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.