https://nzareblog.wordpress.com/2018/02/19/grouping-primary-maths/
I actually haven't had ability groups for quite a few years now. The main reason for this was that within each group, no child is the same and they all have different goals and learning needs.
Instead my learning groups have been personalised so that students only attend workshops with the teacher when they are trying to meet one of their specific learning goals. Even then, they don't have to come to the teacher in order to do that. They can learn from each other or even teach themselves in many cases.
Now I am feeling confused. As I continue to read The Elephant in the Classroom by Jo Boaler, I am beginning to have more questions than answers about how to set up my maths programme.
It seems to me (so far based on where I am up to in the book), that the best way to teach Maths would be to put students into mixed ability groups and give them all the same rich problems to solve. The problem with this is, how do I track individual progress. How do students track their own. Will students be learning important stuff that they need to know? Yes but how can I ensure that every aspect is covered? How do I continue to build the number knowledge aspect?
I do think the learning will still be personalised in that each child will take different things from each problem based on their level of prior knowledge. Therefore they will take from it what they need to even if they don't exactly know what that is.
So far I have been following Jo's inspirational week of Maths lessons found here.
https://www.youcubed.org/week-inspirational-math/
There is no doubt in my mind that these types of lessons are highly engaging and my students are absolutely buzzing about Maths. They are all learning new things and they are all learning different things from each other (hence the personalised aspect). This is great and this is what real Maths is all about but how do I show evidence of progress and learning?
I guess one way would be to create a list of key concepts and get students to self-assess and highlight which things they understand as we go along.
Also maybe I could get the students to do an independent reflection at the end of each Maths lesson stating what they learned. At the moment we reflect as a whole class and each group shares their findings. An individual reflection might look like:
E.g. Today I learned...
- that a prime number is a number that cannot be divided by any number other than itself and 1 without a remainder.
- That 2 is a prime number
- That 1 is not a prime numbner
- That all of the prime numbers are odd numbers apart from 2 but not all odd numbers are prime.
- That the first 5 prime numbers are 2, 5, 7, 11 and 13.
I am going to have to keep thinking on this one I think. Coming up with some kind of sheet with the content knowledge/strategies on might be helpful. This will be a challenging task though because most of these rich tasks touch on knowledge across different levels. I could probably start with Stages 6, 7 & 8 Number Knowledge as so far we have been covering mostly content at Stage 7. I don't have anyone in the class who has passed Stage 7 yet but I will soon.
Basically it is a work in progress but I can see such value and benefit in what I am doing that I must continue. The way it is impacting on my students' attitudes and beliefs about Maths is already changing even after such a short time. I am amazed at how excited everyone is during Maths time especially when they discover something new. I am also loving how students who are considered 'below' in Maths are achieving and feeling really good about themselves.
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