Bringing my learning from 2013 into 2014

Yes life is a little quieter at the moment and it is time to reflect on 2013. What worked, what didn’t and why? It is also time for me to be planning for the massive year ahead.

A large part of my professional development work next year will revolve around pedagogical moves in the maths class. During 2013, I tried out a few ‘moves’ one of which I call:

‘Do next to nothing’.

That sounds lazy but let me tell you it is hard work and it takes bravery and careful planning. So what do I mean?

In October, I wrote about the ratio and a pizza problem I gave to a Year 7 class at Mawson Lakes Primary School in Adelaide. The class had never done ratio and the fraction part was quite tough too. The students were asked to work with a partner. They were to listen to each other try to make sense of the problem and then explore ways of solving it. The main rule was that both partners must clarify their thinking and be able to explain the work that they did. They were also told that there would be no teacher assistance (even though there were 12 of us in the room).

After 10 minutes of agony, all sorts of incredible thinking and trial and error and a wide range of strategies were being trialled and the results showed that students could actually talk their way into an understanding of ratio and fractions.

Another example of ‘do next to nothing’ was a strategy lesson with Year 4-5 class at John Hartley Primary School. The Australian Curriculum Mathematics suggests the use of the area model for multiplication. I decided to put a worked example up on the board and again use partners with the rules outlined above.

I put the following worked example on the board and told the students that they had as much time as they needed to work together to find out how the model I had drawn worked and why. This was their first introduction to the area model. Initially there was stunned silence and then some ‘light bulb’ moments.

This was when the next pedagogical move kicked in:

‘Get the students to do the teaching and explaining’

Partners were asked to volunteer to come up to the board and explain one step at a time. The remaining students gave thumbs up, thumbs on the side or thumbs down to le t the volunteers know if they had understood the step.

A second partially complete example was put up and the process repeated. A few students who had struggled with the first example were now feeling secure enough to volunteer to explain a step.
As we listened to the students working together we gained many windows into student thinking, which included some place value issues. – 26 was easily partitioned into 20 + 6 but 15 was partitioned into 1 + 5 by a few students. This was soon rectified by listening to and questioning the volunteers.



The above examples were put on the board and partners were told that they could select the one that they wanted to try. Many students moved onto the two harder ones immediately and had no difficulty realising that there boxes would be needed for three digits not 2 as before.

The lesson went too fast and was too much fun. When I asked the students why they thought I was mean enough to put the multiplication on the board without explaining it to them, comments such as the following were made:

“Because you wanted to see what we could do without teacher help.”
“Because you wanted us to feel proud and successful.”
“Because you know we learn better when we explain for ourselves.”
“Because you wanted us to have fun working with a partner.”

I asked the class to give a thumbs up if they thought they learnt better without a teacher demonstration than they would have done if I had demonstrated and given them lots of examples to practice on. Their response was a resounding thumbs up.

Last year I was thinking a lot about Carole Dweck’s work around fixed mindset and growth mindset. It is my belief that because:

• The tasks that I set students are challenging 
• I expect them to work together 
• There are no winners or losers and struggle 
• Sharing is the norm.

I am seeing less and less fixed mindset even in those students who used to perceive themselves as good at maths and stick with the safe methods.

Next year I intend to push this even further and try to say even less than I did this year. I am also coming to the conclusion that a lot of teacher questioning is really just telling and playing ‘guess what’s in teachers’ minds, and, what is more, it interferes totally with the students’ thinking. Student questions are so much more interesting to them and to me and they usually lead to learning that they are ready for.