Term 3 Maths Inquiry: What's my plan?

At the end of term 2, my team had a PD meeting with Jo Knox. Jo was working through maths OTJ's with us and explained how much weight strand knowledge has when making an OTJ. It was at that point that I realised I hadn't covered anywhere near enough strand yet. So, I set a new inquiry goal for maths: to teach strand maths at least once a week.

This term, we definitely met that goal! I spent several weeks working on measurement with room 6 and saw a lot of lightbulb moments! Learning about measurement is great because there are so many different ways to use materials and get creative. My class found it quite refreshing and really enjoyed learning. What I loved about measurement, was that we could integrate it with multiplication and add/sub strategies. My students didn't realise they were using these strategies because they were having so much fun!

Needs based workshops: 
Strand maths went so well that I didn't realise how fast time flew by! I sat down this weekend and made a maths plan for the rest of the year. We have very little time left until testing in term 4! Yikes. I've thought about what I'd like my students to achieve by then and decided that workshops might be the best way to help them to get there. At the moment, our maths groups are very diverse in terms of knowledge and the strategies that my students use. Therefore, the workshops will be needs based and I will choose which students I will need in each workshop. I realise that I not only need to focus on the strategies in these workshops but also context. My students need a lot of practice with word problems as this will help them to understand the strategies. I'm hoping these workshops will be helpful!

Welcome to 2017

I can't believe we've already been back at school for an entire month. Time flies so quickly, especially when so many new things are happening around you! That's right, this year has been an exciting year of change.

Last year, I began my teaching journey in a year 4 class with 28 students. Throughout the year I was always so intrigued by the shared spaces in our school, so when the opportunity came up to teach in one, I was stoked!

This year, I am teaching in a modern learning environment along side two other teachers - Matt and Kelsey. We now have about 100 energetic, bustling students in our space! Some people may think that's crazy, but I'm absolutely loving it. There have definitely been some challenges so far whilst I've been adjusting to a different type of learning environment. For example, getting to know so many more students (as we have different classes for maths and literacy) and learning how to engage my class whilst there are other things happening in the same space. However, I'm not at all stressed about these things as I know that everything happens in time and I now have so many more opportunities to learn from my fellow teachers since we share the same students! I am also thrilled as I have a large number of my students from last year who moved from year 4 to 5. It's super helpful as we've already built solid relationships and I've learnt how to engage them in their learning.

We've had a great start to the year and have set some solid routines. Next up, year 5/6 camp! It's going to be awesome.

Part of our shared space - my class (room 6) is in the corner.