Another day in the life!

A little glimpse into my job really. Yesterday I went on some professional development that I have to go on each term for my maths programme - Numbers Count. We are know each other really well as we have been together as a group for a couple of years now. But yesterday more than ever picked up some more creative ideas to use in my own teaching with the children on maths - and I need something to make the day more exciting (but I wasn't convinced it would work).

Basically I was told to just let the children paint/draw/collage on a large sheet of paper and its the conversation you have, questions you ask and tasks you discuss that probe (hate that word) their mathematical understanding and misconceptions. As I said I wasn't convinced it would work at all and I wasn't sure myself if I would have enough questions to lead the discussion if needed, as the children are suppose to lead the learning.

But from this drawing about the beach this is the information and discussion I was able to draw out and the conclusions I made just by this painting and the chat we had:
- he had no issues with counting and simple addition
- he could count on from one number to another
- he could find the difference between two numbers
- he really didn't understand doubles and halves (I asked him to double the amount of ships - the grey blobs on the sand) - didn't realise that double meant adding the same number again
- had no clue about odds and even numbers and was convinced that all numbers in the 2's pattern were odd (2, 4, 6, 8, 10 etc)
- but he could tell me about the number 14 and it was was 10 and 4 more or 1 lot of ten and 4 units (thank goodness as we had been working on that).

Although this looks like a simple child's painting it really did stimulate an in depth discussion (found all this out in 30 mins) and made me realise how much work I still had to do with this child.

But trying this new idea with a couple of my children today made the maths lesson - go quicker and really lightened the load a little. Made the whole day more bearable and I enjoyed teaching it.

So all in all an interesting day -but it has been a long week and I am shattered. Have a good weekend one and all xx