Expected Level in Maths - Year 1&2

Knowing expected levels in Maths helps with planning. I believe that this is very important, every teacher should be familiar with the curriculum content before planning for students. 

At the end of TERM 3, my targetted students are expected to work at stage 3 or above. Most of them are currently working at stage 1 with a few working at stage 2.

Problem Solving Approach - Increases student participation and engagement

Week 1-4

Goal: Students are not listening during Maths time. They talk but not Maths talk, they are talking about other things. I need to know how am I going to get them to listen and participated actively in group discussion.

Dated: 1 May 2017

Teaching & Learning  (Pedagogy & Ako)

How are you going to do it? What are the deliberate steps.   

(Include DAT, resources, PLD readings, support etc.)

Knowing the learner - LINK

Professional discussions with colleagues

Observation notes (sometimes share with TA about what I have noticed)

Student work and sharing of understanding

(Gap analysis and back mapping - depends on SEA test and anecdotal notes)

Maths planning sheets LINK

Multiple opportunities:  ipad, Problem Solving Approach, Using of materials, Responsibility - managing behaviour, and build a sense of belonging (being inclusive)

Indicators of progress

(What I’m looking for that shows I’m making a difference to student progress)

- all students will participate in terms of talk

- minimal teacher talk and more student talk

- students to elaborate their sentences a bit more

- confident in recording their work on ipads

- confidently use materials to help them explain their thinking

 
 

Problem Solving Approach

5 Parts to a Collaborative Problem Solving Lesson

Launch the Problem

Independent Thinking

Pair Share

Group Discussion

Link the knowledge to the strategy used

5 Practises 

Anticipating likely student responses to challenging mathematical tasks

Monitoring students’ actual responses to the tasks while students work on the tasks in pairs or small groups

Selecting particular students to present their mathematical work during the whole-class discussion

Sequencing the student responses that will be displayed in a specific order

Connecting different students’ responses and connecting

the responses to key mathematical ideas


I have been using this approach for a while and I quiet like it. Problem Solving Approach always go together with Mixed Ability Groupings. It is really hard to establish such approach but I reckon that this is really helpful especially trying to increase student talk and student understanding numbers.

Problems:
- My students year level, they needed to know basic Maths knowledge
- It took a while for the little students to get used to the process
- Creating Rich problem that encourages talking / sharing
- Finding a student who has the courage to talk or share at the beginning
- setting classroom norm that helps managing behaviours


Benefits:

- positive attitudes

- cooperative skills

- interesting and enjoyable.

- student talk increases
- student helping each other in their own language
- no need to teach Maths knowledge separately
- students learn through talking 
- less misbehaving
- students see meaning in numbers
- students are able to make connections between numbers and real life 
- teachers plan collaboratively once a week - share ideas and create problems together
- increases teachers' knowledge about Maths content & curriculum

Problem Solving Approach helps students engagement especially with Pasifika students. 

Liten Up Activity

My learners are learning new words through listening to the teacher reading a story or part of a story while they listen up for words written on their paper.

My children love doing this, they are having fun and at the same time learn to recognise new words.

Listen Up and Word Walls

Goal: I will use TESSOL strategies such as Listen Up and Word Wall to support my students’ language development and deeper reasoning. This will enable everyone to participate in discussion and write a full sentence independently.

Date: 22 May 2017

Teaching & Learning  (Pedagogy & Ako)

How are you going to do it? What are the deliberate steps.   

(Include DAT, resources, PLD readings, support etc.)

Knowing the learner - LINK

Professional discussions with colleagues

Observation notes

Student work and sharing of understanding

Multiple opportunities: Approaches to teaching writing (Listen Up and Word Wall)

Indicators of progress

(What I’m looking for that shows I’m making a difference to student progress)

• all students will elaborate their sentences more
• all students will write more than one sentences
• students will write their own sentences using known words correctly and record unknown words using letters with confidence.

 

 

Checkpoint

Weeks 4 - 6

Increase in quality of student talk - some can elaborate more and use some topic words correctly. Still I have two who are a bit reluctant to do so without prompting.

All students have attempted to write their own sentence down. Still need work around this. Need to do a lot of 4, 3, 2 so they know their story well before writing it down.

I use Listen Up activity to increase my students words knowledge. Attending to one or few words while listening to a book enables my students to focus and to learn new words.

What I did on this video is an example of how I used 'Listen Up' in my classroom. I wrote words I needed my students to learn on a piece of paper and gave it to them to mark how many times they hear each word from the story I read.

One of the things that I have learned from doing 'listen up' activity is that not to give too many words for students. For my students, I gave 4 or 5 at first and then I have noticed that it was too much. At the moment we are only doing like one or two words a day. 

