Maths- Connections and Communication

Maths is a connected subject, but some students think of it as disconnected and isolated  from other subjects. Such students who believe that maths is a set of formulas that have to be remembered is associated mainly with low achievement. 

We use talk moves all the time in class. It allows us to communicate about the topic that we are learning. Since I have started using talk moves, I have noticed that my students are making more meaning of this subject and are becoming enthusiastically engaged in their learning of Maths. 

Today I gave simple multiplicative problems to my students. They had to solve the problems mentally and also explain how they had come to a conclusion. I noticed that some of the students could work out the correct answer but were not able to explain their thinking. One of the girls is very new to New Zealand and can speak only Samoan. There were others who felt intimidated and not so confident sharing their ideas in a large group.  

I wanted to honour these students who had solved the problem but were not able to explain their thinking. So I gave them time to think about mathematics. I put them into groups and gave them an opportunity to think and talk about what worked and what went wrong.

Students felt more comfortable in smaller groups and they could find a way to connect or ask questions about the parts that may be confusing or difficult to follow. 

During sharing time, almost all students in this group could contribute a little to explain their working. I was elated to see that each student who never contributed could gather courage to say something little. Though they were not very explicit but I think it was a huge effort on their part.

 Yes! I thought, 'Little steps at a time can make a difference'. 

  

Creating and Sharing - Other than blogging

Last Term myself  Ashely decided to do something for Science as we were feeling science hungry.
We decided to do a mini unit on plants. At the same time we also wanted to look at other ways of sharing and creating apart from posting our learning on the blog.

We made folders where children had interactive things like posters and booklets that they could talk to when they are sharing their learning at home.

Surprisingly, we got a huge response as children came back next week and talked about how their parents and family responded to what they had done at school. Some parents took the time to extend their kids learning further.
One student came back and said " I know how leaves breathe"
and  the other mentioned " plants are very useful because they give us everything, like even clothes"
To hear such things from our students was just amazing... This is exactly what we want... We want the parents to be actively participating in their child's learning.
Just a thought to myself...
Do all parents visit their kid's blogs? Do parents need a portal for their kids to look into their learning everyday? I would really want more participation from our Parents and at the same time I am feeling like doing a bit of science again this Term.

Finding Fractions of a Region - Language of Maths

After doing two weeks of fractions in my class I felt that most students in the class would be comfortable halving and quartering fractions of a region. So I decided to work with my students who are achieving low in Maths.


To my surprise, none of the five students could show me the different ways we could share a cake into quarters. I felt very disappointed.

The question that I gave them was this:

I also gave them a square piece of paper that they could experiment to work out quarters. But somehow it did not seem to work. None of students seemed confident to ask questions or talk about their thinking.

As I started to explain the problem I realised that my students did not have the language to participate in a discussion. So I stopped teaching to the plan and decided to expose my students to the language that was required to participate in a discussion. I used think boards so that each child could record their understanding.

After remembering, repeating and discussing the question a number of times, the students had the words to explain their understanding.

Tomorrow I will be giving an different problem on quarters to the same group of students and hopefully they will understand and be able to solve the problem.

Today instead of giving another problem to the same group, I made them experts and they had to share their learning in a group.  All the students explained and demonstrated the different ways they could share a cake in quarters. They did it beautifully and that was because they had the language to explain their thinking. It built their confidence and left them motivated towards their learning.

In future I will make sure that each child in the class has the words to explain their thinking. It becomes all the more important when most of my students have english as their second language.

Ako

I had a great day yesterday. I was full of energy even when I reached home after school. I could help my daughter get the tools that she needed and also help her with her engineering project, run around the chores at the same time and still feel fresh and energised. Surely I had a great day at school and this was because I had enjoyed modelling a writing lesson for Ottilie who is a beginningTeacher at our school.

