DMiC lessons

Over the last two weeks I decided to video my children working in their groups just to see the progress they have made since my first DMiC lesson.
I think what I am doing is working but will take a long time before we get everyone on board.

DMiC Lesson with Don

This week I had my second session with Don supporting me.I had about 6 children in my group.
The problem launched: I have 8 stickers on my sticker chart. My teacher gives me 5 more. How many stickers do I have altogether?
Firstly I read the problem to the group and then we read it together. We then discussed what the story is asking us to do? At this point one of the children gave the answer and said 13. Don suggested I make the problem challenging so instead of 8 stickers I changed it to 28 stickers.

The children went with their partners to discuss what strategy they would use to solve the problem. Don and I walked around listening to their conversations and they explained to us what strategy they were going to use to solve the problem. A few children could confidently explain that they were going to put the biggest number in their head and count on. The others sort of understood but had difficulty verbalising their thinking or were not very confident to talk. I handed each group a paper and 1 pencil. All three groups solved the problem by counting on from the biggest number. I was not surprised as we have been working on ways to solve a problem(one to one counting using materials, drawing, counting on or counting back). I was really happy that finally got it, but then Don asked some children who seemed quite confident to solve it another way. He prompted for them to use a number line and with Don supporting them they gave it a go.

We came together as a group to share and the pair talked about how they solved the problem using a number line. We did not have much time to do the connect part of the lesson.

The valuable feedback that I got given was to work on:

Responding prompts that I can use.
Revoicing what others have said
Encourage children to ask questions.
Whether they agree or disagree.

Here are some prompts that Don has shared for me to use in my teaching.

Term 2 DMiC Week 1

We are back from the holidays and I feel that the children settled and are ready to learn. They can follow
classroom routines and most of them can work independently and support the others long enough
for me to do a DMiC lesson. I can split my class into 2 groups and successfully complete a DMiC
lesson on some days. I feel that the children are beginning to follow the norms that have been set up in
my group teaching.

Towards the end of Term 1 a few colleagues that shared the same inquiry focus and decided to
work together to create a rubric for the children to measure their learning.
It was great working together, watching the ideas flow as we shared ideas and some concerns.
We hope that this rubric will be beneficial to the learners and we will be able to see some changes,
improvement or progress compared to our first DMiC lesson.

Our focus is on speaking, talking, listening and responding. We have decided to use a colours
(traffic lights: red, orange, green and the medals: silver and gold) as a visual for our juniors to
track their progress.

 We had a classroom discussion and talked about the rubric and our goals. It is displayed on the classroom wall and we refer too it all the time.