Our own class on air!

Today Archana and I were talking about the film festival, and I suggested we should get Ipad Tripods to film with, and how they would be awesome for filming ourselves for PD as well in the long-run. You can just set it up and leave it, rather than having to have a cameraman or woman give their time to film for you. This allows you to record yourself much more often, and more spontaneously as well. 

Since Anne's last visit, Archana and I have been talking about Manaiakalani Class-on-Air, and especially how Archana would love to participate in that programme next year (I would too, but it is only available to teachers with at least 2 years experience, and next year I will only have 1 years experience so I can't yet apply). 

So we decided, we would do our own filming, our own class-on-air type thing thing year. It is a great combination of digital skills and growing pedagogy. 

This afternoon, I decided to get filmed with a small group of my students! 

Warning - the footage is kind of messy. The first few shots were filmed by Archana, and are beautiful, and the rest by one of my 8 year old students.. And bless him, he got a lot of unflattering close ups and weird angles which I have cropped out. I made sure to leave in all the actual learning, so there may be periods where what you are looking at doesn't change, but the conversation was important so I left that part in.. if that makes sense :)

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WALT/Big maths ideas: find regions of a number
Question: Grandpa has 24 chocolates. His jacket has three pockets. He put quarter of the chocolates in one pocket, and half of them in the second pocket. How many chocolates were in the third pocket?
Goal: to use talk moves and some materials in a problem solving approach
Context: Mixed-ability group of year 4 students (Stages 3-E5) in the problem solving approach

After the filming stopped, we kept discussing how we got our answers, eventually getting to the fact that half of a half is quarter.

(Cover half of the fraction frame with your hand)

(Keep the half covered, now cover half of the other half - what is left showing.. one quarter)

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As this is me putting myself out there, please no harsh bullying! It is scary to post this.. but, we as teachers should always be sharing our knowledge and seeking to improve our own pedagogy. 

If anyone has any feedforward and constructive criticism, please leave in comments below.  (We at TPS are using the problem solving approach and talk moves). I'd love to have your ideas on what I need to work on.

Things I have thought of myself are..

-where I was sitting was good, as I could see all the students working out without any obstruction

-I went back to the question lots of time and reread it with the students to emphasise this point! (good mathematicians always reread the question!)

-these kids needed a warm up to remind them about halves and quarters before launching into the problem. They did not have the solid understanding I was depending on for this problem. I also could have broken down the number 24 before we launched the problem - what do we know about 24? 

-I gave students the choice of paper/pen/counters to try and solve it with, but did not have fraction frames out ready for them to use. 

-I only used talk moves well in a few places