All students can record more than one letter for unknown words. Sight words are recorded correctly. This is really good because I can see that they have confidence to take risks in writing new words.

Continue 4, 3, 2 & cut up sentences & vanishing cloze - holding a sentence in their head for a while will always be a goal. They need to remember their story very well before they record it down. Ipads help sometimes but yet I have not tried. Next focus will be using of ipads.

I am very pleased with how much words on our walls have influenced my students ability to write. Words on our walls give students confidence and courage in writing stories. I have seen students walking around looking for topic words from the walls. For students to get up and look for words from the wall, for me is really big at this age group. I am very pleased with it.

 

Term 2 #2 - Hunch

GOAL

I will use TESSOL strategies such as LISTEN UP and WORD WALL to support my students' language development and deeper reasoning. This will enable everyone to participate in discussion and write a full sentence independently.

Indicators of progress

- all students will elaborate their sentence more

- write more than one sentences

- students will write their own sentences using known words correclty and record unknown words using letters with confidence.

Checkpoint

- Increase in quality of student talk - some can elaborate more and use topic words correclty

- All students have attempted to write their own sentence down. Still need to work around this. Need to do a lot of 4,3,2 so students know their story well before recording it down.

- students can record more than one letter for unknown words. Sight words are recorded correctly

- Continue 4,3,2 & cut up sentences & vanishing cloze - holding a sentence in their head for a while will always be goal for now.

Teaching Writing - Building a strong foundation

Engage Pasifika Students

Engage Pasifika Students

I have asked this question so many times to myself and it is going to be a challenge for the rest my teaching life. I read this and it got stuck in my head because it sounds very true.

I will try to find more about how am I going to use this particular knowledge in teaching Maths to my Pasifika students in order for them to accelerate their learning. 

Cut Up Sentences

Goal:  

I will use  these TESSOL strategies (4, 3, 2 & vanishing cloze & cut up sentences & IOL) to scaffold student talk & writing for student to create and share independently.

 

One of the stories that students had to create while in the photo talk session in IOL.

IOL  lifts the quality of student talk in class - some students begin to elaborate their sentence or their idea.

Some students are beginning to show confidence in leading a conversation or a group discussion - I believe this happens because how much information and vocabs being introduced to them through IOL.

Cut up sentences is something to continue because students are learning about features of a sentence, new words and build confidence towards writing a story independently.

I have noticed that all my target students have improved their abilities to write. They are all able to hold their ideas in their head for a while before recording it.

TESSOL

In this page, you will find some of the strategies that I use in teaching practice. There are so many strategies out there that are very helpful in teaching students who are speaking English as their second language but these are some of those effective ones that I found helpful. 

First of all- let's have a look at seven ESOL principles : Incorporating these seven ESOL principles into your planning will help your students to make both academic progress and language progress in all curriculum learning areas.

Principle 1

Know your learners - their language background, their language proficiency, their experiential background.

What do you know about your students' language skills? What do you know about their prior knowledge? How will you find out this information? How will it affect your planning?

Principle 2

Identify the learning outcomes including the language demands of the teaching and learning.

What language do the students need to complete the task? Do the students know what the content and language learning outcomes are?

Principle 3

Maintain and make explicit the same learning outcomes for all the learners.

How can I make the lesson comprehensible to all students? How can I plan the learning tasks so that all the students are actively involved? Do my students understand the learning outcomes?

Principle 4

Begin with context-embedded tasks which make the abstract concrete.

Principle 5

Provide multiple opportunities for authentic language use with a focus on students using academic language.

Is the language focus on key language? Do I make sure the students have many opportunities to notice and use new language?

Principle 6

Ensure a balance between receptive and productive language.

Are the students using both productive (speaking, writing) and receptive (listening, reading) language in this lesson?

Principle 7

Include opportunities for monitoring and self-evaluation.

Am I using 'think alouds' to show students my strategy use? What opportunities are there for reflection and self-evaluation?

Term 2 #1 Hunch

Goal

I will use these TESSOL strategies (4,3,2 & cut up sentences as well as Vanishing dictation) to scaffold student talk & writing for student to create and share independently.

Indicators of progress

- all students will participate in terms of talk

- minimal teacher talk and more student talk

- students to elaborate their sentences a bit more

- confident in recording their sentences down

Checkpoint

IOl lifts the quality of student talk in class - some students begin to ealborate their sentence or their idea

Some students are beginning to show confidence in leading a coversation or a group discussion. I believe this happens because how much information and vocabs being introduced to them through IOL

Vanishing cloze and 4,3,2 helped students to hold their idea in their head for a while before recording in their book.