The Mystery of the Contaminated Chocolate

For the final week of Term 1 I decided to add a bit of 'mystery' to our maths in Wai 4. On Monday I asked the students to take on roles as 'Maths Investigators'.  We read the briefs of 5 different investigations and voted on the investigation we most wanted to solve.  I signed up to Twinkl recently and it is from here that I sourced the investigations. The idea of someone spiking a tub of chocolate with chilli oil grabbed their attention and that particular investigation took out top votes. Below is an image of what you can access as a member of Twinkl.

Later that day I once more set the scene and we had an investigators briefing session.  Investigation ops teams were set for the week (mixed groupings) using my 'popsicle sticks' app.  The list of suspects was glued into student 'Investigation Logs', AKA Maths Books, and we looked carefully at the information on the list to work out what it contained.  We also looked at the initial crime scene information.  We knew that someone had spiked the chocolate with chilli oil and we had to solve clues from the crime scene to work out who the culprit was.  The maths in it was hard.  I had to 'edit' some of the questions to ensure they were appropriately challenging for students to experience success.

This week we have learned about measuring angles and how to use a protractor.  We have explored fractions and algebraic equations.  Today we created a times tables grid that we can use to solve the final clue before we will find out why the crime was carried out.  The best part is that students have been eager to do maths!  Today I heard from a parent that sharing this learning is the only thing her son has willingly discussed at home this year so far.

 I have seen students 'Reach Up' and 'Reach Out' in their learning, going above and beyond to work to solve the clues.  They have shown huge 'Resilience' in the way they have been working through the clues. We have been able to work out what we need to learn to be able to solve the clues (e.g. we found Youtube clips on angles and how to use a protractor to find out eye colour). We watched a further video to simplify fractions so we could grow our understanding of these in order to find out what kind of transport our culprit used. The solution was a 'bike' but this could have been a motorbike or a bicycle.  Some students decided it must be the suspect who used a motorbike because they didn't think criminals would ride a bicycle - it wouldn't be fast enough to get away!  They were most surprised when it wasn't Harold (the motorbike rider) because it was a female (as they discovered after they had solved some algebraic equations). I edited these equations to ensure the questions would allow for students to be successful at solving them in groups.

Today I observed students working in groups to complete a blank multiplication grid (this is a tool to help them solve the final clue tomorrow).  It was fascinating and informative, for me as the teacher, to see the students who could identify patterns with numbers and to connect what they already know about numbers.  Links between skip counting and repeated addition became evident as they did their 2, 5 and 10 times tables across and down the grid.  One student, who wouldn't usually speak up in maths time, demonstrated skills he has been practising using online tools of Study Ladder and Skoolbo to count on so he could work out the next number in the sequence.

Alongside various Mathematics skills, understanding and problem solving, these students have been working on Oral Language to share and discuss their ideas as well as the Key Competencies of Thinking, Using Language Symbols and Texts, Managing Self, Relating to Others and Participating and Contributing.

I have followed 'Number Agents' on Facebook and loved the way it engages young learners and gets them exploring and playing with maths concepts. I read the book and I have been trying to find a way to bring this playfulness into learning maths in a Year 4 class and maybe I have found a way using the Twinkl Maths Investigations!

As one of the Within School Leads (WSL) for our Community Of Learning (COL) we have been using the NPDL quadrants as a way of planning for and reflecting on our learning. I have used the 4 quadrants as a reflection tool for this learning so far:

I wonder what investigations will be carried out next term?

Southland Mathematics Symposium

Last Saturday I left home at 5:45am to drive to Invercargill after booking in the few days prior to the symposium.  I tend to get quite a lot out of these as the workshops are run by teachers for teachers. Having ideas and suggestions from 'real' teachers who work with a class of students on a regular basis is the best kind of Professional Learning IMO.

Joanne Mulligan, McQuarrie University, was our Keynote Speaker.  The focus was spatial development alongside early number and looking at the pattern and structure in mathematical learning.  I attended two workshops run by classroom teachers - Culturally Responsive Practice in Mathematics and Contextual Maths Problems.