Ottilie was finding it hard to move some of her students in writing. They did not use powerful words for impact and this was the reason they did not score well.
At the end of the lesson I could motivate enough to make a difference to three of her students who are not at the Standard. There was one students in the group who was particularly too shy to participate. She barely lifted her head up to answer simple questions about her writing. She was not very enthusiastic about being in a group as she had very low self esteem.

I knew instantly, I needed to make them believe that they could be successful like all the other students in the group. For the purpose of modelling we chose mixed ability students so that students could learn of each other. so I buddied up my low achieving students with some students who were average in Writing.
We talked about sharing and helping each other in the group and said that their learning was not complete if they had not explained their work to a buddy or had not helped another student to be successful in the tasks that they were working on.

So I set them on a group worthy task where they had to write all powerful words for the word 'big'. At this point I noticed that the higher ability students immediately started talking to the lower ability students. The low ability students felt cherished when they saw their work being valued. They all participated eagerly and contributed to the discussions.

Later they used the powerful words to write descriptions about the sky tower.

They wrote their descriptions about other pictures using powerful words and felt successful.
To built up their confidence further, Ottilie today used them as an expert group to write a narrative about the picture that we had worked on. Ottilie said that all the students in our expert group helped the class out to use powerful words, and most importantly, the ones who had low confidence, were today, teaching other children in the class to use powerful words in their writing!

Intrinsically motivated! I would say.

The Learning Pit

I have been feeling so bad that I have not posted for the last two months. There have been piles and piles of things to post but I have not done this in spite of several reminders that I have written to myself on pieces of paper here and there. Life at school has been full of activity and it is always a feeling of accomplishment after blogging about it. I guess, today I am feeling so guilty that I need to put this out to the world so that there are no more excuses left for me for not blogging.

So I will start with what happened today...

We had a staff meeting with Sue Pine on Maths.
Now let me first tell you that everything in Maths has changed from what we used to do three or four years ago. Now we have this new approach where we are required to teach Maths through problem solving. To add to this there are other new things like talk moves and number talks that encourage students to collaboratively solve Maths questions. Teachers need to plan for  Maths lessons in such a way that they strike a balance between all these things for students to accelerate in Maths. As this approach is new, some of the teachers are finding it hard to adapt to the new style and felt the need to revert to the old ways where Maths was mainly  procedural.

After listening to our frustrations, Sue described this as a learning pit and she said that good learners go in a pit and it is okay to go in a pit.  When we are in the pit, we feel frustrated, angry and confused. We want to quit because we do not understand. We feel lost and distracted and sometimes can become very chatty and moan about our failures.

But...

 when we are in the pit, we try harder.  We working together and with each others' support we try to get out of the pit. We ask ourselves questions, find different ways to solve our problems, consider and consult our situation with others, understand what mistakes we made and what opportunities we let go, what better ways we could have attempted to solve the problem. This rigorous exercise helps us to refine our ways and we come out successful and accomplished.
So my learning for the day is that we should not be afraid of failures as because these are the building blocks to our success.

Co- Teaching : Observation with Anne Sinclaire

Today we had Anne Sinclaire come to our class to see us co-teach.  It is great to co-teach and it is because we both have a passion for teaching and we also want to learn from each other.

This is what Anne had to say to us-

Shared Reading

Text: Tane steals the show written by Lino Nelisi

WALT identify verbs in the story

SC: demonstrate verbs to show I know their meaning

• Check students can identify
• Author
• Illustrator
• Title
• Get students to TPS their predictions only using the front cover - what do you think will happen in this book?
• Introduce WALT - check students know what verbs are
• Students go out in small groups and identify the verbs in the sentences provided (with T support). Share back to class.

Context:   

Ashley it is great to see how you and Archana are co-teaching in such a positive and affirmative way. You really do enrich each other’s practice and it is obvious in the way you share ideas and the workload and support each other. In  your reflection of the highlights of working together, you are able to articulate exactly what you give to the partnership.  Ashley you have appreciated having a sounding board for your ideas/questions and someone who is confident with PCK and someone you trust to talk to about your decisions.  Archana has recognised the expertise you bring with your digital skills to enhance the learning for your learners. You both acknowledge the relationship you have has benefitted the learner’s growth over the year.   

