DMIC Professional learning

The Journey

As we begin to feel more comfortable it is time to let go of some of the things we have picked up. It is time to think more about what every child brings to the mathematics learning. 

When we think about our social group it is not as much about how 'good' they are at working with numbers but about all they bring. Do they talk a lot and are good at sharing? Are they all very quiet and need a chance to speak? 

It's time to:

-Think about how they work together

-Do the Boys and girls work well together

-Keep quiet and give the kids time to talk and 'wait time'

-Give opportunities to talk with turn and talk etc. 

-Try to keep your language inclusive, 'we' your groups learning. 

Justifying and Arguing Mathematically

This is about extending students thinking and pushing kids to reason and explain. It is time know to choose justification norms which we can now add to our mathematical discussions. I believe it is time to build on our group norms and add to the norms. This may be We provide reason for our mathematical problem solving, or We agree or disagree with mathematical thinking and explain why. 

As a school and a team we could build up and back of questions and prompts that will require students to justify and argue. 

Require that students prepare wats to re-explain in a different way an explanation to justify it. 

We talked about how we as teachers can make justifying happen. I have been using these reasoning prompts: 

Generalising: 
This comes towards the end and often the kids are struggling to focus. You may want to jump straight in a leave the warm up until the end. What questions with extend the generalisation.
-Does it always work?
-Can you see any patterns? What are the patterns?
-How is this the same or different from...?
-Would it work with all numbers?
-Look at multiple examples is the rule the same?
-Could you do this with.....?
-Does it still work...?