My Takeaways include many tasks and ideas from Joanne's Keynote such as having students draw a 100s board to see what their understanding of the structure of number looks like and an estimation task.  The estimation task asks students to estimate how much of Australia would be covered by the land area of NZ.  We can create images in our minds of this to make an estimation.  Some of us will need to 'see' the land areas as on a map:

When you can see them side by side you can make a 'spatial' estimation.  To be more accurate, facts and figures may be needed.

A task like this could be used to consider regions in NZ, North & South Island, Stewart Island...lakes etc. and provides great links with geography and area.

Creativity in mathematics is to be valued.

My other takeaway was a more explicit use of Maths Problems with students.  This workshop talked about needing to explore the 'context' of a maths problem alongside the inherent maths 'concepts'.  Both have vocabulary that needs to be made explicit to students. The 'launching' of these problems is important for students understanding of the problem.

• Unpack the context first and then the mathematical language.
• Look for the maths in different contexts e.g. Maori history, Dinosaurs...what interests/ engages your students? 
• Use pictures and videos to open windows into the problems for students.
• Don't be afraid to take it further than just the problem on the paper.  What if....?
• Bring drama into the story.

Today in my Year 4 class we worked on one of the NZ Maths problems - Coin Exchange

This was our first foray into problem solving this year and we spent a bit of time unpacking the problem, discussing the coins that could be used and looking at the different resources students could use to find the possibilities.  Students were busy working through the different possibilities for 20 minutes with many focused on writing out different possibilities.  Maybe it was because it was our first work through of problems, or maybe they enjoyed the exploration in their maths.  We did a 'walk and a gawk' where students were able to silently move around the room to see how others were working through the problems.  Students then went back to their spaces and continued to document further possibilities.

Before our final whole class debrief, students shared what they had discovered with a partner (we will continue to work on 'talk moves' to justify our thinking).

It was great to see students working through the possibilities systematically and their willingness to share ideas and to learn from each other.  I am looking forward to tomorrows maths problem!

Back to the symposium, after joining the presenters and main organisers for lunch at The Grille, I drove home again with lots of ideas buzzing in my head!  

The Game of Learning

This year a few things seem to be connecting.  I have always valued play, Early Childhood teacher as well as Primary! At the end of 2017 I discovered 'Number Agents' on facebook when looking into ways to increase student agency.  This concept would be very appealing in a New Entrant or Year 1 class and I can see how the puppets would draw the students into the stories and concepts.  Maybe if I learned maths in this way when I was younger I might have wanted to understand it more!  I have continued to follow the 'Number Agents Group' and the more I have seen, the more I can see I need to look to ways to implement aspects into my teaching practice.

In our first term break I attended a Literacy Symposium in Mosgiel where Gail Loane was speaking.  I downloaded 'Mechanically Inclined: Building Grammar, Usage, and Style into Writer's Workshop by Jeff Anderson after she mentioned the book...but while in the 'Kindle Shop' I saw 'Teach Like a Pirate by Dave Burgess and read the blurb before also downloading this book too.  I have been 'dipping' in and out of it since this time. It was at around this time that I read 'Disobedient Teaching' by Welby Ings.  Both of these books encouraged me to rethink the how and what of teaching so that the content could be more accessible to students.

A couple of weeks ago I was given the opportunity to attend a 'Games For Learning' workshop in Auckland.  The idea of using games in learning, having students create games and the idea of gamification of learning was presented, shared and experienced over this day.  In one of the workshops, Key Competencies for the Future' was recommended...I promptly visited Kindle and downloaded it but also downloaded 'Launch: Using Design Thinking to Boost Creativity... by John Spencer and others as well as 'Explore Like a Pirate' by Michael Matera.  It is Explore Like a Pirate that has inspired me most of late as it has got my mind thinking about ways to 'gamify' Year 4 in 2019.  This year I have had a boy heavy class and they have loved our class money and being able to use it in the class shop - they haven't loved filling in my simplified spreadsheet however.  They have also loved our Chapter Chat work, playing 'The Game of Awesome' and making their own board games.  We did Chapter Chat in the first couple of terms but not so much in the latter part of the year.  They really enjoyed the choice and creativity in the grid options for the Chapter Chat books we were reading: The Wild Robot, The Wild Robot Escapes and the Sasquatch Escape.

