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Meeting Prague, 23th – 28th August 2009

SEMT '09 - International Symposium Elementary Mathematics Teaching
Prague, Czech Republic
Charles University in Prague, the Faculty of Education
Workshop: Natural Differentiation in Mathematics

Coping with heterogeneity and motivation of all students independent from their capabilities, is one of the great challenges in primary school, especially for teaching and learning mathematics. Normally, learners – even if they work on the same content – will be on different levels of the learning process.
During the workshop several substantial learning environments will be presented that allow a kind of "natural differentiation". The crucial point is that the students can work together – on the same content, in accordance to their individual level. This cooperation will enable all of them to enhance their individual levels. For the learners, this natural differentiation should contribute to a deeper mathematical understanding as well as to the development of general learning strategies that could lead to a higher motivation.
The object of this workshop is to familiarize participants with certain examples of substantial learning environments that will allow for natural differentiation in the classroom. The learning environments comply with the following quality factors, in particular:
  • have sufficient mathematical substance to allow manifold mathematical activities for all students (opportunities for coping with heterogeneity in classroom, offers for pupils who have difficulties in mathematics, for average, as well as for bright pupils);
  • contain open problems as well as operative and problem-structured tasks;
  • pursue on the one hand content-related targets (e. g. meeting the standards);
  • on the other hand, also more general targets in an integrative manner, especially to develop general learning strategies;
  • is didactically flexible to be adapted to different general conditions and circumstances referring to various classroom situations.
Together with the participants learning environments and video examples from different countries should be discussed. The topics are chosen from geometry as well as from arithmetic.
The workshop will be appropriate for teachers working with learners of all ages, although examples of learning environments will refer to the mathematics curriculum in primary school.
More information about the SEMT'09 Conference are available at web site: http://kmdm.pedf.cuni.cz

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