I had a great chat with Sue Holmes about teaching and learning in maths last week. She looked at my lesson plans and we have sharpened it up a bit. We looked at Learning Intention and Success Criteria and how a subtle shift in focus can change outcomes for the students.
We agreed that the LIs were to focussed on a particular skill and could be broader to show connections to other universal skills and have a direct relation to our local curriculum and enviro focus. In other words, highly motivating and relevant links that are integrated with other curriculum areas.
I have also shortened the lesson and have cut out practice questions. Students now just have two word problems to discuss in flexible groups. They then show their working out on the board. We go through the thinking and I pick out what next steps and feed forward from there. Also no success criteria until after the guided lesson as otherwise they are not thinking freely and truely problem solving, just complying!
The first lesson was great and we are now adding more elements of cooperative classrooms.
No comments:
Post a Comment