With 4 weeks left of the school year, I am thinking about what to be working on over the summer break and among other things (Seesaw Ambassador Refresher, Google Educator), setting up some kind of 'gamification' has my mind ticking over.  My poor husband had to listen to 'Mr Matera' via podcast (Well PlayED) all the way to Ophir and Back this evening (an hours drive from home) but I love that these give me different insights into what 'could be'.  I had to keep popping notes in my phone as I thought of things while listening to the podcasts.

Joining the Dots

Just before term break students in my class were doing connect the dot activities in maths to practise ordering numbers to 20 and to 50.  They had to think about the next number after.  Some found this tricky, some found it less so.  In relation to this conference, connecting the dots was about mathematical literacy and how many school leavers (a million or so) don't have the required mathematical literacy to participate fully in society.  This is approximately 50% of the NZ workforce.  They are not numerate enough.  Gillian Thomas, NZ Maths shared the different directions that had developed in the teaching of mathematics.  To connect the dots, primary teachers need to build the foundations of mathematics literacy that can be built on or connected to as students move through primary, secondary, tertiary and the work force.

Some points to consider from this

• when doing 'independent activities' are your students talking about maths?
• We go to school to live a productive and active life, how then as teachers do we head students on the maths journey.
• if we are just skimming the understanding, kids drop off.  We need to make sure our groundwork is strong and then the other things can be learned reasonably easily.  Maths is about connections.
• check out ALIM, PACT (coming soon - supporting teachers to form an OTJ in a way that facilitates consistency and allows for progress to be tracked - will break maths into 8 key ideas) and E-Ako.

As well as listening to this keynote, I attended three other workshops - Integrating iPads into your Maths Programme, Home School Math Madness Month & How to use your Interactive Whiteboard effectively during math lessons.

Integrating iPads into your maths Programme
Jazz Rolton - New River Primary

You can find Jazz's presentation on her blog HERE.

Maths Madness Month
Narelle Collie, Heddon Bush School

Narelle shared with us how her school set up a home school partnership with maths evenings - presenting maths around games concepts to develop positive learning experiences to parents and caregivers.  Free games packs were given each night.

Much of the workshops were developed from the 2008 Home-School Partnership: Numeracy book.  You can download this book HERE.

Using your Interactive Whiteboard during maths lessons
Simon Clarke, Kaikorai Primary

A couple of key points

• develop a way to encourage staff to share Activboard presentations
• try to make it interactive for the students not for the teacher
• with a culture of sharing we need to be able to critique too
• lock objects so they don't move - put it on a background layer
• if you are sharing flipcharts, put notes in about it
• know where the maths tools are and how to add more
• when planning in teams, each team member to look in different places to share what they found e.g. someone go to Youtube, someone Promethean etc.

It was a cold day at the Symposium, I was reluctant to take my jacket off in the hall but the classrooms where the workshops were held were nice and cosy.

Debbie Clement

filled with curiosity & dreams....
Ritual
Repetition
Rhythm
Rhyme

Think Boards

A teacher recently visited another school and saw thinkboards in action.  It's funny how we know about stuff but seeing it being used again reminds us what a useful tool they can be!  I shared a hard copy with our team of teachers and thought I'd better put together some ways to use them in our classes.



Here's another way to present the same thing...Storyboard Template

And check out Promethean's thinkboard flipchart Here

the iPod touch

What is the value for children in using an iPod touch?

