SANC Past Events & News Archive 2011-2015

All news and significant happenings archive, listed from most recent backwards. Use this page to navigate to the details of each event by clicking on the links.

Click on these links to jump to the events for a specific year:  2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011

2015 Events and News

July to December

November: Newly initiated club learner awards presented: Grocotts article November Maths awards all add up - Grocotts 20 Nov 2015

13th November: NICLE end of year celecration at Gavin Reilly Post Graduate Village. Guest speaker Dr Ken Ncgoza speech

29th Oct: Debbie Stott was invited to be guest speaker at Ntaba Maria Primary school prize giving

18th October: Congratulations to three St Mary's teachers (two of whom are our NICLE teachers) who won prestigious national teaching awards: Tania Christian (St Mary’s Gr R), Elaine McKenzie (St Mary’s Gr 3) and Sophileen Bond (Alex Primary Gr 3).

12th Oct: Prof Graven was interviewed for the interview for the Science Inside. You can find the show here: http://www.journalism.co.za/blog/topics/categories/science/ Click through to soundcloud to download the podcast.

9th Oct: Lucy Sibanda (Phd student) presents at Research Indaba at the University of Pretoria

6th Oct: Prof Graven was interviewed on CapeTalk’s Afternoon Drive Show with John Maytham on Tuesday 6th October. Listen to the interview here: http://bit.ly/1OVAR4C

5th October: Masters student Anelia Wasserman submits final exmained copy of her thesis to the library

September: Article by Cathy Gush entitled "Counting on it" in Rhodos about the SANC project work

23rd Sept: Prof Graven was interviewed by the Daily Maverick with regard to the current ANA issues. Her comments are near the end of the article.

5th Sept: Roger Meterlerkamp, Anita Sonne and Roxanne Long presented at AMESA Eastern Cape conference (Saturday 5th September at Rhodes University)

16th - 21st August: Debbie attended and presented at the International Symposium on Elementary Mathematics (SEMT) in Prague (Resources)

4th August: NICLE session

3rd August: Debbie participated in National Science Week in Port Elizabeth 

15th July: Mellony elected to the International Group for PME

13th - 17th July: Mellony presented at the PME conference in Tasmania

14th to 17th July: Debbie facilitated a three-day workshop for COUNT in KZN

January to June

June: Rhodes Exchange article "Growing new synapses with after school maths clubs"

11th May: Sizwe Nxasana (CEO of FirstRand Limited) visited Rhodes University. He made some time in his busy schedule to come and visit our project. We arranged for him to experience a couple of the maths clubs in 2 aftercare centres (which we work closely with) and he also visited one of our project schools. Photos on our Facebook page

May: Annual data collection at all our schools

5th May: Debbie was invited to speak at the plenary session at the 1st Community Engaged Learning Symposium hosted by Rhodes University. Her talk was entitled: "Community engaged primary after school mathematics clubs: the interaction between research and development"
Abstract: Stott-CE Learning Symposium abstract-May 2015
Presentation: Stott- CE symposium plenary May 2015

9th April: The following people from both the SANC research community and NICLE graduated this past weekend at Rhodes University. Well done to them all!

BACHELOR OF EDUCATION (ICT) - Noluthando Theodora DLAWU (One of our NICLE teachers)
MASTER OF EDUCATION - Roxanne LONG (with distinction) - Thesis: An investigation into the promotion of productive learning dispositions in government policies and teacher assessment in Grade R and Grade 1
PHD in EDUCATION:

• Peter, PAUSIGERE Thesis: Primary Maths teacher learning and identity within a numeracy in-service community of practice.
• Deborah Ann STOTT Thesis: Learners’ numeracy progression and the role of mediation in the context of two after school mathematics

19 - 23rd March: Mellony attended 2nd meeting of the IPC for ICME in Hamburg

21st March: SMDCC Family Maths Event 2015: It was wonderful that many families who are new to the centre participated in one of these events for the first time. Its fantastic how family maths events are taking off in the Eastern Cape - congratulations St Mary's Development and Care Centre for taking the lead in running this session!

