OAME 2025

What a fun time we’ve had at OAME! Many thanks to the wonderful presenters for sharing their skills, and for inspiring us to think about things in new ways. I’ve got more good problems to try with my classes now, and some new ideas for running lessons.

I was part of a presenter team this year. Our session was titled Fostering Confident Math Learners: Cultivating a Growth Mindset through Engaging Activities. Here are our slides

Our time-slot was the last session on Friday afternoon, so we were excited to get hands on with some manipulatives and try to represent some math.

We had 2 different concept circle stations happening, one with relational rods and one with toothpicks and plasticine building models of exponents.

There were lots of great conversations among the groups about what the exponents of 2 and 3 mean physically, and what the brackets mean, in relation to changing the side length of the object, and how that can change the surface area or volume.

We then had the great cheerio stacking competition, where groups aimed to see who was the fastest cheerio stacker, and then we looked at connections to rates and slopes, and units of measuring speed. We determined who was the fastest stacker in the room and then, if time allowed, we would have created a photo finish by having everyone determine the headstart (in number of cheerios) that they’d need to have a full skewer at the same time as the fastest person.

this activity is good for grade 9 and 10, looking at rates, graphing, points of intersection and determining the b value (y intercept).

It was fun to share some of our ideas with the participants, and hear their ideas of what we could try next.

Many thanks to all who came to our presentation!