ENGAGEMENT
Teachers at R.P.S. had the opportunity to participate in a Games Based Learning Session through the e-central cluster.  One key point I got out of this was the level of engagement that games based learning has over many other forms of learning in our schools.  See below, they are oblivious to the presence of mum/aunt with a camera!

RESEARCH/FINDING OUT
In December my daughter (Miss 10) was doing some research on Christmas celebrations in two other countries.  My TELA laptop is out of bounds for the kids, I need to free up some space on the bulky PC in the office to speed it up and Miss 8 was playing Samarost on the wee net book.  I suggested the iPod or my husbands iPhone and she was off googling Christmas in other countries, flicking through pages and gathering the information she needed to put together her report.


DIGITAL IMAGES
Miss 10, Miss 8 & Master 7 got a gen 4 Ipod touch each for Christmas.  The camera doesn't have good resolution (0.5 mp) for still images but the video's work well for computer screen viewing, haven't tried on a larger screen yet...  The still images are O.K. for viewing online, yet to try printing one.
There are some iMovie apps that can allow kids to create movies with simple editing on their iPod's.  Today's plan is to download some of these and trial them on the kids iPods.  I also plan to download the 'Hipstamatic' Camera or something similar (not sure I want to pay the price as it's only 0.5 mps so might trial a cheaper one for a bit).  Having played with their video functions, I'm thinking that my 'flip' might be old technology, however I love that I can just plug it straight into the lap top with the flip out USB.  Right now, Mr 7 is creating a movie story with some of his toys and introducing the characters before launching the story line....he's even doing the singing and sound effects for it as he goes.


LITERATURE

We have enjoyed Cressida Cowells 'How to Be a Pirate' and 'How to Train Your Dragon' books as well as some CS Lewis books like 'The Horse and His Boy' as audio books on long car journeys and on our trip to Dunedin for Christmas we enjoyed some Famous Five books by Enid Blyton.  I'm not sure this should ever replace the enjoyment for parent and child of reading a 'real book' at bed time but it can open up literature for children like Master 7 who doesn't enjoy reading but loves the worlds of books.   There are 'book apps' where you can listen to the story and see the words or just choose to read the words and flick the pages, great sounds and graphics on these -ones like 'Mike's Bike'.  There are also a series of 'readers' but not sure on the corresponding New Zealand Reading Levels as these are Level A, Level B etc.  Apps like iWrite words where a child's finger traces the letters to make the words can help with letter formation and simple spelling.  Apps like Miss Spells Class can work for  older students and adults.


BASIC FACTS
There are lots of apps that support Basic Facts Recall, some better than others.


PROBLEM SOLVING
Lots of thinking - divergent, lateral, outside the square - is needed for some of the games that my kids have on their iPods.  Even seemingly mindless apps like 'paper toss' require thinking as the wind direction and speed changes how hard or the direction you 'toss' the scrunched up balls of paper.  Early Physics.


TIME MANAGEMENT
Miss 8 is currently keying in family birthdays to her iPod calender.

Some App Review Sites...

Apps4Kids

iphoneandkids

TUAW

appshouter

GiggleApps

Maths Games

Following the maths symposium in Dunners yesterday I'm enthused to create some more games! After seeing what one of the teachers from a New Entrant class at Columba College has put together (an amazing maths folio!!!) I'm keen to get this all recorded too so lots of photos will need to be taken of what I already have with links to the learning that these would be useful in fostering.

Arithmetic Rummy - has the cards you can print, rules etc.

Box cars & One eyed jack - lots of games linked on this page.

Classroom Games

Jenny's games

maths games to print

number club - place value

pig and some other games - using dice

25 - addition & subtraction game with cards

Games List

More on dyslexia...

Neil MacKay's nine steps for turning a dyslexic pupil into a criminal.

1. Teachers should focus on reading accuracy at the expense of thinking and the other core skills of the national curriculum.

