Maths- PD- Wendy Dent

After reading the Boaler book it was great to get the opportunity to attend the Wendy Dent Workshop.  I had been questioning how this looks in the classroom and how they manage the programme. She shared some results indicating that the children's national standard results improved by using this approach to maths, for at least the older children.
I agree that maths talk is important and it really does improve the depth of the children's understanding. While observing at the school it was clear that there had been some guidelines set with children in how to work with their math buddy. There were posters and reflective questions that were used to guide the math sessions.
The children were in pairs mainly on our observations which I thought did allow the children to confidently share their math thinking and not get lost in a group. I liked when children shared their work and they had set it so that one speaks and the other child writes. Hopefully by doing it this way will ensure that each child has the opportunty to both be heard.
From attending this workshop I plan to work on giving the children more opportunities to experience working with someone of a different ability on a word problem. I need to work hard on setting up systems with children sharing and asking questions some of the posters and reflective questions will help.
I found that this school on whole teach by this problem solving way. However some classes appeared to have worked on some aspects of maths and had teaching moments. You would need to do this I think as the children would be limited to the strategies they could use if they didn't know them.

Poor Maths Results

This article on Poor Maths Results was interesting as I heard of this way of teaching maths and came across this article. I found it interesting in that they have done studies to say that ability grouping does not work. During my last few years I have had another look at reading groups as I don't always think that reading abilities groups work, so adjusted my reading programme with good success. However for maths I had not really considered it. I think when they stated that if children are only exposed to lower curriculum than the expectation is low. I question this a bit as  I expect they have to have a certain amount of numeracy knowledge in the first place. With  ability groups they do move on to other levels and I don't think the expectation is low.
 The article also talks about how teachers have to be trained in the way they teach this way without ability groups and I get that. After having a bit of a think about this I think that having the right type of open questions could work. I have many questions though like do you pair them up when attempting these open questions so you get different view points from different levels. How do you ensure that the lower leveled children share their ideas and don't get overwhelmed with the higher ability child's work and just follow their thinking completely or is that okay.
Problem solving in maths is important and can be challenging and a lot of fun for the children and really puts the children's maths skills to test. I need to find more information on this type of teaching to fully understand the practical approach to it.

Inspiring Reading And Writing- Murray Gadd

Attended this session with Murray Gadd on Reading and Writing- What is critical for all ( especially under-achieving and reluctant) readers and writers?
This man has clearly done some research in this area and many of it made sense. The eight dimensions that he came up with made perfect sense. It was interesting to see what he found to be the one that helps to generate learner gains and decreases the achieving gap. I have over the last few years realised the importance of direct instruction in teaching and this is important for the children to gain more from the lesson.

It was nice to be reminded on the fact that writing topics comes from
-the students' own experiences, understanding and interests
-the texts that students access: or
-the cross-curriculum findings and challenges that emerge from classroom inquiry

He appeared that he didn't like the Monday recount pieces of writing, although I do believe there is a time and a place for that. I think for some children that is definitely a stage they go through and does fit under their own experiences aspect. I know in my class I started with writing about their weekend and t was good for awhile as it gave them confidence in writing what they knew. However I have now moved on to imaginary writing for most.  I liked some of his ideas of using text in stories to motivate children for writing. I plan to do this as another way to inspire writing as have not really done it in awhile. I liked when he got his children to write about only an aspect of the story. It is great to let the children to have a choice in writing when they can. Also his questioning was good to get more out of the children to write.

This speaker has made me think about checking out some more books to inspire the children to write.

Gafe Summit

I had the pleasure of attending the Gafe Summit in Christchurch over the holidays. This was a great opportunity for me to extend my IT skills and learn some new things that I could incorporate into my classroom programme.
Some of the speakers were inspiring and I liked how some of them were still teaching and that they ju had a passion for extending the children's computer skills and other things. I think when you go to events like this you can get overwhelmed by all the ideas however it is important to walk away with a couple good ideas that you can use in the class straight away. It definitely happened at this Summit as I wish to get the children to do more on the Chrome books by accessing their google accounts. I know how tricky it is to teach them everything so Screencastying seems like a good idea so that I don't have to be everywhere at once so I plan to use this. I have been taught about google forms before but to see it a bit more in action in an example in maths was great and I have already used it in maths for my top group. The bonus to this was I was able to read the results of the test very quickly and easily.

Some of the things which may not seem big but make my life easier were important. Things like learning about finding the rights to use pictures, taking screen shots and adding to this and mercury reader were just a few of the ways to help my classroom programme.

It was a great experience but it does me think about how quickly technology is moving. In just my time I have gone from hand writing my lessons to now writing them collaboratively on the computer. The google suite sure makes it easier to work in the environment I am now working in I couldn't imagine doing it with written plans.

Maths Mindfulness

I was looking into finding some more open ended maths questions for mainly my top maths group, when I came across this lady Jo Boaler. She talks about maths mindsets and what this means in the class for the children. She talks about the studies she has done and others where taking a different approach to  maths and getting the children to do more inquiry type maths can make changes to their mindset and results.
 She also talks about maths being more creative and visual. It made me think I often don't think of Maths as being a creative activity. When I am doing maths problems I do like being visual and after listening to her it makes me think I should encourage it more. I would like to encourage more creativity in maths.
I like how she talks about changing children's mindset to maths as I know there are children in my hub who think they can't do maths. Another thing I have an issue with at times are the parents who say that I was not good at maths so my daughter or son is not.  I sometimes feel that this attitude to maths rubs off from the parents on to the children. So my question is how can I change this? I guess I can only change the child's mindfulness not the parents.
 So listening to her makes me think I still need to think carefully about the mindsets the children have in maths and would like to change this for some children.  She talks about how speed is not important and that how they get the answer and also how they interact with others to get the answer is important.
Watching her videos has made me think a bit about what I can do to improve my maths programme and so I look forward to checking out her website and to try some of the ideas.

Math mindfulness