After you had introduced the lesson you elicited some great responses  from the learners, who had obviously read the story so could answer  your question fully. I loved the way you did not keep them on the mat for too long but got them involved in the learning quickly. They all moved off and got onto the task as you and Archana moved amongst them. It was great to see how the class worked in groups and got into the activity with lots of energy and enthusiasm. When they came back to the mat you were both sitting waiting for them and ready to proceed. I can see from my last visit how much more you are working together and having empathy for each other and the learners. The Batman and Robin routine is really evident in your practice and this only comes about through trust, respect and empathy.

By encouraging the learners to ‘talk aloud’ and share their thinking, is giving the learners more confidence and permission to participate. Reading the story to the learners and then pausing to get them to identify verbs also gave them a chance to be heard. Archana was able to clarify parts of the task as it continued and then recorded the words on the whiteboard. I can see how much easier it is to manage the class and not waste time with 2 of you. You read the story Ashley and Archana recorded the verbs, rather than you doing everything and taking much longer.  This ‘mixing it up’ also gives variety to the lesson and changes of voice for interest. The learners were so well behaved and engaged and I could see everyone involved and interested and learning! You acknowledge the learner’s contributions - ie. the learner who came in late, but immediately contributed and was acknowledged.

The learners are constantly making connections - fia fia - who stole the show? It was exciting seeing the looks on their faces when you introduced the idea of a visual dictionary. Using the verbs they learnt and having them actually act out the words while you filmed them for the digital visual dictionary. Good on you for taking a risk and trying something, which could have been potentially problematic, but it worked so well. They will never forget those verbs. The class all listened to the instructions and really participated with high excitement. I loved the way you generated such excitement without once losing control of the learning. You are going to compile the movies and put them up on the class site.

After completing the filming you then explained what they would do next. The learners went off to their groups and logged in to the site for their follow up activities. This routine is established, so they know what they do each day and they helped each other.

• Independant follow up slides on the powerpoint, which you went through with students. Explain each slide and get one or two students to offer example answers.

• T to send students off to work on their netbooks on follow up task.

• T to work with students who need support.   

Good on you both for working so hard to provide such a wonderful rich learning environment in your class, which is showing how you are developing the skills of adaptive expertise. I really enjoyed my morning with you and the gorgeous learners, so well done for providing a model of co-teaching and true partnership. I should have filmed this morning so I could use it as an example for others to see. It was also great to see the next steps actioned from the feedback form last observation.  Thank you both!!!

Nga mihi nui

Anne Sinclair ( Professional Supervisor)

May 23, 2016

Balance in Curriculum

The last week was a very busy week as we had ERO at school.
Having discussion during staff meetings and Management Team meetings was a great PLD for us.

Out of the many questions, one of the questions that the Review Team asked was how do we know that we have covered science into our topics. They also mentioned that the Maori and Pacific students preferred to take Arts as their subjects and not science when they moved into universities.
Yes, that may be the case because our Maori and Pacific students have a talent for Arts and this talent runs into the families from generations to generations. This talent is very visible in our students and we do need to make sure that our students pursue this talent.
I also agree that we do need to have a balance in our curriculum. We have to make sure that we teach science to our students as well otherwise we would never be able to identify students who are interested in science. Students need to given the experience of science before they can decide whether they will like to pursue it later in their lives.
At university I had learnt that children have to be exposed to different ideas and subjects for them to open the window for that subject. The lecturer at the time had explained it like this:  A child's brain has lots of windows. All those windows have to be opened through an experience. This means that there will be an Arts window, a language window, a science window etc. As students have more and more experience of a subject, they will get better and better at that subject. This is why there needs to be a balance in the curriculum.
The immediate need is to go through different inquiry topics we will be teaching at school and make sure that there is a balance in our curriculum.
We teachers surely hold this responsibility that we provide opportunities and experiences for all different areas of the curriculum.