Getting my maths on

I was very lucky to attend the NZAMT conference on a scholarship from NZAMT. In other words, I had a fantastic opportunity to spend four days at a maths teacher conference, learning amongst some pretty serious mathematicians. As with most conferences however, things can be a tad overwhelming as we try to make sense and learn from each session, trying not to forget the new ideas they shake loose. I take notes at every conference I go to however, often these notes go to waste as life gets busy. As a result, I decided that with this conference, as well as the notes I usually take, I would summarise each session with a single question to help jog my memory around the ideas or goals each session gave me. You will notice that these are all phrased as 'How might we ... ?' questions. How might we is a great tool I picked up from the design thinkers and books such as A More Beautiful Question. How might we suggests possibility and action.

So here are my questions:

1. How might I develop my knowledge of advanced mathematics?
2. How might I improve the quality and quantity of feedback students receive in my modules?
3. How might I enable more evaluation of methods for more discerning problem solvers?
4. How might I reach backwards, aka, make sure students get to the exciting contextual maths at the beginning rather than a goal to work towards at the end?
5. How might I help students to develop better representations of mathematical ideas?
6. How might I challenge my students to find mathematical patterns in more everyday situations?
7. How might I use PPDAC to support development of mathematical art work in my upcoming cross curricular module with art?
8. How might I use testing data to be a mores responsive, adaptive teacher?
9. How might I expose my students to data science earlier?
10. How might I encourage and enable more students to 'play' with data?
11. How might I empower my students to be more independent learners through the use of video?
12. How might I extend the concepts that I am teaching to bring more mathematical awareness?
13. How might I create innovate and engaging electronic internal assessment tasks for my NCEA students?

It seems that his was a far more powerful way to summarise my notes as looking over these questions I feel ready to prioritise my next steps and tie them to my professional goals for the year.