The Unusual Baker

Over the past two weeks I have presented the children with the problem of the Unusual Baker.  This activity is so rich in the mathematical thinking that it elicits from the children that it has been a great tool for me to be on the ball and anticipating where the students are going next.  It has also forced me to step back and allow them to get on with the solving.  We have made links between fractions, money, decimals and percentages as well as all the operations we use.  This activity has been worthwhile both from a student and a teaching perspective.

Learning From the Advisors

Today I was fortunate enough to spend the day observing the maths advisors who are doing math PD with the rest of the staff at Porritt.  The focus was on 'Talk Moves' and 'Getting Children to Explain their Thinking'.  It was an incredibly worthwhile day watching Robyn, Sam and Deb model teaching with groups of children.  It really reinforced the constant-ness of using talk moves and how they draw out the thinking of children.  It also reinforced the importance of selecting rich tasks which children of different abilities can cope with.

Afterwards the focus of the staff meeting was to consider what an ideal class environment would look like and how we could shift towards that ideal.

I am going to centre my inquiry focus around integrating talk moves more effectively and the rules around talk: to look at the person talking, to listen carefully to the person talking and to ask questions.

I felt after observing the sessions that my questioning and general structure of lessons was OK.  I just need to firm up on the talk moves.  I have a couple of weeks left to get s handle on them with my current groups and then I will start right into them with the new groups.

I hope that the other teachers have taken them on board and I will make sure that they can come a observe any time they wish just to get some ideas around questioning and problems to solve.

Keeping the End in Mind

This term has been much more problem solving orientated and the children have responded really well to the challenge.  I shuffled around the groups to try improve the dynamics within one group.  I am still struggling with getting the children to communicate but a new tactic where the kids are not allowed to start writing for one to two minutes and therefore have to talk is working well.  I still find I am doing a lot of the linking and need to work out how to get the others to step up.

We are moving into fractions and I have to be sure to constantly make the links with percentages, division and multiplicationif I can.  I also need to make sure the problems are context based and hands on.

Over the last three weeks we have had a mult/div focus based around story books and the Converse group have made their own books which have been very successful.

Underlying everything is the continual push with place value and multiplicative thinking.  Only four weeks left and lots to do.  The teachers are starting to test the children and I was thrilled when one teacher reported one of my MST children has met the standard.  Hopefully the rest have made progress too.  I plan to spend the last week testing and organising the next round of contenders.