Term 2 Inquiry Reflection

Here is my reflection of my inquiry so far. I have included what has worked well, observations, what needs improving and where to next.

Progress with Integers Group

During the past week, I've been focusing on teaching division with remainders. The Integers have found this a challenge when the number being divided gets bigger. So, we started off small for example: There are 13 jellybeans to share between Karen and her sister. How many do they get each? How many are left over?
Without using materials children were able to solve this.
When I posed the question 53 divided by 10, Richard was able to use a different strategy and say that 50 divided by 10=5 and there were 3 left over. He knew that 5x10=50 (reversibility) and knowledge of basic facts.
Another question was 44 divided by 5. Machelle said the answer was 9 remainder 1. She said that 5x9=45-1 =44.
Richard disagreed. He said that 40 divided by 5=8 and there's 4 left over. Machelle had to repeat it back and she could see that was she had shared was incorrect. She showed understanding through discussion.

Teaching with Integers

During the previous weeks, I have focused on giving students opportunities to talk and share their thoughts. I had to gift them with examples of sentence starters:

You said ______________________, can you explain why did you do that?
Why did you  _______________________?
I don't agree because ___________________.
I didn't understand, could you repeat that please?

I also focused on not speaking too much and encouraged the children to speak instead. When a student shared their learning and ideas, I found that a lot of the children tended to agree and weren't really questioning or challenging what was shared.

However, children began to put on their thinking caps and had light bulb "a-ha!" moments. Discussions have been working really well with my Integers group.  Machelle is a good example. She is always commenting and asking questions. She would say, "you said ________ but that doesn't make sense because _____________". A few of the children are asking "what strategy did you use?"

By allowing children opportunities to direct the discussion empowers them and gives them ownership of their learning. It also keeps children accountable of tuning in and staying focused.

If children get side tracked during discussion, I redirect them back to the problem and ask them "what is it asking us to do?" If children are confident with their answers, (which is incorrect) I would get them to prove it using materials and prompting them along the way.

This has been a major change in my practice. I'm still learning to remember when to speak and when not too. It's hard but do-able. I'm also still learning to facilitate discussions in my lower ability groups.

Term One Reflection

Reflection: This term has been a very busy week but I've been enjoying my inquiry and looking at ways of improving my practise. Here is an inquiry presentation that I've made to explain what I've done and where I'm up to now.
 This is a short video clip of the Calculators group. These children are year 5 and 6 working at Stage 3 to 4 going into Early Stage 5.

This is a short video clip of the Exponents group. Again, these children are year 5 and 6, working at Early Stage 5.
 
Exponents T1 from Team 4 Pes on Vimeo.

Talk Moves

Talk Moves is a way of questioning and facilitating children discussions in Maths. However Talk Moves can be used in other learning areas.

Solving Number Problems

Last week, I thought really hard about the problems I was going to launch with my Integers group (who are my top group and who were AT the National Standard at the end of last year. To gauge where they were at we worked on this example together, here is a photo of Machelle's working out in her book.

Together we talked about underlining the most important parts of the problem that is going to help us solve it. Then they had to discuss with their buddy what operation they would use to solve this. Some children added 53+18 while others subtracted, 53-18. They talked about what words in the problem were clues. Children were able to say that Bella bough 18 of them and took them away and the words "how many are left?" indicated to them of what was left behind, what remained in the garden centre. Some children used ice block sticks to help them solve this. Others drew pictures and discussed with a buddy their working out.

I felt this lesson was successful. However, moving on from this I got the following problem from No Nonsense Maths Problems Bk2 Stage 6 and we had camp the following day.

Here is a photo of Amethyst's book and a link to her blog.

It was quite a tricky problem to unpack because of the way the problem was written. Again, some children added 75+38= while others said 75-38. If you click on her blog,you'll be able to see what she did to solve the problem. She shared this with our group and the others listened. Using talk moves, I asked children to repeat back, revoice and some questioned her working out. Amethyst then went on to prove her answer by using materials - iceblock sticks. The words "How many more does he need to sell?" compared to "How many are left?" is quite a stretch for some children's understanding. We took note of how this problem has lots more words than the last problem we had.

Where to from here? Keep focusing on problem solving, using talk moves, using materials, pulling the knowledge back to ensure children know how to break tens and encouraging active listening.

NZMaths: Mathematics Inquiry Communities

On the NZ Maths Site there is a video that reflects and shares exactly what I would like to be implementing more of, in the classroom. Click here to view