We, as educators, can be an obstacle to student learning

This post is once again inspired by my professional twitter network.  I honestly don't know what I would do without them.  Their reflections, and open sharing have continued to move my professional practise forward and meet my needs as a teacher inquirer.

My professional focus this year is purposeful play.  I believe that purposeful play is open ended learning opportunities for students to choose to engage in.   Students choose where to go, and for how long and they are free to move among the play opportunities.

           An examples of a learning opportunity:

           Learning Goal:  I can represent numbers in different ways

Numbers on a 10 frame

Before students are off to play I ask them "I wonder what numbers look like on a 10 frame using playdoh."  

Students are free to enter into this and all activities using their own thinking and ideas.  

I then observe their play and document their learning.

Examples of Student learning representing numbers in different ways:

Two students took the fall books off the shelf and began to label each book with a number.  

What I noticed:  students had labelled and written numbers up to 32.

Some of these numbers were out of order and I wanted to take them and put them in the right order.  

This, however, was MY agenda, and my vision of what "right" learning was.  What these students have shown was an incredible example of THEIR collaborative learning.  If I had of taken the books and put them in order the students would have thought that I didn't value their thinking and might have thought that what they did was "wrong".  

When I first looked at this students work I thought that they made an error.  But when I looked closely, I saw that the student wasn't using each sticker to represent one, but rather the number of pencils that were on each sticker.  I never thought of this.  And because I never thought of showing learning this way, then I could have never offered it in my teaching.

Students worked collaboratively to show "MORE".

Earlier in the year students were using 2-D shapes to make a picture.  There were some pre-made sheets of a flower, a ship, a train etc.

These two girls worked together for over 30 minutes making their beehive.

Again, this was not what I had intended, but it as better than anything I could have thought of.

Typically, in my class, purposeful play is set up on Monday.  It begins with a read a loud or smart board activity to activate their thinking on our learning goal.  Students are sent off into play with WONDER statements from the educators in the room:  I wonder what numbers look like on a 10 frame with playdoh.  There are typically 5 or 6 purposeful play activities.  We then observe and document their learning.  Learning needs are identified and instruction is individual, small group or whole group depending on the specific needs.  Purposeful play is adapted throughout the week to encourage students to continue to extend and demonstrate their learning.  When we feel that their interest is waining, we take a snapshot of where they are (assessment of learning) and move on.  I know that I will come back to the learning goal later on in the future and I continue to document and observe students.

What I don't do is "teach" and then send students off with a follow up activity that has only one purpose.  I don't teach. . . . . so I know what to teach.   I look and listen and provide learning opportunities so that students address their own misconceptions.  I am interacting with students all the time asking them to tell me about their thinking.  

I want my students to know that I value and honour their thinking and I step out of their way every day.  Tossing my own agenda and preconceived ideas aside so they can show their learning in new and exciting ways.

Math Learning Through Inquiry

Why I teach the way I teach and why you won't see my students completing worksheets.

My first "blog" and I have to admit, I'm a bit shy.  I have read many great learning journeys by some fabulous teachers coast to coast to coast.  This year my professional focus is to make learning visible for my students and for my parents at home.  

Most of our learning in math takes place off of worksheets.  Worksheets only focus on one right answer.  What does it mean if you have the right answer and what does it mean if you don't?  Worksheets don't allow for students to extend their thinking or to enter into learning where they are developmentally in their thinking and knowledge.  

Last year my students were thinking of how they could sort the alphabet.  I sat down with one of my students who needed help to learn through guided questioning.  This was our conversation:

Me:  How can you sort these letters?

M:  Some are straight and some aren't

Me:  Which ones are straight?

She put all the straight upper case letters in one group

Me:  Which ones aren't?

She started to put the curvy ones like O, S in one group when she stopped.

Me:  What do you see?

M:  This one has both

Me:  Yes, this one has straight lines and curvy lines.  Let's stop here because I want to share your thinking with the rest of the class.  

The next day I re created M's problem for the class sharing her thinking and using her thoughts to highlight the learning.  The straight lines in one sorting circle and the curvy lines in the other sorting circle.  

"M noticed that some letters had curvy lines, and some had straight.   How can show that using these two circles?"

Responses:

Put them on top!

Put them underneath!

Would that work?  Then there was the silence.  There was a lot of silence.  And in teaching 10 seconds seems like an eternity.  But my class was great at letting the silence be just that.  Silence.  They knew that some students needed a lot of time to think.  

With this essential wait time came more ideas:

Put the hoops together! 

More wait time....

My one student who would turn out to guide us in very unexpected places took one hoop and placed it over the other hoop creating space in the over lap and .. and essentially a Venn Diagram.

The next moment is etched in my memory forever.  He jumped up, and lept around the room skipping and jumping and celebrating.  He knew that he had done it.  He knew that the space in between these two hoops meant that it shared characteristics from each side.  Whether it was somewhere back in his mind from the previous year, we'll never know.  

What I do know, is that he, and the rest of the class think that he discovered what we would then call a VENN DIAGRAM.  

This learning moment would have never been found in a worksheet.  This self-directed learning and student discovered knowledge will be planted like concrete in his brain.  I know.  I saw it all year.  Months later...and I mean at the end of the year, I took the two hoops and watched M talk about her "problem" and the rest of the class recreate this moment - step by step.  And yes the student once again lept around the classroom celebrating the learning......and the rest of the class followed him in his dance celebrating with him.

Teaching math through inquiry allows the opportunity to reach all learners.  Every student knows that it's not about the right answer.  It's about their thinking.  It doesn't matter if one student says 20 and one student says 3.  They know that their thinking is what is valued and cherished and wanted.  As my students have gone on in their learning these words have been used to describe them:

Brave       Creative           Collaborators       Thinkers

I hope that as they continue on in their learning journey they continue to be

Brave      Creative          Collaborators     and Thinkers.