Numicon PD Today

 We had Numicon PD in our school today for the Junior School teachers from Years 1-3. It was really good to get together as a Junior team and start to figure out where to even start with this programme. It has been a little frustrating waiting for the hands on materials to arrive, but we should be able to hit the ground running on Monday apparently!

Numicon has come across as a more confusing system than the Pr1me Maths Programme, in terms of ease of getting stuck in and implementing it in the classroom. I have been more inclined to pursue the Pr1me programme for this reason, but after today I am starting to get excited about what Numicon has to offer.

A lot of the reticence I have felt about Numicon was finally laid to rest today and it really comes down to how to navigate the planning resources on their website. There are a lot of clicks and a lot of steps to even access your lesson (as you can see in the example I have prepared below):

I think I will need to organise the planning accessible from the website into my own planning slides, that I can either print and have hard copy, or at least be able to access from my own Google Drive, as I dislike the thought that I am reliant on internet access to be able to continue with my lessons in the moment. I would also like to see the whole lesson sequence in one glance, so that I can better manage the timing of each lesson component, especially while learning this new system.

I am going to launch into 'Getting Started' next week - which is really a focus on the children getting stuck into the materials and familiar with how to use them. I am hoping to start on the first lesson after Getting Started - 'Numbers and the Number System 1' before we get to the holidays, but we will see how we go!