Here it is – 2025.

Big Year for Maths teaching and learning. If I hear one more expert bung on about Explicit Teaching is the only way to go I may vomit!
What I haven’t heard yet is how any Explicit Teacher advancers have rationalised that approach with the 4 Proficiencies in Mathematics – these Proficiencies are not vague or unimportant or mayonnaise on the side of content – they are what should be aiming for – if our kids were all proficient in the proficiencies how skilled and prepared and valuable they would be to this country and in life generally! Politicians and some schools may want great NAPLan results but businesses want prospective employees who can think, communicate, be creative, solve problems, apply logic and reasoning and work cooperatively. 
There will always be a place for explicit teaching – AFTER you have set the kids an engaging, mathematically rich task/problem where the kids get first dibs on learning and when an individual doesn’t understand or needs extending – do your explicit teaching then and there – one-on-one – where it has the most impact. if you need to – take a small group for some explicit teaching if they have a common issue or are all making the same mistake or missing the same skill. If, in your working of the class/grade you pick up on the fact most kids are struggling/missing a skill/ making the same mistake/have the same misconception – stop the grade/class and do a mini-clinic – they need you expertise. Explicit teaching driven by your awareness of what is needed there and then as opposed to – Listen to me while I tell you what I know. Now go off and practice it. Lecturing has always been highly ineffectual and will always be so. Engagement – always engagement – added bonus is you significantly reduce behavioural issues because boredom/apathy are present.
Anyway – good speech Rob! I’m clearly getting too old and grumpy for this job so this is likely to be the last year I work in schools with students and teachers. I’ll miss it because I just love working with kids and teachers who want the best for their students. 2025 will also represent the last year that Mike Minas and me do our webinars. And that brings me to what this year’s series of webinars are all about.

THE LAST DANCE:

Building Deep Understanding of the Big Ideas in Number through the Four Proficiencies and Connected Learning.

2025 will be the sixth year that Mike Minas and I have put together webinars that we hoped/believed would engage and inform and, ultimately, contain information and activities that would be both mathematically rich and ready to use in your classrooms the very next day.

It’s been a very good run but all things must come to an end and 2025 will be the final year for our webinars. Our plan is to offer only 4 – one per term – but make these Foundation to Year 6 rather than split the webinars into F to 2 and Yrs 3 to 6.

We are very keen to continue the same formula of philosophically sound, mathematically rich and classroom/teacher useful for our 2025 webinar series.

As you might be aware the proficiencies in maths have been out there on the outskirts of the mathematics planetary orbit but they’re moving in closer and their relevance and importance is quickly becoming more acute.

Mike and I personally believe that there will come a time (and in the near, not the distant, future) where we use the content of maths to develop the proficiencies and, invariably, it will be the proficiencies for maths that we assess.

This is why we have based our 4 webinars not only around a content area of maths but also around one of the proficiencies and, as the title of our 2025 series suggests, there will be a clear focus of how the content areas and the proficiencies are inextricably linked.

 To the 4 webinars:

The 4 webinars will provide the usual array of engaging activities to try with your students but they will also increase your knowledge and understanding of each of the 4 proficiencies and help you develop a deeper appreciation of how vital they are for our students.

A brief overview of Webinar 1 – Wednesday, February 19, 2025 4:00PM AEST

Unlocking the Power of Place Value and Reasoning link

Place Value is a vital component of any maths year – Foundation to year 6 and beyond. Apart from the obvious implications for reading, saying, ordering and essentially understanding numbers and how they work it also has serious applications to measurement (we have a metric system of 10, 100s and 1000s, not to mention conversions where place value and units of measurement are clearly linked) and to the 4 operations.

As such Webinar 1 (of 4) will have a focus on Place Value but through the Proficiency lens of Reasoning and with explanations and demonstrations of how Place Value and Reasoning can/should be linked to other content topics like Measurement and the $ operations as well to the other Proficiencies (Fluency, Problem Solving and Understanding].

Practical, engaging and multi-level tasks and activities will feature in all webinars and Webinar 1 is no exception.

As usual, our clear intention is to make every webinar practical, useful, worthwhile and engaging – a lot like every maths lesson should look and feel like.

An overview of Webinar 2 –Tuesday, May 13, 2025 4:00 PM AEST

Exploring Fluency Through Addition and Subtraction

If you’ve got some stuff and someone gives you some more stuff, then you have more stuff than you started with …. addition! If you have some stuff and someone takes some of your stuff, then you have less stuff than you started with …. subtraction! First thing is not to make these two of the 4 operations too complex – the concept for each is readily understood by kids. When it comes to the algorithms or methods for each there can be a tendency to show a method which the students then copy. That’s not an awful mathematical or teaching thing to do – providing any method/s is place value based so that method/s palpably makes sense to the students.

Webinar 2 will not only make clear links to the Fluency proficiency (as well as to Problem Solving, Understanding and Reasoning) but also highlight the clear links that addition/subtraction can make to multiplication/division; statistics, measurement and geometry.

An overview of Webinar 3 – Mon, Aug 4, 2025 4:00 PM AEST

Mastering Multiplicative Thinking Through Problem Solving

Multiplicative Thinking is a crucial in helping students develop a capacity to work flexibly with the concepts, strategies and representations of multiplication and division as they occur in a wide range of contexts. (mathematical reasoning)

It also encourages them to go beyond simple memorisation of basic arithmetic skills and gives our students the means to communicate multiplicative understanding effectively in a variety of ways (for example, words, diagrams, symbolic expressions, and written algorithms).

There are obvious links to the Problem Solving, Understanding and the Reasoning proficiencies and they will be highlighted and explored in webinar 3. The equally obvious links of Multiplicative Thinking to division will be highlighted as will links to pattern, algebra and geometry.

An overview of Webinar 4 – Tue, Oct 14, 2025 4:00 PM AEDT

Building Conceptual Understanding of Fractional Thinking

Whenever Mike or I ask a class of Foundation children what they know about the word HALF we get many marvellous replies (and some frankly weird) and explanations. They will talk about half, draw half (often covering half of an object and half of a collection), show half (something in their classroom) and generally seem to wonder what the fractions fuss is all about. Invariably all the proficiencies will and should apply to any content topic but inevitably it is the proficiency of Understanding that seems most pertinent to Fractions (decimals and percentages).

This last of the Last Dance webinars will focus on that link between Fractions and Understanding in addition to linking fractions to decimals and percentages, to time, to geometry, to measurement, to statistics and chance. As always, engaging, practical, multi grade level and multi entry point tasks and activities will be a feature of this webinar as they will be in webinars 1 to 3.

As to being part of these marvellous webinars, you can either get onto Eventbrite direct for tickets – links are here:

Wednesday, February 19, 2025 4:00PM AEST

1. Unlocking the Power of Place Value and Reasoning

 Tuesday, May 13, 2025 4:00 PM AEST

2. Exploring Fluency Through Addition and Subtraction

Mon, Aug 4, 2025 4:00 PM AEST

3. Mastering Multiplicative Thinking Through Problem Solving

Tue, Oct 14, 2025 4:00 PM AEDT

4. Building Conceptual Understanding of Fractional Thinking

 or

You can email me with names and email addresses of staff who want to attend and I can invoice the school directly. This way we may be able to offer group discounts if we have a number of teachers signing up from the same school. Email – rvec@bigpond.com