Teaching Portfolio

29/04/17 - INQUIRY - HUNCHES/FOCUSSING I have used the questions from Janelle's slides to help organise this stage of the inquiry process. Hunches: What’s leading to this situation? My main hunch is that we don't spend enough of maths time 'talking' about maths. All three of the children I interviewed struggled to articulate clearly what they enjoyed, found difficult and wanted to learn. The children focussed on numeracy aspects of maths as well as very over arching subjects like 'times'. How are  WE  contributing to it? As teachers I feel we teach maths in a very 'bitsy' way. We tend to teach one strategy for a few weeks then move on to a different domain or strategy, filling in the gaps with activities to practise the taught strategy. Compared to literacy and inquiry teaching this is a very linear and pre-set way of teaching. In literacy we understand and value the benefit of integration and authentic contexts. I feel in my practice at...

After our COPs meeting today I have been reflecting on the next steps in this process. It was really interesting hearing how the scanning stage went for others and hearing my own process summarised by Janelle. From this process I realised that the children I have chose have pretty good self-esteem and feelings about maths. I didn't initially think this would be the case. This finding is also quite unique in our COPS group as many of the learners discussed had wellbeing or engagement needs as well as academic needs. I will think about these learners carefully before moving forward with them as they all have good relationships at school and are all engaged in maths. I wonder if there are other children that would benefit from this process more? This summary shows the key areas I discussed as well as my hunches going forward. These hunches were interesting as they were quite similar to other people in the group! Maths language was also discussed by others in our group as an area of...