February 21

Maths – Changing your Mindset

Sometimes when I tell kids we are going to do Maths or ask children how they feel about themselves as Mathematicians they sometimes look like this.. facs_feelings

is this you?

What is it about working with numbers that often makes our children feel confused or overwhelmed. I remember loving Maths and enjoying Mathematical challenges, but as the years went on my mindset began to change too and I nearly looked like this poor child by the time High School rolled around. I am trying to work out why.

There has been a lot of interest with educators of late on how our Mindset impacts on the success we experience. Last year our school attended some T and D where we looked at work by Carol Dweck who examined the differences between a Fixed Mindset and a Growth Mindset, you may recall the information sent home.

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Of course this has implications for all areas of learning, but when beginning our sessions in Mathematics it is important that we have a headset that will grow with an attitude that I can do it.

So it was important that we establish some criteria for working during our lessons. We worked out what we didn’t want to see happen and what we did. This is what we came up with..

 

Alex Narcys our Maths Co-ordinator shared some work by Jo Boaler from Stanford University. We had a look at some of these powerful videos on how our brains work and what goes on when we make mistakes in Maths.

Here is a snippet.

Really powerful, positive and reassuring information on how we can work on building successful Maths Skills. So as we investigate Place Value and big numbers is clear that we need to just have a go at trying to put our understandings through its paces.

Questions to think about.

When do you use maths?

Have you seen your family do any Mathematics?

Why do you think we should learn Maths?

How do you feel about Maths?

What’s your favourite Maths topic?

February 7

Welcome to the start of 2016. A new school year.

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I am grateful that you all got back your permission slips quickly, so now you are all officially my new Bloggers. Thank you parents and caregivers too. I hope you all keep checking in to read our blog and leave a comment or three.

newclass

 What a fabulous bunch of eager year three learners. We are going to have a great year.

We have been very busy already getting to know our new classmates and learning what we need to do to work successfully in learning teams.

To start with, we needed to know what our Criteria for Success would be so that we can do our job well. That is … To Be The Best Learners We Can Be.

We came up with many ideas for us to work well, work safely and to show respect in our classroom this year, but we would have to have hundreds of rules to cover each one. So we summarised our lists.

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We made colourful paintings to show what our class would look like to the school community. Aren’t they stunning.

We have also made a start on practicing how our morning team meetings will go this year. This has been a challenge and we are trying to be efficient, as we learn all the roles. So we have learnt a new strategy to help us.

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It works, we managed to improve out meeting time by half. How good are we. Hey kids why not sing your folks the Kaizen song.

Here are some questions for you to think about and share your answers with us.

How do you feel, now that you are in the Primary section of the school?

What did you enjoy about your first week in year three?

What are you looking forward to?