Sharing Good Practice - St Gabriel’s February 24, 2008
Posted by Mhairi Stratton in : East Lothian, Learning, Mr Tracker, Planning, Sharing Good Practice , trackbackI was invited to go to St Gabriel’s and join P1 & teacher, Helen Maule, for their numeracy lesson today. What a fantastic experience. Helen was trained in MR Tracker in October and now uses the Maths Recovery techniques in her teaching.
This is how she structured her lesson:
Learning Intention - adding two groups together
Warm up
- Number Word Sequences:
- “Clap, Clap, Pat, Pat”
- Teacher says first two numbers of a number word sequence on Clap, Clap
- Children say the next two number in the sequence on Pat, Pat
- Teacher asks if the sequence was forwards or backwards (links forwards to adding and backwards to subtraction)
- Challenges children to say number word after
- Helen throws in some challenging numbers sequences and lets all children have a go
- “Clap, Clap, Pat, Pat”
- Finger Patterns:
- “Bunny Ears”
- Children put hands in “bunny ears position”
- Teacher asks the children to put a quantity on each hand
- Teacher asks how many altogether.
- Teacher supports those children who need support by directing them to look at someone elses ‘ears’ (this changes the task from a screened task to a visual task)
- Teacher then invites the children to check their answer
- Key questions to challenge thinking: How do you know? Can you prove it another way? Can you make that number a different way?
- “Bunny Ears”
- Domino Patterns
- “Domino Add”
- Helen show the children a domino on the interactive whiteboard and challenges the children find out how many dots their are altogether.
- Children are encouraged to use a range of strategies to solve the problem
- Children check the answer by counting and highlighting the spots.
- Key questions to challenge thinking: How did you know how many spots there were? Prove it a different way?
- Techniques to challenge thinking: flashing the domino initially (screened task) hiding half of the domino (partially screened task)
- “Domino Add”
- Numerals
- No formal teaching of numeral sequences this day (Helen does use washing line numerals)
- Children were provided with whiteboards and pens to write down numerals/ sums depending on their ability.
Problem Solving Task:
- Adding two collections together
- Children are grouped by ability.
- They each have an adding task targeting their development needs
- Some tasks are visual, others are partially screened to challenge more sophisticated strategies (Helen leads this group to ensure she challenges thinking)
- Children can all be given the same challenge but this can be differentiated by providing the challenge visually, partially screened or fully screened. We discussed using clear and opaque screens/boxes so the children all had the same equipment (the clear screen/box would allow for visual counting)
- 2 clear boxes- visual
- 1 clear & 1 opaque - partially screened
- 2 opaque - fully screened
Plenary
- How did you get on?
- How did you solve the task?
- This is a good time for pupils to demonstrate their strategies.
This is an excellent example. Helen linked all her progressions together. The warm up introduced/practised the key skills that were required to do the problem solving activity. The problem solving activity was simple and therefore children were working independently and on-task. Helen made sure that she used her time to challenge children’s thinking by introducing screens.
Thanks Helen!
Powered by FireStats
Comments»
no comments yet - be the first?