Imagine you have been hired by a curriculum authority to create a new visual that represents the Working Mathematically Proficiencies. Upload your image/drawing to your journal platform. Reflect on its use as a classroom teacher.

Mason Ping
Sep 9, 2018 · 3 min read

The mathematical proficiency poster that I have created is a great resource for teachers and support staff in the classroom. I think it is important for a teacher to have a simple visual reminder of these interrelated components of the mathematics syllabus. This resource could assist teachers in ensuring each student is catered to in relation to the learning mathematics proficiencies.

It is also important that support staff are made aware of these proficiencies, as often students who need further assistance in the classroom do additional intensive one on one work with support staff to further aide their mathematical and educational development.

The poster recounts all five of the mathematical proficiencies. These being:

  • Understanding; the teacher ensuring that the content is being understood or that students are understanding the content that is being delivered.
  • Problem Solving; assisting students to problem solve by giving suggestion to them or giving them ideas to think of the problems in new ways
  • Communicating; this proficiency requires teachers and staff to ensure that the message they are giving to students weather it be directions or step by step processes is being understood properly
  • Reasoning; this proficiency assists by reminding teacher that they should be asking students questions to understand why it is that they think or don’t think certain approaches can work to solve problems and finally,
  • Fluency, it is important for all educators to monitor student performance for fluency as this proves that they have met their outcomes and requirements of the unit of study

I have chosen to place these above listed proficiencies on each finger of one hand. This is a representation showing how each of the proficiencies is separate from the others. However, it also shows that each proficiency is a part of the same apparatus, the same larger picture.

Students need to be apt in all five of these proficiencies in order for them to meet the required outcomes for any stage of development and this easy pictorial is a wonderful visual aid to remind staff of what they are aiming to teach students.

When it came to creating this image I decided I would paint a poster of a hand, and tried to make it as visually appealing as possible so it would be suitable to put on a wall or stick onto a desk etc. I wanted the image to be one in which teachers or support staff would want to use to assist them within a classroom.

Something that is interesting and appealing to look at often gets the message across a lot more effectively. I think it is important for classroom teachers to use resources such as this in order to ensure they are delivering the necessary information to their students.

Being Indigenous I often find it easy to use symbols and images are representations of much larger agendas. For me the true meaning of the hand has a much greater significance than what can be seen at first glance as it is actually a tool for learning (much like the mind) and in mathematics education that consists of the 5 components written on each finger.

Mason Ping

Written by

Future Teacher//ACU//Pacific Palms🌴//22

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