16th March: Prof Graven was a speaker at the Mail & Guardian and First Rand Foundation event focused on how maths education in South Africa can be improved
Mail and Guardian article on the debate: M&G-2015-What’s wrong with maths today.pdf
Graven's slides: M&G FRF Debate slides 13 March 2015

10th March: NICLE Session One: Progression in subtraction and experiencing Family Maths Events

9th -13th March: Mellony involved with Research Design Week Course (Education Department, RU), Debbie presents on this course

9th -13th March: Khulisa evaluators visit our project

6th March: Debbie: appointed as an AMESA representative on the South African National Committee for the International Mathematics Union (SANCIMU)

21st February: Lebone Family Maths Event Feb 2015

February: Debbie started 4 new maths clubs at local schools with a variety of Grade 3, 4 and 5 learners. 

17th February: Debbie facilitated a second Maths Club workshop for Club Leaders at various Grahamstown After Care Centres with a focus on resources for the clubs which aim to push for progression.

27th January: Debbie facilitated a Maths Club workshop for Club Leaders at various Grahamstown After Care Centres with a focus on using assessments and games to establish where learners are in their learning. 

12th to 16th January: Members of the project research team present a number of papers at the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Southern African Association for Research in Mathematics, Science and Technology Education (SAARMSTE) in Maputo, Mozambique. See all the presentations on the Publications page or each individual person's page. 

 

2014 Events and News

June to December

2nd Dec Debbie Stott is guest speaker at Shaw Park prize giving. Her 10 minute talk focused on changing our mindsets about maths and on the power of struggling with maths. Mistakes are opportunities for new learning and for growing our children's brains. 

• Stott-SP-speech‌
• Photos

19th Nov Prof Graven is guest speaker at St Mary's Primary School prize giving. Her talk focused on the importance of developing life long resourceful and resilient learning dispositions. 

• Graven-STM-slides 
• Graven-STM-speech 
• Photos

7th Nov NICLE end of year session. Thanks to all our wonderful NICLE teachers for participating in our celebratory end year function and for a productive year of exciting collaboration. Thanks also to Ken Ncgoza for your inspirational words about our work and the critical importance of community engagement within the broader Grahamstown area. Thanks to Zukiswa Sohena, of the Department of Education, for sharing how NICLE schools are shifting education (and mathematics results particularly) in our district and finally thanks to all for the wonderful gifts you gave our team. Click here for a photo

28th Nov Debbie Stott was the plenary speaker at the 2014 PGCE (FP & IP) RESEARCH CONFERENCE. Her talk was entitled: After school maths clubs as enabling spaces for both recovery and extension of mathematical proficiency in young learners

23rd Oct Debbie Stott was invited to speak at the opening of the Education Department's Community Engagement Day. Her talk was entitled: DAS-Research and development enabling each other

2nd Oct Debbie Stott wins the Rhodes University Community Engagement Research Student Researcher of the year award

30th Sept Prof Elaine Simmt's public lecture on “Extra curricula math clubs with learners and parents – insights from Canada”

24th Sept For Heritage Day St Mary's School in Grahamstone along with the SANCP team hosted a Family Maths Event for their Grade 3 learners and parents. It was such a fun day and there were over 100 people at the event. NICLE teachers assisted at the event, the Soul Buddyz club also helped. SANCP co-ordinated the activities and provided snacks and prizes. What a fantastic community effort - a huge thank you to parents, learners, the school, teachers, project members and other invited guests for making this such a successful day. Photos and Grocotts article on St Marys Family Maths Day

13th Sept Debbie Stott was invited to be the Plenary speaker at the Regional Eastern Cape AMESA conference which took place at the Butterworth campus of Walter Sisulu University. The title of her talk was Pushing for Progression. She also ran a multiplcation workshop for the Intermediate Phase strand which focussed on strategies for developing learner conceptual understanding in multiplication. Resources for this can be found here. Plenary presentation slides: EC AMESA 2014-Pushing for Progression. She also spoke about Number Talks, click here for these resources.

26th August Mail and Guardian article<span quoting the six FRF Chairs on South Africa's maths results

25th July Prof Graven was invited to participate as a role model and mentor in the DST-NRF Research Career Advancement Fellowships Launch, which took place in Cape Town yesterday. Mellony hosted a table which focused on “Strategising Ways In Which Career Advancement And Societal Responsibilities Can Support Each Other”. The DST, through the National Research Foundation (NRF), initiated the Research Career Advancement Fellowships programme, and made funding available to help strengthen research capacity and scientific research leadership. This programme will serve to increase the pool of active researchers within the National System of Innovation (NSI) and strengthen scientific research leadership in Science, Engineering and Technology as well as Social Sciences, Humanities and Law.
Read more about this initiative here: http://www.nrf.ac.za/news/launch-dst-nrf-research-career-advancement-fellowship

End June. Prof Stephen Lerman spoke about Doing educational research with Vygotsky’s theoretical framework. Slides available here: Vygotsky-Lecture One, Vygotsky-Lecture Two

25th June Prof Graven was interviewed by Stephen Groates on Talk radio 702 at 12:40 today on her views of why so few girls are participating in the International Maths Olympiad held in Cape Town next month. Full article here.

