We had a PD session on DMIC in our staff meeting on Monday where we practised working on a maths problem collaboratively at different levels.
Key messages from the session were:
- The maths problem needs to be challenging enough that no one child can solve it on their own - they need to work collaboratively.
- The teacher needs to have high expectations of all students. These can be used to motivate - e.g. 'I'm going to give you a really tricky problem because I know you are capable.' This can empower children.
- The problems need to be engaging. For example use a cultural context or something that the children are into.
I found it useful to have the facilitator clarify some points about how the maths lesson should be set up and structured.
- The groups should be pre-organised and written into the modelling books. Year 0-2 children should be in pairs, or if a child is a non-counter, buddied up with two counters.
- The half of the class that is not working with the teacher should be engaged in quiet, meaningful work, but DMIC does not specify exactly what this is. It could be a problem they have worked on with the teacher the previous day but with the numbers changed.
- The warmup is not a chance to teach the strategy that will be used in the problem but a chance to work on number knowledge etc. It can be something unrelated to the problem, for example choral counting.
- The teacher should keep a journal with anecdotal notes about how the children approach the problems. This 'professional noticing' helps teachers to understand where children are at.
- Maths planning should be shared in team meetings.
- Role playing can be used to set up the routine parts of the sessions - for example children can role play speaking in a clear voice to the class (and what happens if they mumble when presenting).
- For juniors, when a group is presenting, the teacher draws what they are saying.
- Connect back to the big idea at the end.
- Connect to the context - if the answer is '435' - '435 what?'
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