“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn.”

Last night I was working alongside 'Mr I'll be 12 next week' as he looked rather desparagingly at his maths homework sheet. He was looking at 'Adjusting' where he was asked to 'Adjust by one. Do the last four in your head.' with sums like 428 + 69 = 428 + 70 - 1 =.... Just having 3 digits totally lost him and it seems like he had a block to how numbers actually work.

There were a couple of other challenges here for him too. The sheet was white with black numbers. Mr almost 12 is waiting on Irlens Lenses and has Dyslexia. I'll be copying the sheet onto some pastel paper ASAP to minimise these barriers.

We googled it and found a teacher at Silverstream who had a page of tutorials and support set up with a link to some videos on how to do this 'adjusting' with 2 digit numbers - he had used a whiteboard type app to record the process.

Why am I mentioning this on my teaching blog? Well, there are a few 'lessons' for me in this too and some reflective questions to build into my practice.

Lessons for me:

make better use of my class page for tutorials and support for students and parents - record tutorials relevant to the learning needs of students and load these on my class page.
ensure homework that goes home with students is not 'foreign' to them and that they have an understanding of what to do with it, perhaps use the point above to support this learning at home.
check that learning I send home is relevant for the student and that it's necessary to be done at home - kids need down time.
Make use of 'Show Me' or 'Educreations' Apps on my personal iPad to record lessons, tutorials etc. for future reference for students and their families, share these to benefit other learners as the teacher from Silverstream School had done.

Reflective questions:

Is the 'homework' necessary?
Have I made the learning accessible?
Can students and families re-visit the teaching and learning?
Do students know 'why'?
Am I creating barriers to learning with too much black & white photocopying?
Have I 'involved' the students in their learning (see Benjamin's quote above)?