20th June Debbie Stott was invited by the Port Elizabeth District to talk to their 240 educators about clubs! She was ably assisted by Varonique. 

January to May

20 May	Prof Graven contributed to an Up4Debate interview with Ashley Westaway, Sarah Murray and Brett Malila on the topic of Who Can Save Our Schools?
8 May	Prof Graven gave a talk for the Rotary Club of Grahamstown on learners mathematical learning dispositions‌‌‌‌
29/30 April	Members of our team, Eduction academic staff and PGCE students enjoyed the two seminars presented by visiting professor Bill Atweh. Bill also spent some time with some of the SANC Project's PhD students whilst he was here. Presentations from Bill Atweh Seminars: Beyond Student Centred Education: Improving Teaching through Productive Pedagogy‌ Social Response-able Mathematics Education
10th April	Nine of our Honours and Masters students graduated on 10th April. All nine are from the Eastern Cape and all are teachers (or ex teachers having moved onto positions of teacher development). Two graduates are from our NICLE teacher development community. Their research work was strong with rich insights and implications for primary mathematics teaching. Many have already conducted excellent workshops and presentations at key conferences and platforms and we encourage all to continue sharing their findings. Congratulations to all of you. It has been a pleasure working with you and we look forward to working with you further in your continuing studies (Prof Mellony Graven). Copies of the Masters students theses can be found here
March	Mellony and Debbie out and about visiting project schools doing Number Talks in Grade 3 and 4 classrooms
March	Varonique organised for Steve Sherman from Living Maths to visit us again, doing some exciting mathematical shows and assemblies for learners in our project schools.
February	Profs Graven and Venkat NRF Science for society lecture podcast and NRF Science and Society slides 26 Feb 2014
February	Prof Mamokgethi Setati Phakeng gave a Guest Lecture on Friday 7th Feb at 14h15 at Rhodes Education Department. The title of the lecture was "Mathematics in multilingual classrooms in South Africa: from understanding the problem to exploring possible solutions"
February	Some of our research team attend and present at the SARAECE conference in Port Elizabeth (4th to 7th February).
January	Maths Club workshop for staff and volunteers from three Child Welfare Community Programmes being, Ikhaya Losizo (Cluster Foster Homes for children found in need of care); Nompumelelo Pre-School and the Sun City After-Care Programme
January	Research team attend and present at 22nd SAARMSTE conference at NMMU in Port Elizabeth (13th to 16th January). Click here for papers presented.

