Personalisation in Mathematics: Number Strand
Dreams:
At Discovery College, personalized learning has been a college wide focus this year. Having made the move from Year 2 last year, up to Year 6 for this academic year, I was struggling with how to cope with the huge spread of abilities in Maths. A few tensions arose for me as a teacher of 30 students, all with varying needs, abilities and learning styles.
- I wanted children to take more responsibility for the direction of their own learning.
- I wanted children to be able to reflect on their own strengths and areas for improvement, and subsequently set their own learning goals.
- I wanted children to be able to choose from a range of teaching/learning resources, depending on their preferred learning style.
- I wanted to provide opportunities for children to conference with, or report back to the teacher on a regular basis to discuss their progress and needs.
Mysteries
- How do I manage 30 different learning goals?
- How do I provide effective and timely feedback?
- How do I ensure children’s productive use of time?
- How do I need to change or adapt my teaching practice in order to enable all children to achieve their goals?
- How do I make learning more visible to the children AND to the parents?
- How do I make this sustainable and cope with the ongoing management and monitoring of student progress?
- How will this be meaningful for ALL students?
- How/where do we record evidence of learning and how will it be shared?
- Can this (or how does this) transfer to the other strands of Maths? (And other curriculum areas?)
At Discovery College, personalized learning has been a college wide focus this year. Having made the move from Year 2 last year, up to Year 6 for this academic year, I was struggling with how to cope with the huge spread of abilities in Maths. A few tensions arose for me as a teacher of 30 students, all with varying needs, abilities and learning styles.
- I wanted children to take more responsibility for the direction of their own learning.
- I wanted children to be able to reflect on their own strengths and areas for improvement, and subsequently set their own learning goals.
- I wanted children to be able to choose from a range of teaching/learning resources, depending on their preferred learning style.
- I wanted to provide opportunities for children to conference with, or report back to the teacher on a regular basis to discuss their progress and needs.
Mysteries
- How do I manage 30 different learning goals?
- How do I provide effective and timely feedback?
- How do I ensure children’s productive use of time?
- How do I need to change or adapt my teaching practice in order to enable all children to achieve their goals?
- How do I make learning more visible to the children AND to the parents?
- How do I make this sustainable and cope with the ongoing management and monitoring of student progress?
- How will this be meaningful for ALL students?
- How/where do we record evidence of learning and how will it be shared?
- Can this (or how does this) transfer to the other strands of Maths? (And other curriculum areas?)