Mr Wong's Maths Challenge...

Earlier this week Greg Wong shared an awesome resource he had created as part of his teaching inquiry. Today I introduced 'Mr Wong's Maths Challenge' to my to my Maths group and it was met with a huge level of enthusiasm. I have added the link as Greg is happy for me to share it (Don't forget to give him the credit!). My initial thinking was this basic facts challenge would be completed in 15 minutes, however when I called 'time' I was met with a collective, "Miss can we keep going?"

I am very much a believer in capitalising on learner engagement and enthusiasm so we carried on. Greg's randomly generated arrays were designed to support knowledge gaps in basic facts recall. The timed element of competition is how this challenge is able to meet individual learning needs, but on this occasion that took a back seat as rich dialogic discussions about how different strategies suit different numbers and which strategies were the better choice evolved. 

Movie Making Hints Toolkit

Earlier this week I went to one of the seven toolkits offered by the Manaiakalani cluster. These toolkits are a fabulous initiative that give us the opportunity to tap into the expertise of our colleagues. I went to the Movie Making Hints toolkit offered by Greg Wong. Although I have been making movies with my classes for a number of years now it is always a bonus to be able to revisit my own learning as I know I come away with a useful takeaway each time. My takeaway this time was storyboarding, which I put into use two days later with a group of students who asked if they could make a movie to show their learning. My refreshed knowledge gave me increased confidence when guiding them in the planning stages. 

The boys came to me with the plan on the left and after co-constructing the storyboard, the image on the right shows our rough outline that they have gone away to put together in more detail.

The link to the notes I took is here.