Using Our Knowledge to Create

Once students LEARNed about bridges and became "bridge experts" they worked together in small groups to CREATE their own project to display their learning. Groups were encouraged to work collaboratively once they selected their create task from a "101 ways to Create" poster that is hanging in the classroom.

One group, used their knowledge from the reading and came up with a list of interview questions that they wanted to ask our school's Executive Officer, Mrs. Sorenson.

Enabling Exploratory Reading

This term, I decided that in addition to teaching my reading groups the basics for reading that we all teach (decoding, inferencing, etc) I wanted my students to understand that their Chromebook is a tool for learning independently as well. We have had many discussions about how it is ok to stop when reading independently and explore online for an answer to a question that may have popped up when reading. It amazes me that my students thought they weren't "allowed" to use the internet to further their understanding of a topic being discussed in class.

So, keeping with our Auckland Harbour Bridge theme (which has evolved from our read aloud novel), students were asked to read two newspaper articles about the Harbour Bridge and then one website page about the forces of bridges.  While reading, students were asked to list important and interesting facts on a padlet, and they were encouraged to click on other links found on those pages to further their understanding to ultimately become a "bridge expert."

Students loved the opportunity to explore on their own and many took the padlet assignment seriously. 

DMIC: Planning and Understanding for Big Ideas

Step 1: Begin with the mathematics

• -Planning takes time. 
• -Consider what you students need in the way of Big Ideas (NZ Maths Key Ideas is another place to look for Big Ideas
• KNOW the Curriculum for your year level
• Google "big mathematical ideas"
• van de Walle book is highly recommended

Step 2: Thing about your students

• What do they bring mathematically and culturally
• Put current knowledge and interests at the centre of instructional decision making
• How can you best present mathematical concepts that match prior knowledge?

Step 3: Decide on a task/problem

• Be clear about the big idea you want to connect to and explore
• It must be group worthy with appropriate challenge level
• Low floor, high ceiling
• Culturally responsive and relevant to your students
• Using bigger numbers allows for students to work at a higher (deeper) level of understanding

Step 4: Predict what will happen

• Anticipate all approaches including misconceptions
• Recognise what they are thinking and how to move forward
• Identify what you're looking for and who is going to share and why