February Numeracy Webinar: Bridging Informal and Formal Math Education with Dr. Yasmin Sitabkhan About 61 million primary school-aged children around the world are still out of school. Many of these children have dropped out of school because the teaching and learning happening in the classroom does not build on the knowledge children already bring to school. What if a connection between the informal knowledge children develop outside of school could be connected to the formal knowledge they learn in school? For example, many of these children work to support their families buying and selling fruits, vegetables, or other small items. Through these buying and selling activities children develop informal mathematics concepts, which can be leveraged in a classroom setting and become a stepping stone to formal concepts. This can ensure that children stay in school and are learning. Dr. Yasmin Sitabkhan, who will be featured in the Global Partnership for Education’s February Numeracy Webinar, discusses the importance of drawing on informal mathematics in early grade instruction. She raises questions as to how formal and informal mathematics can be bridged and used to enhance the quality of early grade mathematics teaching and learning. Access the webinar through Adobe Connect: http://worldbankva.adobeconnect.com/numeracywebinar/ (Click on the “Enter as Guest” option, enter your full name in the text field and then click the “Enter Room” button.) Dr. Sitabkhan, completed her Ph.D. from the University of Berkeley and recently joined RTI in Washington, D.C. where she is working on early grade mathematics education. Dr. Sitabkhan has done extensive fieldwork in India and Mexico on informal learning in mathematics. The webinar series is part of a Community of Practice on Numeracy facilitated by the Global Partnership for Education. The community of practice is open to teachers, educators, practitioners, researchers, academics and others interested in numeracy. Join the community of practice on ‘Numeracy for Development’ here. All webinars are at 10am EST (3pm GMT) and typically fall on the first Wednesday of the month, unless otherwise noted. Here is the schedule for upcoming webinars: • March 6th, 2013 – Emma Näslund-Hadley, Inter-American Development Bank – Inside the Math Classroom in Latin America and the Caribbean • April 3rd, 2013 – Abigail Bucuvalas, Sesame Workshop – Sesame Workshop’s numeracy work • May 1st, 2013 -Nadia Nosworthy, University of Western Ontario – The relationship between arithmetic achievement and symbolic and non-symbolic numerical magnitude processing in primary school • June 5th, 2013 – Linda M. Platas, University of California Berkeley – Early Childhood Development and numeracy • July 10th, 2013 – Steve Leinwand, American Institutes for Research – What we know about high quality instruction and need to see in all math classes If you have specific expertise in numeracy and would like to present in a webinar, please contact Deepa Srikantaiah at dsrikantaiah@globalpartnership.org. We hope you’ll get involved in helping children learn and grow, and join our conversation on Facebook and Twitter.