Observation Week 3

Teacher has class set out with materials and questions at each station to provoke the kids. Chn are allowed to pick what they want to do during reading. Teacher gives instructions at each station, as it is a new provocation. Students aren’t told what to do; they pick what they want to do.

As I look around the groups are mixed ability and are interacting with the top learners explaining their thinking around why they are doing certain things. Some learners are watching others, some are trying to attempt what the higher learners are doing and there is a lot of talking around the learning that is happening.

There is a group working with the teacher. I have noticed the teacher is writing the words the children are struggling to read and re-visit them at the conclusion of the lesson. This group is one of the lower groups so the extended learning is the re-visiting of the unknown words. The groups follow up is at the level for the children and they are able to do independently. Before they go away the teacher does it with them and scaffolds their learning.

One thing that I have noticed is that the children looked really focused and stay on task. The teacher did not once ask them to settle or be quite. There is a lot of productive conversations and all learners can enter into conversation at their own level.

Before I think about my own next steps I will need to reflect more on what I have seen and I how I will implement what I have seen in my class. There was a lot of awesome things going and a lot of good teaching points. What do I want to think about doing first and how will I execute it.

Nikki Knights Observation

BES Maths Exemplar 1

The essence of this article is centred on developing learning communities where students engage with the teacher and each other in mathematical inquiry, reasoning and arguementation.

Set out to develop communication and participator skills aimed to develop students' abilities to explain mathematical concepts, justify arguements and make generalisations expectation of students to use mathematical language, definitions and use generalisations and inscriptions (graph, diagram, number system) to support explanations and clarify others understanding. teacher knowledge teachers work smarter, not harder, through the use of evidence for continuous improvement discuss who has the power in the classroom remind students it is ok to agree/disagree.

We can do this is a non-judgmental, non-emotional way. Use a framework of participation to develop a classroom agreement on how to discuss rules for talk uses collective first person: Can you show us with your red pen what would happen? Identified a need to move beyond unhelpful discussion- talk mainly cumulative (arguments avoided- students build on each others ideas, students come to a collective view, but it is yet to be evaluated) or disputational (cyclical assertions and counter-assertions which are unexamined as participants defend their own ideas). students encouraged to take time to think; argue clear, logical, wellreasoned; question; listen; share ideas students showed (and then encouraged) to scaffold newcomers opportunities to learn.

 Assessment scaffolded self assessment- check understanding of bits of problems, checking with others to make sure they have the best solution stusents take responsibility for not only own learning but that of peers. It would be good to find out through more research needed to understand what this looks like in practice would like to see more of a collaborative, supportive class like to see children supporting intellectual risk taking. After seeing an idea of this in practise I would really like to challenge myself and students to develop the skills in maths. I would like to develop the discussions and friendly debate between children about strategies and how these learning multiple strategies will aide in our thinking.

Maths inquiry

 Maths inquiry is a set of norms in a maths class that good mathematicians do. Chn are given differentiated questions to solve first by themselves and then as a group. Chn are encouraged to questions and justify their responsive through friendly arguments. This promotes sharing strategies and low-level learners are exposed to high level thinking strategies.

The first step to implement this is to encourage discourse with groups through different talk moves e.g. can you prove it? Can you explain how you got?   

T4 W2 Observation

How to scaffold reading unknown words.

Tch keeps eye on the rest of the class as his group reads. Chn are organised and know what to do when they move to the next activity. He is managing his children well by stopping then reinforcing them expectations.

When a child/ren has trouble with a word he stops the group and asks if anyone can read the word. If they are unsure he reinforces letter-sounds and encourages children to use their knowledge to decode the word. Children don’t move on until they can decode the word.

Teacher gives praise for the strategy used, not the characteristics of the child e.g. I like how you used your letter sound knowledge instead good boy.

I have found that using specific praise for the strategy is more useful than character praise because chn were more likely to use the same strategy again to help them decode unknown words.