Maths observations

Today I was observed by Sue Pine, our TPS Maths PLG leader (an expert bought into the school to help us get better at teaching maths.)

Eek! Although I was nervous, I did feel as though I have gotten a lot better in the past few weeks at teaching maths and using talk moves and number talks. (Scroll further down in my blog to see previous observation notes.)

I knew I was proud of how far I have come, so having somebody observe me and give me next steps was a nerve wracking next step for me.

Things I did well

A well worded problem

 (Sue even said that this would be a really good national standards problem for testing the strategies students know and used, as there are many ways to solve it.)

Connections

(I used the same number for my number talks as in my problem (24) so students could apply the knowledge they had talked about in the number talks to their feijoa word problem.)

Structure

(I used a good structure of my lesson and it generally flowed nicely from one activity to another.)

Things to work on

Launching the problem

(I can work on this by ensuring I read the problem aloud, then talking to the students about the problem and ensuring they understand what the problem is asking them to do, what are the important parts etc.)

Pace

(I can keep working on this by choosing wether to do number talks or the warm up, whereas I had been doing both of them. This will cut ten minutes out of my lesson and help me speed it up. Another thing I can work on is getting the students who have understood the problem and are just sitting to get started with their follow up work, and continue my eliciting answers and talking about them with most of the class instead of all of the class, then quickly moving onto smaller group clinics with those students who need it most.)

Other notes

Growth mindset

(Sue pointed out that at one point, I told a student 'you are so smart'. This encourages a fixed mindset. I always try to make my praises about the learning, but evidently some comments still slip through. Tomorrow I will be sure to change my comments to things like 'you are thinking very hard', 'you explained your thinking very well'.)