MR Tracker - Is it making a difference? May 12, 2008
Posted by Mhairi Stratton in : East Lothian, Mr Tracker, Training , add a commentI met with a group of recently trained MR Tracker teachers
I started be asking them three questions:
Q1: What did you learn from the assessment interviews?
A:
- We can underestimate the ability of children
- It highlighted areas of difficulty and suggested why they were struggling
- Took a lot of time
- numbers across the decades are tricky
- It highlighted the discrepancy between verbal and written maths
- Children rely too much on their teacher’s approval
- There is a lot more to early numeracy than level A would indicate.
Q: How have your lessons changed?
A:
- More Practical
- I take more time reinforce and consolidate skills
- Extending children knowledge - always challenging them for more
- Getting children to explain their strategies
- Much more self assessment
- More counting (especially counting back)
- Faster Pace
- More active learning
- Asking for alternative strategies (”Can you show me a different way?”, “Prove it!)
Q: What are the advantages and challenges of MR Tracker ?
A:
| Advantages: | Challenges |
| Identifying the gaps in knowledge | Resources – can’t buy them have to make them |
| Children accessing lessons at their own level | Time management |
| Children are more willing and able to complete written task/recording because of all the practical experiences | Convincing parents/other staff |
| Active Learning! | |
| Saves money on workbooks! | |
| Better Understanding | |
| More secure of level A concepts | |
Mr Tracker - Implications for the Classroom May 6, 2008
Posted by Mhairi Stratton in : East Lothian, Learning, Mr Tracker, Planning , add a commentPlanning Formats May 6, 2008
Posted by Mhairi Stratton in : Mr Tracker, Planning , 1 comment so farAt a recent MR Tracker session I shared some planning sheets. Here are the preferred formats:
MR Tracker - getting started March 18, 2008
Posted by Mhairi Stratton in : East Lothian, Learning, Mr Tracker , add a comment•Initially ‘roam the known’ - Choose activities similar to the assessment interview to start with
•Plan daily - include 4-6 progression activities
•Consider and hypothesise about the current ways of thinking based on an initial interview or early lessons (OBSERVATIONS)
•Test your hypothesis by posing tasks and closely observe response
•Modify your hypotheses if necessary and continue the cycle
•Monitor children’s willingness to tackle the problem and how comfortable they are
•With practice and reflection teachers can learn to adjust in subtle and important ways the pace, difficulty and challenge in the tasks.
•Tailor the teaching as closely as possible to the initial and ongoing assessment. It should be at the cutting edge of children’s knowledge (ZPD)
•Activities should continually challenge with the aim to bring about reorganisations in the child’s thinking and the development of more sophisticated strategies.
•Use the skills of wait time, repeating, reposing and probing responses which you learned in the assessment phase.
MR Tracker site updated March 13, 2008
Posted by Mhairi Stratton in : East Lothian, Mr Tracker , add a commentI have finally managed to add example interviews for all assessment tasks. I hope that those people who have had MR Tracker training find them useful. Please let me know if more clips are required.
Click here to go to this part of the site
Early Years Head Teachers’ Meeting March 5, 2008
Posted by Mhairi Stratton in : East Lothian, Mr Tracker , add a commentThe Early Years Strategy Group (Active Learning) were invited to speak at the Head Teachers meeting.
This was our PowerPoint for Numeracy:
Supporting MR Tracker Training February 27, 2008
Posted by Mhairi Stratton in : East Lothian, Learning, Mr Tracker, Sharing Good Practice , 2commentsI have been trying to think of ways to support MR Tracker training. My first step was providing sub pages to this blog with information about the progressions (Click on the MR Tracker tab at the top and then click on the sub pages). A possible way of sharing ideas could be that teachers add their tried and tested activities as a comment at the foot of the pages. CLICK HERE TO SEE AN EXAMPLE .
My next endeavour is to add some video clips of MR Tracker Interviews. These can be found by clicking on the MR Tracker tab at the top and then clicking on the subpages - Observations. I hope that these prove useful to those teacher who have had MR Tracker input but would like more opportunities to practise observing children solving the tasks. Again teachers could post comments about these if they would like to start a discussion about any of the progressions.
Adding the video clips is proving time consuming. Hopefully I will have this part of the site complete over the next few weeks.
Sharing Good Practice - St Gabriel’s February 24, 2008
Posted by Mhairi Stratton in : East Lothian, Learning, Mr Tracker, Planning, Sharing Good Practice , add a commentI 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!
Using Learning Assistants to Good Effect February 24, 2008
Posted by Mhairi Stratton in : East Lothian, Learning, Mr Tracker, Planning, Sharing Good Practice , add a commentAt Longniddry we roughly tracked a class of children and then considered possible ways of planning an effective numeracy lesson for all pupils. The tracker made it very clear that the teacher could not use a differentiated lesson. She was required to deliver two separate lessons (Some children were working within numbers to 20 and the rest of the class were working with numbers up to a thousand, multiplication & division). This raised the issue of how much time we spend teaching numeracy each day, ensuring that every child gets quality learning and teaching experiences.
One solution is using learning assistants to effect: providing them with some training in the MR strategies so that they can be directed to groups within a lesson to practise skills (warm up), support problem solving and challenge thinking.
This is exactly what Longniddry are trying to do. The Learning Assistants had their first taste of Maths Recovery today. We looked at Number Word Sequences and looked at common errors and ways of supporting this. We also had a go at bunny ears (a fun ‘game’ that uses finger patterns to combine and partition numbers). The group reported that they now felt confident delivering these activities under the class teachers instruction - fantastic!
MR Tracker in action. February 15, 2008
Posted by Mhairi Stratton in : East Lothian, Mr Tracker , add a commentI visited Longniddry Primary today. The infant staff received MR Tracker training in October and have began implementing the strategies in the classroom.
I have yet to speak to the P1 teacher, but I have been told that she has been using the progressions and teaching strategies as the basis for her teaching. The school reports that there is difference in the children’s level of understanding of number and the children are further on than what they would usually be at this stage - this is very exciting. I have asked to visit this classroom so I can write about the children’s experiences.
The infant staff have been using the progressions and techniques for their mental maths session (about 20 minutes each day). In particular they have been putting greater emphasis on number word sequences and number word after/before to improve the pupils knowledge and understanding of the number system. They have also been making more use of spatial and finger patterns. They are now wanting to look in more detail at the progressions so that they can adopt a more problem-solving approach to numeracy. We will be looking at this together over the next few weeks. Of course I shall add these sample lessons to the blog.
Catherine Jack, Head Teacher, is keen to get the whole school using Maths Recovery techniques. In the future she plans to have all her teachers trained, to varying degrees (She already has two teachers trained in Maths Recovery). The Learning Assistants are learning about some of the tecnhniques so that they can recreate what the teacher has done when supporting children’s learning. This really is a whole school approach.
I must not forget to mention the wonderful support that the Maths Recovery teachers (Pam Clark and Amanda Hutchison) are giving to the school’s MR Tracker teachers - I am sure this will contribute to the success of MR Tracker in school.
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