DMIC with Massey University

We covered a few basics today. This was a great session - perfect timing for my intro back into teacher maths after a year off on maternity leave. 

Groupings

A few good reminders here... when we group children by ability they often raise (or lower) themselves to those predetermined levels. For example, the 'lower' ability children stop trying so much - "Why should I? I'll most likely be wrong anyway, and my peers and my kaiako probably expect that of me too." The more able tamariki puff their chests out and compete to see who can finish first - often quite loudly. This is an exaggeration, but you'll understand what I mean.

Grouping children completely randomly is a new concept to me. We discussed how random grouping can eliminate social barriers, decrease reliance on the kaiako and increase reliance on co-constructed answers, and increase enthusiasm.

A suggestion was to try a computer generated randomiser. You could also use cards, sticks with names or numbers, shuffled photos. So many options! I'm looking forward to giving this a go.

This quote from the presentation really struck a chord with me, and is something I've spent years trying to address -  In order for group work to be effective and meaningful the teacher needs to stop asking questions and students need to stop asking the teacher questions. 

Assessment tasks

There has been a massive misconception with these! We’ve been doing it incorrectly the whole time! 

Launch the task as you usually would.

Read, discuss, use talk moves, “what do we have to do here?”

Children work on the tasks individually but can share their ideas.

It is not a test! Repeat, IT IS NOT A TEST!

No time limit - IT can be worked on over a number of days.

I am be looking forward to getting our latest assessment back and having another go under these more favourable conditions. I think the tamariki will really thrive from being able to bounce ideas off each other.

Knowledge/Hotspot/Warm-up ~ Number Strings 

Some great ideas here that i look forward to trying with my tamariki during our warmup.

I know some of my tamariki would love looking at problems like these.

Really interesting that Number Strings don't need to use numbers. Why had I never thought of that? 

I believe this was our last lot of Professional Development with Kelly and the team. Though there are still aspects of DMIC I'm on the fence about, I see a lot of benefits and am keen to renew and strengthen my maths programme.