Maths Intensive week

In week 4 the school had a Maths Intensive Week. All learners in Room 1 thoroughly enjoyed this week. Each day the learners were given a new challenge to complete and time was given for sharing and asking of questions. The same format of agreeing or disagreeing with a reason was used. I also introduced ... How do you know your answer is right? I have a question about....

It was interesting to note that as partners were working together solving the windows in our street problem how they communicated freely with each other. Learners were also actively engaged and keen to ask questions and comment on others work at the feedback session. The question I now have is how much influence does the problem and task have on the oral language used when sharing as 'talk' was greatly increased and evident with the making our own street problem.

Maths Programme with knowledge and strategy.

Ove the past few weeks great emphasis has been put on strategy and problem solving with learners talking about their learning. I was however concerned that I was not doing enough 'Perfect Practise, reinforcing of knowledge, quick recall and expanding basic math knowledge that could assist learners with solving problems. I thus decided to once again make a change to my Math Programme. This time I incorporated a 20 minute session focussed on knowledge. I started with 5 minute slots of quick bursts of knowledge i.e.

5 min - counting to 100
            counting back from 100
            identify the number
I used the 1000's boards and we filled in numbers as a class. We also threw a sift ball around the class saying the next number.

5 min - shapes song
          - name the shape
We sang a shape song on the t.v. from youtube. for name the shape I would either say a shape and learners had to form the shape using their body or with a group, or I would hold up a shape and they would shout out the name and 1 attribute.

5 min - teen and ty
I would write a number on the board and they would shout out the name. They then had to give me a a reason e.g. 10 + 4 = 14, before 15, 1 ten and 4 ones.

5 min - quick recall facts to 5, facts with 5
I would write answers on the board and have 2 children at  a time compete. I would say the equation and they would slap the correct answer.

All the learners thoroughly enjoyed these 20 min sessions. On day 1 I would assist learners who had found a particular 5 minute session tricky or introduce a new knowledge concept to half the class. Day 2 would see me working with a different set of learners ensuring that over the 2 days the whole class had an opportunity to complete the problem. On day 3 we would share how we solved the problem and discuss the various strategies in depth. Learners then had a chance to try a different method to solve the problem on Day 4 and share what they have discovered or learnt.

Agree or Disagree

The learners are growing in confidence when sharing their ideas, strategies and thinking. The next step in our learning was to allow the class to agree or disagree with our statements and explain why using the word 'BECAUSE'.  We are also attempting to form questions so that others can gain better understanding or get clarification on a strategy or answer.
To implement this I asked learners to show whether they agree with a strategy or answer using thumbs up or thumbs down. Many learners were hesitant to agree or disagree as they felt it had an impact on whether they had friends at playtime or not. To try and reassure the class, we did a few role plays to show how this should look. I hope that with time it would improve but there is still an underlying reluctance by some to agree or disagree. In complete contrast there are a few learners who disagree just because they can and are unable to give a valid reason for their disagreement.

Although we have been attempting to disagree or agree using the word because since the start of term 3 it has not been easy to achieve. This will have to continue to be a work in progress. We are able to however show, using thumbs up or down whether we agree with the answer or not but saying why we decided that has been based on what they saw others showing. Many still find it difficult or are reluctant to say why they agree or disagree. I am wandering whether a lack of confidence in known math knowledge is prohibiting the learners from stating facts incase they are wrong. Perhaps a focus on knowledge and lots of Teacher modelling will help us overcome this stumbling block.