Professional Learning Review

Lisa Cairns
Launceston Christian School, Tasmania

Our thanks to Lisa for willingly sharing this and to Robert Armstrong (HoD) for organising the day and its review.

It was an interesting process reflecting on the key things valued in mathematics lessons. Particularly things such as student engagement, small group interaction, and opportunities for different learning styles as well as individual teaching time, that involved rich tasks and good questions and working mathematically rather than learning recipes. Yet my content-based approach delivers these things very infrequently and I am aware of not explicitly teaching the skills and strategies students need in a consistent manner.

In mathematics lessons getting the right answer is usually the main concern for students. However, mathematics is a 'language' that we use to communicate and reflect on the world around us. Refocusing on a Working Mathematically approach, that is teaching the process of doing mathematics and fostering a learning environment where questions lead to deeper understanding, must lead to better outcomes for all students. The Task Centre Workshop reminded me that what should be being taught are not problems for the sake of problems but how to think about problems, the questions to ask and teaching the students to identify the skills and strategies needed.

I have found recording and reflecting on mathematics problems is inherently weak in a content driven approach. Journals are a way of recording learning and fostering reflective work habits and an attitude that there is more to understand. It is a way of working that I will need to explicitly teach.

This is the problem solving approach that I have used with science and technology for years and that gives purpose and direction to skills lessons. I am wondering why I haven't used it in mathematics lessons! The place of 'toolbox' lessons where skills (content and concepts) can be taught that relate to problems in mathematics therefore rings true and a summer of re-planning my approach to teaching mathematics seems to be approaching.

It was valuable looking at the different ways of using the tasks that we have purchased. From a planning perspective, because the tasks are open ended, the opportunities for differentiation are huge. The tasks offer flexibility in how students approach solving the problems and ample opportunity for teacher and student questioning to extend the tasks into significant investigations and units of work as well as identifying concepts that need further teaching. The tasks also provide great opportunities for students to work with concrete materials and to record and communicate their learning in different ways.

Management and structuring of lessons from whole class teaching and modeling through to small group investigations with the tasks seemed practical and achievable and should meet the needs of differentiation in my classroom but will need to be carefully planned because playing with problems must be purposeful.

A powerful way into a lesson that emphasised mathematics literacy and modeling of the four steps of read and understand the problem, choose a strategy, carry out the strategy, check the result.

I particularly valued this whole class approach to teaching mathematics literacy and the meta-cognition of problem solving. I have used it already and found it very effective. The class were all engaged and despite the wide range of abilities all students received enough scaffolding to begin the problem and I was able to provide individual support when it was needed and extension was easily achieved through questioning that also revealed some interesting misconceptions!

Having the time to explore the different sites was useful particularly the search facilities for specific lessons which I have since used to identify a Maths300 lesson which I then linked to a Poster Problem and now have enough teaching and lesson material for at least a week or two. The initial lesson was well received by the class.