Day 3: Planning a maths programme

What a great day. This has been my favourite day by far so far. What I wanted to get out of doing the MPI overall was a) ideas to help me create/find content for follow-up activities with ease, and b) to learn and understand current best practice in teaching maths. Today has helped me with both those things a lot. 

I found this to be a useful reference, the glossary. Teachers are, after all, renowned for their use of jargon. :)

The conversation around flexible vs levelled groups was interesting. While I often used mixed ability groups in reading, I hadn't really thought about it for maths. Having Level 1-5 learners in my room, I still struggle to think that everyone in the group would get the most out of a completely mixed ability group, but lessening the range of the students I can see would work in some situations. I will be trying this while working with the class on the rich maths tasks. 

The session on rich maths tasks was extremely useful for me, particularly the opportunity we had to explore the maths sites geared up toward rich tasks. I took the time to look at Youcubed, and was impressed with the parts of it I looked at. 

The low light of the day was when I read the question wrong in the rich task activity! It wasn't until I heard the answers of others I realised my mistake. Haha, I was mortified. This is precisely what I teach the kids not to do :)

The huge list of digital resources will be a game-changer for me. My biggest issue in maths planning is getting lost down a rabbit hole trying to find the perfect resource. I really like a suggestion today that we could perhaps use just one site a week/month etc. I would adapt this to be one new site a week/month while backing up with sites the students and I are already familiar with. 

Thanks for a really interesting day. I am looking forward to trying the rich maths tasks next term when I am back in the classroom and introducing some of these new sites to my class.