The Maths4All project, funded by Science Foundation Ireland, has been running since 2019. Members of the DCU Institute of Education work in collaboration with teachers to run activities such as webinars and TeachMeets. Our main purpose is to create opportunities for teachers to share and discuss their practice and find ways to enhance their teaching of maths.
As of Spring 2022, we are also delighted to collaborate with Clare Education Centre and the the Teachers’ Research Exchange to facilitate an online professional learning community.
The Maths4All website also presents high-quality activity plans, created for and with teachers, and video examples of mathematics teaching in Irish preschool and primary classrooms.
These activities were designed to align with the content of the draft specification of the new mathematics curriculum which was released for consultation in 2017/2018. The proposed curriculum suggests that the four elements of:
understanding and connecting
communicating
reasoning
applying and problem-solving
are central to mathematical learning. Each of the activity plans is structured to facilitate children’s engagement with these processes and elements.
The video clips provide opportunities for teachers to see good practice in action and also to facilitate reflection on teacher practices that are relevant across all mathematics activities and all age groups. Professional development materials relating to the use of tasks and talk in mathematical activities are also provided.
Please register to access the videos/activity plans. We are asking you to register for this website so that we can establish and maintain a community which agrees to view and discuss our videos in a respectful manner. There is no charge for registration and we will not pass your details to other organisations.
When watching videos of other teachers engaging with their classes, it may be easy to see things that we might do differently. Those of us who have had opportunities to watch videos of our own teaching often notice things that we wish we had done differently! It is more productive for your own practice to watch videos with a view to learning something new about teaching and learning rather than aiming to evaluate the teacher or children in a video clip.
The videos on this website were not scripted or rehearsed. They were filmed in real classrooms where teachers have endeavoured to do their best under the pressure of being filmed. Some videos show teachers working with their own classes. Other videos show teachers teaching classes that they are not familiar with.
Please keep the following in mind as you watch these videos:
- Assume that there are many things you do not know about the children, the wider school/preschool environment, and the shared history of the teacher and children in the video.
- Assume good intent and expertise on the part of the teacher. If you cannot understand his or her actions, try to consider what might have motivated him or her.
- Aim to stay focused on what children may be learning from the talk and interaction.
- Think about how the discussion is serving the mathematical goals of the activity.
(Adapted from: Talk Moves: A Teacher’s Guide for Using Talk Moves to Support the Common Core and More, Third Edition by Suzanne H. Chapin, Catherine O’Connor, and Nancy Canavan Anderson (Math Solutions, 2013, xxi).
As a condition of using this website you agreed to certain terms and conditions. In particular, beyond always respecting the teachers and children in the videos, the following terms are important:
- Refrain from and/or prevent videos or other information from being used outside of this site – including prohibiting videos, screenshots or other reproductions being made.
- Respect the terms the participants originally agreed to when they signed up to do this project:
- Do not show the content to others unless it is in an educational setting such as a course or workshop, where you take personal responsibility for the individuals with whom you are working, ensuring their compliance with these agreements.
- Report to maths4all@dcu.ie instances where information is found that may put a child’s or teacher’s privacy at risk.
- Use these videos and website contents only for personal viewing and for limited educational purposes and not for research. If using these video contents for education, the onus is on the user to help learners understand what it means to treat the videos, the information in the videos and the people in the videos in respectful and responsible ways.
These rules and procedures have been developed based on those found at the University of Michigan ‘Teaching Works’ website. This is a well-established website which uses video data of real classrooms to support professional development for teachers.