2. Fail to share concerns with parents, dismiss parental concerns, tell them their child is young/naughty/not ready yet.

3. Dismiss, or ignore, achievements or aptitudes in other subject areas because of basic skill weaknesses.

4. Put pupils in remedial groups despite average performance in subjects other than English.

5. Treat escalating bad behaviour as a problem with the pupil, their home, background or environment, rather than looking for causes within their schooling.

6. Ensure the pupil, on transfer to secondary school, is labelled "naughty" rather than in need of support. Ensure none of their teachers is aware of dyslexia or of how needs may have been identified or met in primary school.

7. If the pupil gets support, ensure it is focused on improving reading accuracy at the expense of functional reading with little or no emphasis on learning to learn, planning or organisation.

"Death by phonics" is essential, especially if the pupil prefers to acquire literacy skills in other ways.

8. As attendance and punctuality decline, see it as a self-fulfilling prophecy rather than an institutional failure.

9. Ensure the pupil leaves school with minimal or no qualifications, despite being of average ability.

Reference:

Dyslexics at risk earlyBy John Lewis on Tue, 16 Jun 2009 - ODT

The following article - especially the dissector child is a great picture of my son!

Detailed Processor Versus Slow Processor

And a couple of interesting sites:
Optimum Learning
The Davis Autism Approach
Dyslexia Teacher

Bee Bots, numeracy and literacy sequencing

Yesterday Bridget came into Flora 1 during both numeracy and literacy to share with a group of students how to use the bee bots. For numeracy she had the students taking turns to move the bee bot to the next number in the sequence one to 10 across the mat and for our shared book from last week: "I'm the king of the mountain" the students sequenced the animals/insects involved as part of the reading rotation. Using the Bee-bots gave the students another way of working with curriculum content - a little variation from the norm and perhaps became a 'hook' for a couple of students as it kept their interest high in learning experiences in which they often switch off quickly as their aim is to normally just get it finished!

I am now looking into other ways of using the Bee-Bots in learning in our class

bee bots blog

Activity topic ideas

Get the buzz

TTS - has some videos of the bee bots in use

Support materials

Bee bot jackets - make the bot into elmer, an aeroplane...

Bee Bot mat images

Creating your own bee bot mat instructions

I'm sure there are heaps more but I'm looking forward to planning for the use of these in my teaching and learning in term 2! Love that we have a teacher who can support students (and teachers) with the how to of the Bee bots and other e-learning tools!

ICT in junior classes

Today we had an exploration session where children had a variety of equipment available including digital still camera's, a 'dinoscope' as well as 'bubber', mobilo, blocks etc. About 200 photographs were taken by children around the classroom! One child was fascinated with what the dinoscope could 'see' on the activboard screen. As a result I am checking out some of the other ways to incorporate and add to children's learning experiences in my Year one class!

Using 'voice thread' to record children's ideas: TKI ICT snapshot

Some netsafe considerations on blogging and Web 2.0

Kidpix maths for juniors

Animation with a digital camera - having seen my 6 year old create a digital story on our home camera using lego people & creations, this could be easily incorporated into a junior classroom.

Dramatising Greedy Cat

Filming junior drama - e.g. retell of fantail, fantail

Starbuck Bear - oh the possiblities for our own 'star bear'!

Statistical ICT - Year 1 & 2 classes

Using clicker to enhance literacy learning

Letter Sound reinforcement

digital number stories

Starting school book - Just like my 'buddy teacher' created for the learners in our class

ICT journey of a Junior Teacher

OK, enough for now :-)

Dunedin maths Trip

A useful link:
Otepoti - a Dunedin based page with lots of useful links on

Inspiring and Informative trip to explore numeracy in some other schools.
Gained lots of ideas for independent activities (as shown in the collage above) and ways to make maths more visible in the classroom.
Interested to not see children using computers during numeracy lessons.
Interested also to note that both schools visited keep literacy and numeracy 'pure' and keep topic or inquiry for the afternoons.
One school also not willing to 'join' prescribed teaching programmes including PMP and Sounds Alive with reasons including knowing individual children's needs and focussing on those rather than having 'all' children doing them whether needed or not.