2013 Events

November	Final NICLE session of the year (5th November)
November	2nd Family Maths Event at St Mary's Development and Care Centre (2nd November)
October	Debbie and Varonique ran a 'STARTING A CLUB' workshop at ITEC in East London. Pictures in the Gallery.
October	Debbie ran a worskhop at Samuel Ntsiko school on Addition Strategies using Number Talks
September	Team members and teachers presented on Maths Clubs at the regional SARAECE Conference in East London.
August	9 Grade 6 and 7 learners from Shawpark, Hendrik Kanise and St Mary's got through to the 2nd round of the Maths Challenge. Congratulations!
August	Lynn Bowie presented a NICLE session on Fractions
July	Family Maths Fun at the St Mary’s Development and Care Centre
July	Prof Steve Lerman whose research interests include sociocultural theory and sociological perspectives of mathematics education visited us in Grahamstown in early July to work with our Masters and PHD students. Public lecture slides, Social Turn chapter
June	Varonique Sias (our project manager) receives her 15 year long service award from Rhodes. Pictures in the Gallery
June	In total 9 members of research team, NICLE programme and Maths Club project attended the 19th AMESA congress in Cape Town from 24th to 28th June. Stott & Graven LP presentation powerpoint. See Publications for papers, workshops and presentations. We also have some feedback from the teachers who attented Congress.
June	"Maths teachers learn" piece in Grocotts Mail (7th June 2013)
June	Prof John Mason, visiting senior research fellow at the University of Oxford and Prof Emeritus at the Open University in the UK presented tasks which highlight the fundamental role that mental imagery plays in learning, doing and teaching mathematics at an open lecture on 7th June and work with the NICLE community in the morning
May	First Introductory Workshop for Out-of-School-Time Maths Clubs. 21st May. For photos, see our Gallery
May	On Wednesday 15th May 2013 Prof Graven was invited to speak at the Oatlands Prep School Parents evening. She chose to speak about “How can parents help learners to develop key foundations for learning”. She was excited to see an fantastic turnout from parents who were interested in helping their children. Her message is summarised in this hand-out (2013 May Graven OP Parents talk)
April	Congratulations to 2 members of the NICLE team, Melissa Tweedie and Elvira Milborrow for graduating with distinction earlier in April
April	Gudbjorg Pálsdóttir from the University of Iceland spoke to our NICLE community in April
April, June & October	Make It Count series starts on Grocotts UKUFUNDA page
March	Steve Sherman (from Living Maths) presented assemblies at 5 of our project schools during SciFest (March). Have a look at some of the photos
March	All our NICLE teachers attended SciFest on 19th March
March	Some of our learners attended the Laser Show at SciFest in March
February	Dr Nosisi Feza presented a NICLE workshop in 19th February on Geometry and Spatial Thinking for young children
February	Einat Heyd-Metzuyanim, who specialises in Mathematics Education, Emotions, Identity, Discourse Analysis and Classroom Discourse visited our project from 24th to 28th February. She presented a workshop for our Masters students, gave an open lecture to the Education Faculty and undertook some collaborative research work with Prof Graven.
January	Team members attend SAARMSTE Conference in Cape Town - January

(back to top)

2012 Events

November	One of our Masters students, Zanele Mofu, has been promoted to be a curriculum planner for mathematics for Foundation Phase in the Eastern Cape Province. Great news and congratulations, Zanele!
November	EduPeg visited us to see how we use EduPeg in the clubs (Thursday 15th November).
November	Prof Graven gave an interview on Talk Radio 702 on 1st November 2012 at 12:10. Download it ‌‌here to hear what she had to say.
November	Funder's visited to see how the Maths Clubs operate (5th, 6th and 7th November)
November	Educator's 2012 End of Year Function‌ took place on 6th November in Grahamstown.
October	Steve Sherman (from Living Maths) presented assemblies at 5 of our project schools during SciFest (early October)
October	On 9th October Steve Sherman hosted an evening Family Maths Event at Rhodes University for all local parents and schools. About 130 people came to this event.
September	The South African Numeracy Chairs at Rhodes University and the University of the Witwatersrand in collaboration with the South African Research Association in Early Childhood Education host Early Childhood Education Research & Development Week
August	Research & Teaching in Conversation mini conference, 4th August 2012. This day was the culmination of the National Maths and Science Week and refocused the efforts of AMESA and SAARMSTE. There were inspiring presentations for teachers as well as a postgraduate colloquium comprising 12 presentations in 2 venues. 2012 Research & Teaching in Conversation
August	Grade 4-6 mathematics challenge: Partner: AMESA, RUMEP
June	Fun with Maths series starts on Grocotts UKUFUNDA page
June	Team members attend 18th AMESA Congress in Potchefstroom in June
June	Numeracy Maths movies: “Donald Duck in Mathemagicland”
March	Grade 2, 3 and 4 online numeracy games workshops: Partner: Sci Fest
March	Fieldtrips to Sci Fest for clubs and classes
January	Team members attend SAARMSTE Conference in Malawi in January

(back to top)

2011 Events

August	Grade 2, 3 and 4 maths problem solving relay competitions: Partner: AMESA
August	Grade 4-6 mathematics challenge: Partner: AMESA, RUMEP
June	Team members attend 17th AMESA Congress in Johannesburg
March	Grocotts articles: Kids get coaching where it counts and Success, surprises at museum maths event
March	Grade 2, 3 and 4 online numeracy games workshops: Partner: Sci Fest
February	AMESA Mini Conference, Grahamstown

(back to top)

Last Modified: Tue, 29 Mar 2016 11:11:53 SAST