Week 9

High

Week 8

Playing Salute to hone that number sense.

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Connecting with whānau using Student Story on Class Dojo.

Week 7

Got this cute note from one of my in-class group girls which tells me what I am already seeing, these guys feel way more confident and positive in their maths. I will put together a student voice survey for the end of term. Due to school swimming I am not taking ALiM group but giving extra time to my in-class group.

Despite this group mastering addition, subtraction, multiplication and division of fractions, they show a conceptual lack of understanding when working out fractions of a whole. So I am using an activity I tried with my other group that uses beans and chalk to divide equally then find the fraction of a whole. During main class we all made a fraction wall to help them visualise equal fractions.

To help them I also did an activity where they had to find the size of some fraction blocks turned upside down using a 1/4 and a 1/3 fraction block as measurements. The next day I used paper pieces. 

My inquiry buddy teacher observed me on Monday and we discussed what he saw. He suggested the students prove the sizes which was a great idea. He also noticed I could develop Talk Moves move among the students. I agree and although I use them often I feel I can get the students using Talk Moves more, perhaps I need more confidence and practice to model the talk.

The YouCubed Facebook page continues to provide great ideas. A new digital material idea I am trying this week is called SPLAT. I am using the fraction ones for my in-class group and will try the number one next week with my other group.

I adjusted our Hacky Sack game to include adding 1/2's and 1/4's.
  

WEEK 6

Both my ALiM and class have been exploring fractions. As a teacher I am aware that I have never really used materials and equipment much, perhaps my lack of understanding of how to make the most of them, or my teacher training, and not reading enough research. However this ALiM teaching has taught me how effective materials and equipment are in helping students get the concepts. They are more likely to retain and transfer this understanding to other problems if they get the concepts rather than just learning strategies and processes which has been my main teaching. So my in-class group have really shown they get the strategies for adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing fractions. In fact they are so confident, they have taught the rest of my class and created training videos using Explain Everything for our blog and website. However when working on fractions of a whole they keep saying, "I don't get it!" I have to admit I was getting frustrated, I taught the strategy, I folded paper but still... So with my ALiM group I started exploring student activities with fraction blocks, paper folding and the big ah ha moment, dividing shapes into 1/4's and 1/3's then sharing beans, of course related to a word problem. They got it, so more of this for my class next week.

As part of our Algebra learning (all other classes are covering this this term) and to help front load and support my ALiM students we have been solving picture problems and of course creating them for the classes to try and solve. Using these picture problems has been the easiest and most successful way for me to teach Algebra so far. We have also been exploring sequential growing patterns, although finding rules are more challenging.

In-class Group

Week 5

Students from my ALiM groups teaching other kids as past of their front loading.

Last week I did a few mini assessments from GLOSS to see how they were doing. What I did learn from it was that my students were struggling with interpreting the words and grammar. So I created a mixture of addition and subtraction word problems using their names to increase engagement. We have been working on deciphering the problem operation from the words which has had limited success.

This week we had the ALiM network meeting. It was great to discuss our successes and challenges with each other especially finding that we were all struggling with similar things, like am I doing it right? Do I have enough rich and open tasks? How is my teaching different? I shared that I feel like I am succeeding because there is a definite positive growth mindset amongst both my groups. I have found that I use lots of different but related hands on learning activities in short bursts so no boredom. I can definitely see how I can use these more in my classroom teaching.

Week 4

Our Maths vocabulary wall is growing even better than the one in my classroom, this is because it has a huge whiteboard so it's easy to add to. To improve my class vocabulary wall I got a big piece of brown paper and pinned to the wall to write on, works a treat.

Our Hacky Sack game is still a favourite with the students, we adjust the numbers and operation to suit our learning.

Fractions is a huge gap for not only my students but the whole senior school so I've been doing some work on them. It can be a really difficult concept to get and I tried a rich task Paper Folding from  YouCubed. It did not really get the concept across very well, so I tried a few other folding activities along with fraction blocks. That lesson brought out concepts of symmetry from my ALiM group so we continues the ideas with folding paper into 1/2, 1/4, 1/8ths then paper cutting. Then we explored symmetry more with painting.

Paper Folding  YouCubed

Week 3

Despite all these students showing up as just below on the PAT math assessment and at a similar level, I am finding their knowledge very different, so much that I started doing individual teaching on one day. I am thinking of creating individualised ICT lessons to guide their progress and allow me to work with pairs and individuals. They have repeatedly asked to use computers, so it may be a hook for them.

Already three of them are splitting place value, although it is not consistent, so when they where struggling to see how to split the numbers I got out our money. They quickly ask for change to subtract amounts which was my aim. I'll use more money activities next week to reinforce.

I got out cubes and tried the famous YouCubed "How is the pattern growing" activity. Only one boy really got it but I think I didn't guide the talk around it very well, so will try again next week with another pattern.

Week 2

This week we scattered the cards and played speed pick, cards that add to 10. Some of the group do not seem to have this basic knowledge, while the ones who do, it helps their speed recognition. We also used cubes and whiteboards to find all the 10's facts, with the students seeing the 1-10 pattern.

In an effort to help them understand place value in addition and subtraction problems, especially crossing the 10's, I used the abacus and 100's board. Both were useful although I would like to find some more material ideas.

However most importantly the students are acting more confident and showing more growth mindset when thinking about themselves as mathematicians.

Week 1

As I write this for the second time I'm wondering about my choice of Blogger as a recording platform, arggg.

In the first week of ALiM I spent getting to know the students and developing rules and expectations. They each received a new big math book and a personal deck of cards. The cards are their daily homework. This week I taught them Memory and Place Value Battle to help grow their understanding of bigger numbers.

 As we were learning to add and subtract using 5's and 10's we played some other more physical activities which help with some of my more energetic boys. We did outside hopscotch skip counting and played a very popular game where they had to throw hackysacks into a target area with scores of 5, 10, 15 and 20. They students then had to add them up, check each other. This also gave us an opportunity to find combinations of 10 and other tidy numbers when adding up.

With my in-class group we have been focussing on learning the times tables and growing their range of number strategies. I also have been giving them some prior knowledge about whole class work to build their confidence.

ALiM 2017

I am a teacher and Maths lead teacher at my school and have just completed the training for ALiM (Accelerated Learning in Mathematics). This is an inquiry approach to giving students who are just below in Maths a boost through trying things (based on research) that you have never done before. The aim is to change these students outlook on maths as well as accelerating their maths learning.

I will use this blog to record my journey.

ALiM Year 1 Inquiry: ‘What is acceleration and how do we achieve it?’