We are 6 weeks down and after the holidays another 10 weeks to go. I have just finished interviewing all MST children for my first assignment - the topic being What is Maths and Why Teach It?
The most prevalent view is that Mathematics is addition, subtraction, mult and div. We learn maths so we can do hard maths at high school and so we can help our own kids do maths when they go to school. There is very little connection with maths being used everyday in the world around us. It is a worrying trend as our children don't see a broader purpose for maths other than school. We need to engage them in how maths is apart of everyday life and essential to our existence as humans.
On reflecting on this bombshell discovery I will really focus on expanding the children's view of maths and its essentialness.
The children are working brilliantly in the groups and they are showing empathy and caring towards each other when working on a probem.
My other focus is to work on getting kids to struggle more, question more and pull back from helping them too much. I got a bit caught up in strategy teaching and stopped focussing on Prob Solving which develops strategies as a matter of course.
My aim is to make the kids more independent and confident and really enjoy maths. They have been loving coming to the MST group but we need to change it up and bring on the challenge in tasks.
Look out Term 2 :)
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