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= Superior Greenstone District School Board = = Student Work Study Initiative =

Introduction
My name is Kathleen Schram and I am a 1/2 time Student Work Study Teacher as well as a 1/2 time Numeracy Facilitator for our Board. Numeracy is a passion of mine and I was very excited this year to have these two roles combined as it allowed for me to observe students and hear their thinking around numeracy specifically.

Our Board is located in Northwestern Ontario and covers a vast area of 45,100 square kilometers.The geography is huge, yet schools and class sizes are relatively small, creating a whole different array of challenges. We have 11 elementary schools, one in each community except Caramat as there are no longer students in the school there.

This year our Board split the SWST and Numeracy Facilitator positions to be able to provide services in 2 of our regions. I was to cover the Greenstone Region (Beardmore, Geradton, Nakina & Longac) and Kellie Wrigley (our other SWST/Numeracy Facilitator) was to work with the schools in the Nipigon area (Dorion, Red Rock, Nipigon, Schreiber, Terrace Bay). We worked closely together with our SEF, Nicole Morden-Cormier, as part of our Board's School Effectiveness Team. This allowed us to align the SWST initiative with other initiatives such as CILM, EPCI and our SIM goal. The use of the SWST model allowed us to ground our work in the classroom thus honoring teacher needs. Our CILM model took on a different role; working within teams doing co-planning, co-teaching, & building the content knowledge piece using evidence from student work.We worked together to share our work with all principals at System Implementation Team meetings and hosted a Grade 3/6 Professional Learning Community for all Grade 3/6 Teachers in our Board where many of our observations and work with host teachers was shared.

=__ Supposition __=

When students utilize a variety of math strategies and models THEN they develop a deeper understanding of “Number Sense”. “Number Sense” = “a good intuition about numbers and their relationships. It develops gradually as a result of exploring numbers, visualizing them in a variety of contexts, and relating them in ways that are not limited by traditional algorithms.” (Howden, 1989) see Van de Walle (2003) pg. 119 - Elementary and Middle School Mathematics: Teaching Developmentally. Chapter 9: Developing Early Number Concepts and Number Sense = **Continue on to 'Overview'**   =