joining us. Thanks to Zenzele Itereleng who made the camp possible!
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