DMiC Norms Lesson.mov

Direct Instruction

The learning intention for this lesson was for the children to count large numbers of objects quickly, by using skip-counting or grouping strategies. As it is still so early in the year at this stage, there is still a big focus on establishing the Group Norms in our Maths sessions and getting the children to collaborate to solve tasks.

The video shows the warm-up session to a DMiC Maths lesson I was teaching, where the Big Idea was that skip-counting can help us to count large numbers quickly. Unfortunately, the camera cut out the main problem at the end!

(DMiC stands for Developing Mathematical Inquiry Communities and has been an area of Professional Development at Pt England School since the start of 2018.)

Extended Lesson Plan

Reflection

I was really happy with the Group Norms aspect of this session. This was a main focus for this lesson, as it occurred at a very early stage of getting to know my students this year. I felt that this was one of the first times all the students were engaged with the warm-up enough, to follow my expectations for working together with the one iPad and putting their eyes on the TV at the right times.

I was happy to see collaboration among the students. They were working together and checking if they agreed. Although, I suspect some children may have changed their answer to that of their partner’s, rather than engaging in the ‘friendly argument’ I was encouraging.

I loved the enthusiasm the images produced. I think that sometime pictures are more inviting for my reluctant mathematicians than numbers are, so I will plan on including them more frequently in my lessons.

The sharing with the class part went well. It got better actually, after the clip ended. There were three different groups that all got up and shared their different ways of counting the final problem. It is a pity the camera turned off before capturing this moment!

I think that I am starting to show some progress myself at implementing the DMiC talk moves. This has been the trickiest area for me, as I really have to think quite deliberately to ensure I include them. Hopefully this will become second nature to me one day!

Things to Note

The main problem which is not seen in the video, had no '3-second countdown' attached. It was a harder task and so the image remained on the TV screen throughout, so that the children could refer back to the problem.

There is not a lot to the specifically linked example of student generated work in relation to the video above. So, I have also linked an example of a task the students were set, at around the same time, to show how my Maths programme has been operating in a broader context.