Maths-New Way of Thinking

Well the start of another year and some exciting things to consider. Currently as a team we are looking at how we do things in the area of maths. This has lead to some interesting thinking that I have had in the back of my mind for around a year or so since I heard about different approaches. It is good to change things up and after looking at some statistics there is hard evidence to suggest another approach could be good.
I have enjoyed teaching problem solving, as I have mentioned before, when I was younger this was a real struggle for me as a young child and I don't wish to make this the case for other children. We are looking at how we could incorporate this into a daily maths programme effectively. The other part we plan to do as a team is to include workshops into the programme as well.

So after a good discussion on this as you can see from the whiteboard, we discussed some good questions and things to ponder on.
Some of the questions I have are
How do we ensure all children benefit from this approach?
How do I ensure that the children are supported in this new approach?
What resources are available to ensure the children get suitable problem solving activities?
What will workshops look like?

I liked how we discussed having some baseline data as this will be an interesting to compare with later on. Although the case study I read mentioned it is possible there will be small dip but getting information from our year 3 children and teaching them again next year may help give us some interesting results.

Here are a few things I am looking forward to seeing
- more maths talk
-children using maths in more practical problem solving ways
- hopefully more children speaking about maths and sharing their ideas
-more discussion about maths in everyday situations

I plan to read more case studies and generally find more information on doing workshops on the problem solving approach.

MATHS IS EVERYWHERE!