This meeting included a summary of maths teaching tools and strategies we are currently using, and our next steps as a school. Rapid Routines include... Full Notes Maths Staff Meeting
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Full Presentation Key Points for Teachers - Using Problems in Maths Problem-solving activities can be completed individually and through group work Carefully choose tasks so they encourage collaboration (and not one person taking over) Ensure groups have support Provide a balance of the four task types (see below) Provide a balance of proficiencies (adaptive reasoning, problem solving, procedural fluency, conceptual understanding, productive disposition) Provide a balance of the strands (statistics, geometry & measurement, number & algebra) Four Types of Tasks Exercise : Require a known fact / procedure, put into practice Application : A worded problem, with one or two steps, solution pathway is transparent. Often strategies/algorithms focused Open-Ended : Has several solutions with multiple solutions pathways. These have a low floor but high ceiling (all/most can access and answer it, but it also has huge scope for extended thinking). Includes extenders ...
Planning (Digital copy of presentation saved in personal filing) Helping our students learn and succeed in maths requires careful planning. The termly and weekly plan should include these proficiencies : Procedural fluency Adaptive reasoning Problem solving Conceptual understanding Productive disposition Children need time and practise in each of these competencies, across each dimension of maths : Number & algebra Geometry & measurement Statistics (image courtesy of Rob Profitt-White) Example: (image courtesy of Rob Profitt-White) Use the NZMaths Curriculum Elaborations to guide planning. NZ Maths Long Term Plans - use the thematic plans to cover each area of maths over the year. Weekly Strategies To Engage (group or individual) Move It, Prove It - start of week (diagnostic observations) and repeat end of week (summative show of learning, and spent more time reasoning and justifying so all understand the concept) Have students mak...
It was a pleasure to have Rob in to observe this lesson, and provide useful tips on how to improve student engagement. Problem: Seth had 15 pieces of lego in his tower, and Shikani had 32 pieces of lego, and Zac had 23 pieces of lego. Who had the most? Who had the least? How do you know? Draw, build or make it to prove it. Goals for the session: * Teach/develop the collaborative inquiry skill of justifying e.g. ‘How do you know?’ ‘Can you prove it?’ * Explore knowledge of number size, specifically, students' ability to identify and order numbers to 100 * Differentiation provided through an enabler and extender. Enabler: Seth had 2 pieces of lego in his tower, and Shikani had 12 pieces of lego, and Zac had 8 pieces of lego. Who had the most? Who had the least? How do you know? Extender: Can you prove it another way? * Children to work in pairs and use varied ways to justify their learning (e.g. materials, by drawing, through an equation etc) My professional goals (areas for ...
Presentation Link Teach Dispositions For Maths * This includes teaching what the School Values look like in maths learning (we care, we get there together, we love challenge) * This includes teaching what the Key Competencies look like in maths learning * This includes that maths needs fast thinking (e.g. basic facts) but also a lot of slow thinking (place value on this when discussing with students), like maths inquiry Represent maths concepts in familiar and unfamiliar ways e.g. using mixed fractions, using a wide vocabulary Inquiry Maths * provides multiple solutions and pathways * provide extension, i.e. an extra challenge, organising and setting out all the answers you can find, join two groups/students with different answers and ask them to talk, compare, contrast, justify etc * enable students to solve or attempt to solve independently (do this by pre-teaching some content, reduce the number of steps, change the way it is represented, simplify the numb...
Rob shared the beginnings of a Computational Thinking Progression Framework on how we can track computational thinking in our students. He also explained a num ber of simple ways we can help our students be confident with computational thinking, including: Estimation: provide for LOTS of opportunities for this. Ask children to do this BEFORE they try to solve a problem. Year 0-2: provide 3 numbers for addition problems so you can identify what strategies they are using and scaffold their sharing of these. Number talks: these are 5-10 minute problems which everyone attempts to solve . Sharing allows all students to compare, contrast and justify their answers, and learn more in the process. When running a shared problem, walk and notice students' different answers. Once the solution time is up, say, "I saw lots of answers including 2, 5, 3 etc (relevant to the problem), did anyone get a different answer." This moves students away from their focus ...
Key Points When Supporting Basic Facts Learning Rob's Presentation Slides Use concrete materials, visual models and partitioning models With concrete materials, ensure a variety are available, e.g. Base 10, Numicon, Counters etc so children can show their learning different ways AND find the most efficient counting material. This may be using Numicon or Base 10 for 2 digit numbers, rather than counters. Provide open ended questions for basic facts practise, as well as games, writing tasks etc Example open ended question: You have 10 popsticks. What maths can you show? There are 3 steps to learning basic facts Provide students with ways to make learning/recall easier Such as: all 9 x multiplication problems have results which add to 9, e.g. 6x9=54....5+4=9 etc Break learning into manageable chunks for the students Provide clear goals for each session ...so students know what to focus on and work towards Modelling v...
Updating our thoughts on DMIC / Inquiry Maths Approaches Workshop with Rob Profitt-White An abridged version of Rob's presentation: The Research An Outline For Maths Teaching & Planning & Learning: Presentation Two Key research findings: * Hard / challenging learning is remembered and concepts are retained by students (presuming they succeed through the challenge) * Students need time to think independently as well as in small groups, in pairs and whole class. * Students need a range of experiences , i.e. representation / modelling, contextualised (i.e. this includes word problems), and open ended * Students learn from and need explicit teaching as well as inquiry maths experiences * Students having a positive disposition towards maths is key . This is nurtured by various factors: appropriately challenging learning, strong teacher-student relationship, risk taking attitude, self-efficacy, teacher belief / parent belief in child's ability, ...