CoL Inquiry Update, Week 9

-
After our second CoL meeting yesterday, I wanted to review my Inquiry thus far this term, I feel I need to have a look at my initial problem, re word my Inquiry question, officially identify my target group and come up with a way of how I am going to MEASURE my students progress.
  1. What is my problem: My children lack the mathematical language, needed to explain how they work out a problem. In addition, this means they find it difficult to understand what many word problems are asking them to do in the first place.
  2. What is my inquiry question: Would the everyday, explicit and rich teaching of mathematical language, coupled with step by step techniques of unpacking word problems, help my learners to better understand mathematical concepts, and better answer questions and explain how they got their answer?
I feel like this has been more of the direction my inquiry has gone this term, although I am integrating a lot more strand I feel like it has become very clear that there is not only a lack of mathematical language but a lack of understanding what this actually means. My learners really struggle to answer word problems. They get caught up in the words and straight away take the numbers and either add or subtract them. I have already seen improvement in my learners ability to actually know what to do to tackle a maths word problem.
An example of what I have been teaching them is to first look at the question and
  1. Figure out what is is asking us to do. What are the relevant, or important numbers in the question.
  2. We have spoken about the word ‘context’ and what this means. With every question I have introduced to the children they have had to explain the context of it.
  3. The third step is to explain, step by step how you SOLVED the problem.
How do I plan to measure the progress my children make? I want to video the learners in my target group before the end of the term. What language do they use to help them explain how they figured out the question. Do they have enough knowledge and understanding of the language in the question to figure it out in the first place? What is their confidence like? Do they hesitate in answering the question? Recording my target group in T4 will hopefully show the fantastic progress they have made!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Maths PD With Jo Knox

-
Image
Today's PD was about aligning the NZ Number Framework, NZC and the National Standards. I have made some notes around things I found helpful or interesting, especially around the tests we use with our children. This is my first year teaching year 3 and the tips around Gloss I found very interesting and helpful. Thanks Jo Knox!! Some important notes/ things to remember : Because one curriculum Level spans 2 years - we look at early level and end of level. So in year 3 they need to be early level 5 - at the end of stage 5 by the end of year 4. Knowledge and strategies are interwoven or interlined We need to think about what tool is most appropriate - Jam or Gloss? Assessment isn’t just a one-off thing … it can be a chat you have with students. Summative - tape measure - MEASURING - gives you a mark/score. SUMMARISES what the child knows. Formative - what can I do differently to affect the growth of that flower (student in our case) - informs what learning
Read more

What's New?!

-
Image
Kia Ora Whanau. It's a while since I last posted - please excuse me. I have returned from an amazing, almost 3 month trip around Europe. How lucky am I? I flew to London, and from there visited Greece (Mykonos and Santorini), Spain (San Sebastian), Paris, Croatia and Italy! A lot to fit into just under 3 months… I had an absolute ball. I travelled mostly alone but met friends in Spain and Croatia. I have travelled alone through Vietnam earlier in the year and although many may think it is a lonely experience I find it quite the opposite. Staying mostly in hostels I was amazed at how many other people were travelling alone, so straight away there are people you share a common trait and conversation starter with. Travelling alone makes you get out of your comfort zone. I found myself really putting myself out there and making an effort to walk up to people and spark a conversation. I am certainly not a shy person but I think in daily life I am mostly around people I know, colle
Read more

Second Session with the DIMC Mentor Don

-
Image
To recap, my Inquiry question for this year is: Would the everyday, explicit and rich teaching of mathematical language, coupled with step by step techniques of unpacking word problems, help my learners to better understand mathematical concepts, and better answer questions and explain how they got their answer?  Last term  I did a lot of work around how we 'unpack' a word problem (essentially using the DIMC approach) and doing lots of learning around mathematical vocabulary.  A recap of how I have been implementing this in my maths class with my learners:  When looking at a word problem: What is the story about/ What do we know from the story? We have spoken about the word ‘context’ and what this means. With every question I have introduced to the children they have had to explain the context of it.  What are we trying to find out? Once the group is able to agree upon a way they may go about solving the problem they are given paper to being their working.  We  ma
Read more