Family of Schools partnership: ER12 Assistive Technology and Math

In late March, a group of special education teachers gathered at Blantyre Public School for their Family of Schools professional learning session. The focus of the session was Math within the Primary / Junior Home School setting.

The session was hosted by Wendy Klayman, the HSP/MART in her classroom at Blantyre. Klayman, FOS Consultant Crys Kartos, Sharelene Bourjot, Coordinator (ER12, ER15, Behaviour) and itinerant resource teacher, Valia Reinsalu co-facilitated this session.

Along with creating look-fors in the Math classroom and using TDSB effective practices, a three-part Math lesson was modeled. Teachers had hands-on time participating in the Action part of the Math lesson.

Throughout all stages of the learning, the way assistive technology can be embedded in lessons to support student learning, assessment and problem solving in all parts of the three-part Math lesson was demonstrated. Interactive whiteboard tools (pen, highlighters, shapes, digital manipulatives and math tools, for example) can provide opportunities for differentiation in many ways (process, tasks, products). The interactive whiteboard also supports multimodal learning (images, text, audio and video). SEA Interactive whiteboard claims also come with peripherals such as a document camera and learner response systems (LRS) "clickers". 
Some teachers had a chance to try "clickers" for the first time by answering a set of survey questions.

Teacher Richard Araujo, from Danforth Gardens Public School works with his group to solve the fair sharing sub problem.

ER12 Special Education Consultant Crys Kartos shares the importance of the Highlights and Summary part of the three-part lesson when consolidating Math concepts with students.

Wendy Klayman shares how her students conducted a Math Congress and subsequently designed Math posters highlighting the big ideas about fractions.

Teachers shared their solutions using the document camera. A live photo can be projected (photo right) or captured as a digital image on the screen (photo left).

Teachers engaged in dialogue and sharing throughout the session. The set of teachers will try what they learned in their own classrooms and regroup in May for a follow-up professional learning session.