Observation 29/6/17 - Maths

I watched Siale’s maths today in Room 7.  Half the class were doing repeated addition with her and the other half were working on independent problems.

First, Siale revisited the group norms and reminded the children that the norms apply to any group, like a sports team too.  She used humour - “Remember we are family, don’t let the little red hen do all the work” to reinforce this.

The class were doing a repeated addition problem.  “If Anzac had $2, then his nana gave him $2, then his uncle gave him $2, then his mum gave him $2, how much money did he have altogether?

Siale asked questions to clarify:

“What is the problem about?”

“Who is in the story?”

“What did she (Mum) do?”

“How do you know?”

“How many numbers are there?”

“What’s it called?” “Repeated addition.”

Then she said “Ok.  Let’s attack the problem.”

I liked the way she asked questions that drew out the children’s thinking.  

After the children had worked on the problem for a while, Siale rang a bell to signal it was time to stop.  I liked this non-verbal signal - it reminded me that I could use my bell for this.

I also liked her reminder for putting away the pens - “Lid on, pen down, lid on, pen down.”

Two groups presented their answers.  Siale was careful to position them so that they weren’t blocking the board.  After they had explained their answers she brought the rest of the class to the mat and talked to them about repeated addition and how that can be represented as multiplication, the ‘x’ sign meaning ‘groups of.’  She got the children to role play making 6 groups of 2, and 2 groups of 6, showing the reversibility of these factors.  

She then modelled place value in this kind of problem - “If you know that 2 + 2 = 4, you know that 20 + 20 = 40, 200 + 200 = 400 and 2000 + 2000 = 4000.  

Takeaway: From observing this lesson I saw the power of getting children to role play the problem, giving a visual representation.  It was interesting to observe Siale’s careful questioning and this has given me ideas about the way I will launch maths problems in my class.