My Hunch: Bridging gaps in Number knowledge and teaching smart strategies
explicitly to solve problems, will make the target group
successful in achieving at their expected level in Mathematics.
Reviewed Week 2 Term 3
Of the 7 students in the target group , one student moved to room 10 at the beginning
of term 2. 4 students made progress by one or two sub levels, 1 student stayed on
the same level, 1 student went down a sub level.
Target group: Rm 7/10 students
Reviewed Week 2 Term 3
The student from room 10 was not part of the target group after moving to Rm 10
|
Year Level
|
Beginning of year
Num stage
|
Mid year
Num stage
|
End of year
Num stage
|
Bi
|
7
|
5
|
E6
|
|
Ka
|
7
|
E5
|
E5
|
|
Le
|
7
|
E6
|
5
|
|
Ma
|
8
|
E5
|
E6
|
|
|
| | |
Ta moved to Rm 10
|
Tu
|
8
|
E5
|
5
|
|
Tan
|
8
|
E5
|
5
|
|
Question: Will deliberate acts of teaching maths (bridging gaps + explicit teaching
of problem solving strategies) to the target group enable them to
enjoy problem solving and achieve at their expected level?
Reviewed Week 2 Term 3
What the target group and I were doing in Term 2
Students were working away from the class as a group
From the beginning of the year assessment data and from what I noticed, there were
huge gaps in the target group's number and strategy knowledge
I used stage 5 word problems from Ted Bark's resource that has rewindable learning
videos to go to again and again for practice.I had to bridge the huge gaps by doing explicit teaching of the simple strategies to use
to add and subtract numbers in the word problems. We had to revise a lot to reinforce
the strategy learned.The fast pace that I first used at the beginning to push these students did not work.
It was not realistic for these students. I had to slow down for them to really grasp the
strategies taught and to practice them during problem solving.
I also noticed that they needed to improve their instant recall of basic facts and
multiplication facts. We did this through games to consolidate number knowledge.
This took time. We used the talk moves each and every lesson to build these students'
confidence to share how they solved their problems.
I am proud of the ways the students participated in the learning, worked their problems
out methodically and how well they shared the strategy they used to solve the problem.
Even though the students were doing all this, they were using very simple strategies to
solve the problems.
The enthusiasm these students showed to come and learn was amazing.
Towards the end of term two, due to the Cultural festival practices, the lessons
in the last 3 weeks were intermittent and this could have affected how they performed
in the testing.
On reflection
It made me wonder if withdrawing them from the class was the best thing to do.
This meant that the students who are more or less at the same level were depending
heavily only on my teaching and they were not learning from other more able peers.
Hence, I discussed this with the classroom teacher and I decided that may be,
if the students stayed in the class and I went there to support their learning, these
students would also learn other strategies used to solve problems from their teachers
and, from their peers.
My revised Question:
Will deliberate acts of teaching (bridging gaps + reinforcing strategies taught
to solve problems) the target group enable the students to enjoy problem solving,
and help them learn from their peers and get better at problem solving?
My hunch and my Inquiry question still hold good. The only thing different I will be doing
is providing these students explicit teaching of the strategies that others may have used
that they don't understand.
My being in the classroom enables these students to get the same teaching from
the classroom teacher and more clarification and reinforcement of the various
strategies with my support.
I expect the students to move to the next stage and be more confident in solving complex word problems and talk about how they solved the problems.
Time Frame: 2 terms (Terms 3 and 4 until assessments)
Measurable by doing GLoSS testing each term.
