Hoon Hay School visit

We were fortunate to have the opportunity to visit Hoon Hay Year 5 and 6 students working in single cell classrooms. We were able to witness their maths programme where they completed a problem solving, mixed ability maths group approach. This problem solving approach included coverage of number knowledge, addition and subtraction, multiplication and division, and portions and ratios.

We were lead through the background thinking and the goal of students to develop a disposition toward their maths learning which involves them seeing themselves as learners who construct mathematical meaning through engaging in maths activities, rather than experiencing maths as isolated facts and procedures. This was obvious from the way children showed engagement in group mixes as well as from the obvious perseverance with working through problems in each group.

Individual groups were given a copy of problem solving tasks for the week. The activities included 4 different entry stages that increased in difficulty. Students were asked to work on these tasks throughout the week and reflect on which strategy most people in the group would use and why?... as well as why their chosen strategy might work better for their given numbers? They had to consider:Did they ask a question during the session? ...and how well they used maths talk with their partner? There was a launching session at the beginning when the problems were first given out and then a sharing session at the end of the week where students shared their findings with others and where they were questioned about strategies they had chosen to use and were required to give further explanation about what they had completed.

It was great to see children who were engaged in maths sessions and who had a good understanding of what was expected of them. Students were prompted with questions on a wall display; " I agree because....."  "I don't agree because..."  "I don't understand. Can you show me....."   "I'm confused, can you explain that bit?"   "I don't get that. What do you mean by.....?" The wall display also had examples of maths strategies that students had been learning about as well as student ideas of what makes a good maths mate....someone who uses eye contact, talks through problems, is equally responsible, follows along when working out a maths problem, listens, shares, keeps focused, explains the thinking clearly, encourages you, uses maths talk e.g "I agree" or "I don't understand that part."

It was obvious that a great deal of preparation had gone in prior to groups getting to the stage we had witnessed. Other important words were displayed like: Mistakes are valuable: questions are really important: everyone can learn maths at a higher level: maths is about creativity and making sense; maths is about connections and communicating;thinking deeply is more important than speed. These ideas would be valuable to include in a display to guide our problem solving maths work.

Our team came back from the visit and reflected about ways we could include this problem solving approach in our own maths programme. While we didn't feel ready to yet do this in isolation we did see the benefit of working in mixed ability groups in this way and gained ideas of how to better integrate problem solving tasks into our maths sessions as well as wonderful question prompts.