I'd like to share a bit of a story with you from my Maths workshop yesterday morning...
I have a year 3/4 homegroup this year. We've spent a lot of time talking about making choices to further learning and consolidate skills. We have talked about working with strengths and suggested many ways to consolidate and practice number facts and skills over and over again. Sometimes it has become tiresome because it's felt like nothing is sinking in.
We were working with table facts and their relationship to division. I showed the kids who already know their number facts an App called Trichotomy on iPad, which goes through problem solving using greater than, less than and equal to. For the rest of the children I said I'd run a focus group for anyone who needed help and set up the expectation that by the end of the session - everybody would have worked with "flipping" at least 5 facts.
Here are some of the spontaneous things that happened. I didn't plan for them to happen, but they did;
- Two children who didn't want < and > explained to them, figured out what these signs meant and how to apply them through playing with the iPad App using trial and error. "Don't worry - I figured it out through making some mistakes - I get it now, I am getting them right, see?"
- Two children disappeared, saying something about photocopiers and returned five minutes later with table fact worksheets they'd photocopied from a book brought in from home. They then 'roved' around the Village to see who else wanted a worksheet to use. (And they had a variety to choose from, though I have a feeling that they hadn't planned for things to turn out that way). Great use of intitiative and resources.
- Another child asked if he could help his friend who is struggling with learning his table facts to work on some strategies for learning 7 and 9 times tables. His 'student' then shared these strategies with the group at the end of the session. Fantastic collaboration.
- I worked with some children on the table facts of their choice, using concrete materials. These were all children who had identified that the concept of relating times tables and division was an area they wanted to work on during conferencing. By the time they got it, some of the other children had reached an impasse and were asking for help. "Don't worry, I'll teach them" they all said and one by one, they got up and left to tutor somebody else.
And guess what? I actually got to sit back for a moment, observe them all collaborate with each other! I actually had a moment to (wait for it...) BREATHE and take it all in. No arguments, no complaints, no need for redirecting kids back on task, just engagement and purposeful learning.
Wow! It's moments like these that make all of the modelling, purposeful conversations and strategic planning worth it.
Who still says kids can't organise their own learning? I say they can, but we need to model how to 'walk the talk' and give them opportunities to put it into practice. Even the kids we know will struggle with it.
