Essential Ingredients

Published in Mathematics Teaching September 2005

Page 3/4

The typical scenario was to introduce a problem to the class once a week and ensure that everyone is clear about what we are doing I would give the children the problem on paper and read it to them, and question them to ensure they understood what to do. I would point out that there is no right or wrong way to carry out the investigation and that I was looking for lots of good ideas. I would also ask them to present the work as an explanation to others about how they tackled the problem. They could use numbers, words, symbols, drawings, in fact anything, to explain how they are thinking. The results of this brief were astounding, even from children who are supposed to be less able (whatever that means!). I also found that the more the children were involved in this type of activity, the more confident they were for future investigations.

Some answers

“Do I have to teach a three-part lesson every day and all the time?” The short answer to this is no. I have found that spending one lesson a week, or a prolonged time every two weeks is good for developing wider skills and applying what has been learned in the three-part-lesson.

“Could I find space for prolonged activity with a looser brief to the children, and provide a more inquiring atmosphere?” Definitely. Time is found for extended writing and this should be shared with mathematic learning. Even if you were to find a space of 2 hours every three weeks, that would be valuable time spent on extended activity.

Additionally, it may also be worth while examining the kind of learning environment you are providing for the children, and if it is conducive to asking questions and wondering why certain ideas are so.

Some results

All the new investigations and projects were open-ended statements that encouraged the children to find a solution in groups or pairs. Previously, these children had regular mathematics lessons with teacher input and follow-up exercises. They enjoyed the new opportunity to think freely. As part of my own enquiry, I asked the children to keep a record of their thoughts and ideas in mathematics diaries and encouraged them to fill these in whenever they thought it appropriate. I asked them to make comments on what have been going on and how it made them feel about mathematics and how much it helped them to understand mathematics.

The children wrote such things as:

“It is interesting and exciting when we do investigations.”

“Mathematics in school is excellent because we do problem solving.”

When asked how to make mathematics more interesting one child said:

“More investigations and projects that we did last week.”

Another child said:

“We learned about Gauss. We began to think like him and act like him…”

I found that in other areas of learning the children had a new independence and confidence in going about the activities. When taking part in project work, they were able to think of ways of getting information and solving their problems without resorting to asking the adult in the room all the time.

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