2021 PBS Teacher Only Days...

Hearing a shared message is always the best way to make sure as a staff we are all on the same page. This year our professional development helped us strengthen our connections to Maths, and to Physical Education through Healthy Active Learning. I am really looking forward to implementing my new learning in both curriculum areas.

My notes from the Maths PD with Marie Hirst

My notes from the Physical Education PD with James McIntyre

Motivating through Competition...

This week I introduced a new activity shared by our maths facilitator Marie Hirst, into our maths warm ups. Maths Scrabble, a game designed to help learners recall maths vocabulary. The challenge to get the highest score completely won my class over. 

What I liked about this activity was the amount of maths vocabulary that was recalled that wasn't linked to a current focus. One group worked out quickly that words like 'exponent', 'equation' and equivalent' gave higher word scores. I added a component that required the spelling to be accurate so allowed 2 minutes to use the maths dictionary to check the spelling. This was a great way to remind my learners that this site gave great explanations of vocabulary. The image below shows one group waiting to see the final score to see who won. Standing back and watching I saw a wide variety of strategies being used to tally up numbers. The conversation and engagement in the photo below was really exciting to watch. I noticed the students who had already added up their word lists watching and doing quick additions to see if they were going to hold onto their positions. This is a fantastic way to bring maths vocabulary alive!

Maths PD 2020 #1

We began our school year with a Maths professional development session run by Marie Hirst. It was a great way to begin our 2020 journey as we heard a shared message that helped us unpack what an effective balanced maths programme looked like.

My big takeaways from the day, apart from some awesome ideas to use in my programme were:

• Mathematical communication is using the language in context deepens understanding so need to provide opportunities for this to happen
• Arranging for learning
• Students learn best when they are mixed with students of different abilities
• Mixed ability problem solving + needs based ability workshops
• Needs based groups mean groups are not labelled
• Flexible grouping allows the focus to be on the learning goal that meets the needs of the students who need the information
• Have 'teams' not 'groups' for collaborative challenges
• Unpack 'team' roles one at a time to strengthen connections to what is expected of that role
• Teacher content knowledge is critical
• Equipment allows for visual connections but we need to be able to use this effectively

                                    
Jo Boaler

• Fixed mindset happens with ability grouping when students develop fixed ideas about their learning potential and affects ability to learn.
• Loose confidence.

John Hattie

• Tracking progress sets expectations to students that this is where you perform.
• Teachers tend to teach to that level which locks out components of the curriculum.

Christine Rubie-Davis

• When students have more advanced opportunities to learn they make more progress than they expected they could.

Maths PD with Marie Hirst

Last week we had some fabulous professional development with Marie Hirst who showed us how we could make connections between numeracy and our Term 4 topic of Enterprise. Our session began with Marie showing a slide that asked us to discuss which option we would choose. This question was taken from the site wouldyourathermath.com. Each question encourages you to pick a path and justify your reasons why. I can't wait to introduce this challenge as I can see so many possibilities for my learners to use their number knowledge and strategies in both collaborative and independent situations.

Following on from this challenge we explored a selection of games that use money as a context for number. What I really liked about the follow up discussion was the sharing time when we shared the strategies we had used, and discussed some possible adaptations that could be made to meet the learning needs of a wider range of ability levels.

We spent the last part of the session carrying out the practical task of finding the real cost of owning a pet through exploring costs, spending and budgets. This was a collaborative task that required us to discuss, research, negotiate and strategise. This is definitely another idea I am looking forward to challenging my class. Click here to find more challenges like this on TKI.