Workshops

Spirit of Math Student Workshops are designed for on-site delivery at public and private schools as a way to add variety and enrichment to math class.

Neuron Ticklers: The Neuron Tickler workshops provide students with a glance into the life and ideas of a historical mathematician! Spirit of Math teachers will travel to the classroom to run a one-hour interactive session exploring the mathematical concepts of Pascal, Venn, Gauss, and Fibonacci.

After a brief introduction to the life and times of one of these mathematicians, students work on related problem-solving questions—independently, then in pairs, and then in small groups. For the final portion or the workshop, groups of students compete against each other in a short math rally to solve questions from past Spirit of Math competitions. This rally gives them exposure to additional problems that encourage them to use their logical problem-solving skills.

Neuron Tickler workshops are available from Grades 1 to 8. Each mathematician is geared towards a specific grade:

√ Pascal Pathways (Grades 1 & 2)
√ Venn Diagrams (Grades 3 & 4)
√ Gauss Series (Grades 5 & 6)
√ Fibonacci Sequences (Grades 7 & 8)

Parents play a crucial role in the development and support of their child’s learning. Parents of high-achieving and gifted children often experience the added challenge of providing further enrichment at home, as well as providing emotional support and standard homework help in mathematics. In this session, the misconceptions that surround mathematics enrichment will be explored, along with ways in which parents can help their children at home.

Strategies to assist your child include the underlying language of mathematics and conceptual connections between different math concepts. This session has been conducted across North America, with groups of parents asking for the session to be brought back for more people to view it.

Parents will learn what current research tells us and leave with concrete strategies to better meet the needs of their high performing children at home.

Spirit of Math’s formal teacher training program dates back to 2007. Since then we’ve trained hundreds of teachers in our methods. More recently, we’ve expanded this aspect of our business to include on-site and hybrid (in-person/online) professional development programs for teachers at leading private schools, as well as public school boards and individual institutions.

Our programs range from half-day workshops to year-long collaborative partnerships designed to strengthen the math teaching skills of an entire school board or district.