Team Pereyma would like to extend warm thanks to our Molde NORCAN friends for the warmth and hospitality they extended to us on our visit. We truly appreciated them giving their own personal time to meet with us during their summer break and the first few very busy days of the school year! Very special thanks to Kirsti for all of her work preparing for our visit during this busy time! We would also like to thank Mona Rosselend for meeting with us and providing great feedback about our plans for the up-coming year, particularly relating to documentation of our learning.
Prior to our meeting in August, our Molde colleagues had expressed interest in developing a Math Council at their school. We realized immediately that this goal aligned with a key focus for this year’s NORCAN project at Pereyma. Reflection following the May summit in Ontario allowed us to realize that we need to be more transparent with students regarding how student voice, including achievement data, perceptual data and survey data reflecting student preferences, actually drives teacher learning. The Pereyma Math team believes that a Math Council is a mechanism that could make this process more transparent to students. We believe that this greater transparency will empower students to take more ownership of their learning and will nurture the development of life-long learners who are capable of advocating for their unique learning needs.
Next Steps:
Team Pereyma and Team Molde will use technology to accomplish real-time communication for greater efficiency and personal connection. We agreed that email communication has limits regarding the sense of connection, team-building and collaborative problem-solving that it nurtures and supports. As such, regularly scheduled virtual communication will be a priority in our work this year. First, teachers will connect virtually, followed by select students and eventually the larger Math Council group. Just this week, AnneKarin and I had our very first digital meeting. How exciting!
During the next virtual teacher meeting (just before school in Ontario is just after school in Molde!), both teams will bring survey questions that they have cooperatively developed with team members. These questions will focus on students’ Math mindset, as well as student perception regarding the impact of student voice at their school. These surveys will be administered at the beginning of the year, and will be given to all Math students, as well as the members of the Math Council.
Team Pereyma still has many questions about how a Math Council can work effectively at our school. Some of these questions that we will be exploring together include:
- How many students will be on the Pereyma Math Council? How will these students be chosen?
- Should we have a larger Math League along with a Math Council?
- Which teachers should be involved with the Math Council? At this point, we feel that the Math Council may be a precursor to a Learning Council and so we would like to include “non-Math” teachers on the Math Council as well.
Additional Math Council Thoughts by Team Pereyma
During Math Council meetings, students will discuss the goals of the council. The Math Council will provide a mechanism to formalize student voice, and will provide a forum where lead learners will discover how the brain changes during learning and what students and teachers can do to optimize the learning experience. Math Council members will be lead learners regarding mindset and will become lead learners in the community. These students will also connect with other students involved in the NORCAN project.
Team Pereyma Learned about Molde Assessment Strategies
The Pereyma Math team has also been working to improve our assessment and evaluation practices so as to measure learning, rather than performance, and to ensure that a growth mindset is nurtured in students. We were grateful to Team Molde for sharing their expertise and thinking in this field. Thanks to Siv for translating her work! We have created a plan for assessment that we believe better celebrates student learning. We continue to be thankful to Team Molde for their insight and know that peer feedback is only an email or FaceTime call away!
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