As we head into winter here in Melbourne, the days are getting shorter, the weather colder and there is a spike in the number of viruses going around! ❄️ It is certainly not my favourite time of the year!  This week we had the first 'winter bug' enter our house. At one point 4/6 of the family had kindly shared the virus with each other, and while we all had relatively mild symptoms, it certainly slowed us all down. This week's experience reminded me again of the many similarities between us as teachers, and doctors. When you go to visit a doctor, one of the first things you might hear is ..read more

  My PhD research into place value identified the need to focus our teaching around six key aspects (you can read more about this here): Count, Calculate, Compare/Order, Make/Represent, Name/Record and Rename. While each aspect is important, for me, the most critical is renaming. When I work with teachers, renaming is the place value aspect they are the least familiar with, and thus the least confident to teach. For many of us (me included) renaming was not taught to us at school, so it is a skill we need to spend time learning before we can teach it to our students. Whilst I, (and others ..read more

If you have been following my work over the past few years, you will know that my PhD research focused on the assessment and teaching of whole number place value. Part of this work has been, and continues to be, helping teachers to develop a deep understanding of their student’s knowledge of whole numbers. This means teachers are better able to teach whole number place value, and make data-driven decisions around when their students are developmentally ready to be introduced to decimals.  If we look at the Australian Curriculum Version 9.0, the NSW syllabus document or the Victorian Curri ..read more

During Term One I have been doing some personal reflection. One truth in life is that each day only has 24 hours! As my children get older, their lives are becoming busier. My eldest daughter is starting part-time work (!) and driving her to her first shift made me realise how fast little ones grow up! This made me think about all the plates I have ‘spinning’ in the air and helped me see that I would like to step back and enjoy some more family time before all four are out ‘flipping burgers’! One of the plates I have had 'spinning' for the past 3 years has been Editor of the Mathematical Assoc ..read more

Having spent so much time thinking about, teaching and researching place value, I am often using the term 'Base 10'. In this blog I wanted to unpack what we mean when we refer to a 'Base 10' place value system.  We use a Base 10 place value system to represent quantities. This base was likely chosen as we have 10 fingers and toes. Other bases are still commonly used in our society. For example, when recording time, we use a Base 60 system: 60 seconds is one minute, 60 minutes is one hour. Similarly, in the ICT space, a Base 2 binary system is used. In essence, a base indicates the groupin ..read more

Earlier this year Taylor Swift 'mania' hit Australia as she brought her ‘Eras’ tour to stadiums across our country. I am not really a big ‘music’ person. I don't listen to much music except when I'm driving the family around in the car. I don’t have a Spotify list, and don't ever choose to have music on as I complete cleaning duties around the house, or when I exercise. In fact I really dislike listening to music as I run. I much prefer just silence and the sounds of the world. I will always choose a podcast over music, so this means the only 'songs' I am really familiar with are those that I ..read more

When I was younger I played a lot of tennis. From the age of 7 to 16, along with basketball, it was the sport I spent most time playing. While I loved playing tennis, looking back, all I seem to remember was a lot of politics, sitting around waiting to play and very early Saturday and Sunday morning matches. Over the January holidays, I watched on TV bits and pieces of the Australian Open tennis Grand Slam that takes place every year here in Melbourne. In one match the player had won the first two sets and then lost the next two sets. The commentators were talking about how the player was ‘cho ..read more

An important part of my mentoring work within the Numeracy Teachers Academy is answering member questions. One of the most common questions I am asked (particularly at the start of the year) is ‘"which online programs do you recommend?”. The simple answer is: “I don’t like to recommend any”. Up until this day, I have not come across any online programs that I can recommend with full confidence to every school, in every context, so until I do, I don’t recommend any. Some schools go with Mathletics, others like Times Table Rock Stars , others have signed up to Matific or Ness ..read more

On the holidays we welcomed five birds into our family. This was a big moment for the Rogers clan, as we had previously been a 'pet free' family. I don't have anything against pets, it's just since birthing humans, I feel like they have taken up all of my feeding/caring/cleaning up after/worrying brain space. So I have avoided any discussion of pets. My avoidance strategy was working well until we moved about 2 years ago. When we moved into our new house, there was a inbuilt bird 'aviary'. The first thing I thought when I saw the aviary, was ‘hmmm… down the track we can pull that out and plant ..read more

On the holidays my family and I travelled to the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. It is a truly stunning part of Australia. I highly recommend visiting if you haven't already! We are a very ‘outdoorsy’ family, so every day we were either at the beach catching waves, or on extended scenic walks. One rainy day we decided to drive down to Bribie Island. We had lunch at the Surf Club, and as we were leaving I noticed a free tourism magazine for the region. I picked up the magazine and was reading it in the car as we returned to our holiday rental. Much to my delight, I came across an article titled ..read more