Inquiry Focus Term 4

We are now moving toward the end of the year and many children in my class have made significant progress. There are a few children who are still struggling especially with the holiday break. The first week of school was basically trying to get back into routines and catching up where we left off at the end of Term 3.

My inquiry focus for this term is continuing to work on, mathematical terms, languages and concept especially when solving word problems. Yes, many children can solve number sentences but once given in a word problem they have difficulty comprehending, understanding the question and therefore get the answer incorrect. I find that sometimes children revert to guessing or simply shrug their shoulders. The group that I’ll be working with, will be looking at word problems, understanding and talking about what strategy they have to use to solve the problem but most importantly highlighting key words in the problem that tells us what we need to do. Once again we will be focusing on unpacking and analysing mathematical terms and language.

On Monday at our Staff meeting, the CoL teachers had the opportunity to present to the staff and talk about their Inquiry for this Term. It was really interesting to see that every teacher mentioned some of the concerns I have been experiencing with my juniors. I could make connections to what they presented to my inquiry. For example, Rob mentioned about how he had to go back to using materials when he found that his group of children did not understand a maths concept. Andrea talked about learners enjoyment when given tasks to complete. Another teacher talked about mathematical terms and language that our children struggle with completely given a problem to work out.

Teaching and learning

Some of the learners in my group struggle with understanding mathematical language and terms.
I discussed this problem with a colleague(Rachel) that I am presently job sharing with. She talked about a warm up activity that she played with her older children and explained how we could use it in a Year 1 class.

We practised counting backwards with support of materials.

Hypothesis and trends

Children are quite confident in counting forwards. With my teaching experience over the years I have always found that they always struggle when it comes to counting backwards, saying the number that comes before. I think that they may not understand the term before, backward, or that it means one less. Not only have I heard this in the junior school but across most year levels.

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Term 3 Focussing Inquiry

We are halfway through the year and the children in the group that I was working with have made progress and made a shift. I will continue working on my goals for this group. For my inquiry focus for term 3 I have decided to work with a different group of children. These children can identify numbers from 1-20, can say the number after for numbers 1-20 however, they struggle with counting backwards and solving simple subtraction problems. It is important for them to be able to count backward accurately from any given number and only then will they be able to work out subtraction problems fast and correctly.

Counting in 2's

I have been practising counting in 2's with my whole class. We did rhythmic counting using a number chart so children know that there is a resource available for them to use. As a follow up activity children had to take photo's of counting in 2's to show their learning. The children were engaged and enjoyed doing this activity.