Bubbles

I have been wanting to try out some language experience activities with my class and decided to do bubble blowing as an activity to spark descriptive writing.  I bought some small party favour bubble wands and gave out one between two, with the instruction that one was to blow bubbles, and the other could catch or pop them.

I was struck by how engaged the children were in this simple activity and how positive their behaviour was (I have been finding transitions to outdoor activities challenging).  Afterwards we brainstormed adjectives we could use to describe the bubbles and the children wrote stories about the bubbles - I was impressed with their attention to detail when describing them.  This reinforced the effectiveness of using language experience activities and made me excited to plan my next one...making sticky slime.

Maths in Room 21

Today on my PRT day I observed a maths lesson with Year 5 children, as I have been learning about the 'Bobby Maths' approach.  To start with the teacher, Niu, got the children in pairs to talk about the maths norms - they clarified what some of these meant.  For example, for "Depth is more important than speed" one boy said "Depth means going deep into your brain."

Niu also clarified the expectations for the maths programme - that children need to contribute to their groups - "No passengers" and need to ask questions if they don't understand.

The problem they were working on was one they had done for homework "If 297 people attend a church and 229 stop attending, how many will be left?"  There were a few variations on this problem and the children were able to select which one they wanted to answer.  The teachers in this classroom had identified subtraction as an area that needed work so were focusing on this.

The children got into small groups (4 is the ideal size) and worked on solving the problem.  They had a range of strategies - some split the number into hundreds, tens and ones and subtracted using these, one group used an algorithm, one group used materials, one used a number line...

After about 10 minutes the groups got back together and each one had to demonstrate their strategies.  The other groups were encouraged to ask questions if they needed clarification and the teacher asked them to check that they could add their numbers together to check that their equations were correct.

The main learning I took away from watching this was that children were discouraged from putting their hands up so that everyone was engaged, not just those who wanted to put their hands up.  I need to check whether this was the policy in all curriculum areas in this class or just in the maths programme.  I noticed that this increased engagement and the idea of 'no passengers.' I will be interested to see how this approach works with my Year 2s.

PTC 4

4. demonstrate commitment to ongoing professional learning and development of personal professional practice

i. identify professional learning goals in consultation with colleagues ii. participate responsively in professional learning opportunities within the learning community iii. initiate learning opportunities to advance personal professional knowledge and skills