With the participation of teachers from six municipalities in the Metropolitan Region, a b-learning Suma y Sigue program’s test started. The courses by Education Lab at Center for Mathematical Modeling (CMM), with the Secretary of Education, convened more than 250 primary education teachers from Puente Alto, Pudahuel, Recoleta, San Ramon, Central Station and Pedro Aguirre Cerda, who have the opportunity to strengthen their capacities to teach mathematics.
The courses were designed under a collaboration agreement between CMM and the secretary in order to strengthen the teaching and learning of this subject in the country.
“In the environment of education reform we are living, we cannot neglect an important element, which is the quality. In the secretary, we are concerned to lead a series of initiatives to address it. One is to support the work of teachers in schools with innovative proposals,” said Marcelo Henríquez, chief of staff of the Division of General Education at Mineduc.
Central issues
“Teachers learn by discovering and thinking about mathematics. True mathematics labs, where abstract concepts are represented, are available for them, who can experiment with these concepts,” explained Lab Director Salomé Martínez.
Some of the topics addressed by teachers are the most complex and difficult to teach, Henriquez said: “Problems the CMM detected in its researches as central in mathematics teaching.”
For that reason, teachers will have the support of expert tutors, in addition to both face and online lessons.
Friendly resources and feedback
“I have acquired enough knowledge and ways to relate content. There were some complex things that course helped me to deepen. Examples of activities also helped me,” said Luis Villamán, a teacher at Liceo Enrique Alvear, Pudahuel, who also participated in an earlier version of this program.
During the first half of this year, four courses will be held in b-learning mode: ‘Working with the decimal system and the additive situations’,’ Working with multiplication and division of whole numbers’, ‘Developing geometric thinking’ and ‘Developing algebraic thinking ‘.
“We hope that, in a few time, these courses will be available to all teachers and are useful in all establishments in the country,” concluded Henríquez in the courses’ kickoff.
