MATHS VIA: Teachers Sharing Seminar on Mathematics Education

2024-05-25

United Prime Educational Publishing (UPEP), in collaboration with the Faculty of Education, CUHK, is thrilled to share the success of the Teachers Sharing Seminar on Mathematics Education held on 25 May 2024. The seminar, led by Prof. Law Huk Yuen with a series of teachers’ sharing, provided an enriching experience for our frontline teachers.

A total of 106 participants, including both Primary and Secondary Mathematics teachers, attended the event. The event opened with a speech by Mr Ignatius Lee, Managing Director of UPEP, to welcome the participants. He affirmed Prof. Law’s role and commitment to conducting this Maths VIA research project for the past nine months.

Over the two-hour seminar, Prof. Law first took the stage with his keynote speech titled ‘Brief Introduction and Guidelines for Task Design’. Our participants gained insight on how to put values of making mathematics meaningful into action via task design. He also described the use of Think-Pair-Share approach in classroom implications.

The project school teachers’ sharing session began with Miss Luk Yin Wah, teacher at HKMLC Ming Tao Primary School, covering the themes of ‘Kilometres’ and ‘Capacity’ for her P3 students. Miss Luk not only shared her teaching experience but also illustrated how she plans and implements her task design in class with video recording as supporting evidence. Moreover, she showed participants how teachers can use classroom language to motivate students to speak and encourage them to share their ideas. She hoped that the two hands-on activities could provide a truly fun and valuable learning experience to her students, which will foster them to apply their mathematical knowledge to real-life situations.

Next, Miss Leung Mei Kee and Mr Leung Yin Kai, teachers at S.T.F.A. Wu Mien Tuen Primary School, shared their experience and feelings in designing and implementing the classroom activity, ‘Triangles’. Miss Leung and Mr Leung approached Mathematics in a playful way which turned a P3 Mathematics lesson into a hands-on exploration experience. Students were asked to use sticks and Blu-Tack to build a prism. Then, students had to guess and test how many books their figures could hold. The students demonstrated creativity in different ways, for example, by using extra sticks to connect everything. Students became small architects, trying their best to make their figures as stable as possible. Mr Leung reflected that when teachers give space for students to grapple with hard problems, students can experience deeper and more meaningful learning.

Miss Chan Nok Yiu, teacher at CNEC Lau Wing Sang Secondary School, was the last project school teacher to share her task design with the participants. Miss Chan chose ‘Approximation and Estimation’ as the topic for her S1 students. As shopping at the supermarket is a part of our daily lives, Miss Chan chose this topic in hopes that it would be more relatable and familiar to students. In this task, students were arranged into small groups and asked to pretend to be buying snacks at the supermarket. Apart from discussing effective purchasing strategies, students had to activate their prior knowledge from ‘round off’ to ‘round up’ and ‘round down’. The language of Mathematics was introduced to communicate mathematical ideas, for example, ‘Before rounding, the price is [$______]. After rounding [off/ up/ down] to the nearest [$dollar/10/100], the price is [$______].’ By highlighting the applications of mathematics in the real-life, Miss Chan encouraged students to appreciate mathematics and its significance in various areas.

HHCKLA Buddhist Leung Chik Wai College recently held its annual STEAM week with its theme named ‘算術迴戰’. Although the school did not join our Maths VIA research project, they provided students with a coherent mission of making mathematics meaningful. Thus, Mr Huang Hok Hoi and Mr Chiu Hei Chun, teachers at this college were also invited to share their experience on how they organized and implemented the ‘算術迴戰’ activity. Mr Chiu reflected that the STEAM week had successfully aroused students’ interest in mathematics.

Next up was a briefing session of the Task Design Competition given by Ms Grace Yiu, Education Services Executive at UPEP. The competition is hosted by UPEP and is held from May to December of 2024. The target participants are Primary and Junior Secondary mathematics teachers.

The seminar ended with closing remarks delivered by our special guest, Prof. Siu Man Keung, Honorary Professor at the Department of Mathematics, HKU. Prof. Siu thanked all the speakers for sharing their valuable experience on task designs and prompted teachers to participate in the upcoming Task Design Competition.

The feedback for this seminar was overwhelmingly positive. Participants said that seminar not only provided them with valuable knowledge but also sparked their creativity and ignited their passion for designing engaging learning tasks for students. Many expressed their eagerness to attend future sessions and deepen their knowledge in this area.

MATHS VIA: Teachers Sharing Seminar on Mathematics Education

Photo 1: Opening remarks delivered by Mr Ignatius Lee, Managing Director of United Prime Educational Publishing.