Going deeper with DMIC

We have now been doing DMIC (Developing mathematical inquiring communities) and it is time to look back and step up our game and move forward. 

We talked about embracing new ideas and how the hardest part of this is letting go of the old, things that are not working so well or need to be let go to get more.
One of these things is the numeracy project it was discontinued in 2009 as it does not address the needs of all learners we as a country have done something no other have in slitting strategies and knowledge. We shouldn't however throw out the key ideas of the numeracy project it is about changing the delivery of the learning.

Reflecting back:
We have all learnt so much and this means that things are moving faster. We now have more confidence and this has had a huge impact on the way we teach. We also still have challenges but these are more around going deeper and exploring more the balance of child and teacher talk and norms and mathematical discussion.

Arguing Mathematically:
We want kids to challenge each others. It is easy to get kids to agree it is harder to disagree and provide a reason when you ask "why".  Kids need to be challenged when they are right as well as when their answer is wrong. Pushing for hands down allows kids have more opportunity and pushes them to try.
It pays to use a bit of wait time when using agree and disagree as this provides time to form opinions and they will have more to share. We want kids to be able to justify why and how they did things so that the process of the mathematical thinking is the focus of the learning not just the answer.
We must require that there is an individual and collective responsibility for learning and sharing.
We are teachers and we must still model what we expect them to say.
We need to be specific with our praise, we often say that was great but need to state what was great and why so children really understand.

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