Reflections on being an Older Teacher.

The other day, trying to thread a needle, I became deeply frustrated.  Every time I thought I'd done it, the thread just - well, missed. I cursed the onset of all things middle aged and groaned at God knows what further frustrations and indignities are to come as more than eyesight fades.
Of course it was more than just the unmended jeans that was getting to me.

The plain truth is that the future I thought was never going to be mine is here. I'm middle aged and counting.

Should I be put out to grass?

And with the return to school only a few short weeks away I got to thinking if it was time to give up?
Am I bringing enough to the big school table? Am I blind to my own shortcomings in the classroom?
Is teaching not a young person's game? If I can't even thread a needle.....

But I'm a blue sky thinker.  I still feel seventeen at heart.  I'm fit and my mind is buzzing like it never has before.  

I'm a blue sky thinker. 

There are just so many opportunities and so many reasons why older teachers are best placed in the classroom and not the retirement home.

1. We lived the past and we're not going back to authoritarian, unimaginative, dictatorial, system centred education. Despite its shortcomings we appreciate everything that education is today and can be tomorrow. We love change.

2. We love being digital natives, inspired by the creativity and connectedness of the net but we're passionate about many things the net just can't provide - a love of rhyme and rhythm in the spoken word, the intrinsic beauty of a book, the power of nature to nurture and heal, the need for others and a wicked sense of humour.

3.The powers that be may improve, recycle and discard curricula, methodologies and philosophies - but we know what really works.

4. We believe in every child not because we're told to but because we're around long enough to have witnessed many a struggling ugly duckling transformed into a beautiful, achieving, swan .

5. We've been practicing mindfulness since long before it became a buzz word.  We know everything passes and we've learned the hard way to judge not lest others judge you!

6. We know that every little tiger is really just a pussy cat.

7. We're needed. We have a serious store of general knowledge and educational expertise.

8. It's not always about what it seems to be about.  Upset is generally about something else.

9. We know how to mend all kinds of things - broken hearts in the staff room, broken dreams in the parent room, broken equipment in the classroom and not just the hem of a favourite old trousers.

10. Because we want to be there, in the classroom at the centre of it all.

Now I feel better.

So the new school year is almost upon us.  The sounds of summer are beginning to fade and the lure of the classroom is growing steadily stronger.
Dusting off my bags and books (lying neglected in the corner into which I had thrown them on the last day of term) my thoughts turned to organisation.  It's not a strong point of mine.  I tend to 'up-play' my love of untidiness - the littered desk, jumble sale classroom, Mary Poppins' bag and my inability to ever find anything just when I want it - well it's all a sign if a creative mind.  Isn't it?

The Reverse Cognitive Effect

Last year in my primary school we set out to tackle necessary structures such as organisation. It seemed to us teachers that children, weighed down by complicated home lives, busy schedules or helicopter parents who zoom in and 'do' for their children, were not taking enough responsibility for their own organisation. And this spills over, encouraging a certain laissez faire attitude and general disconnect from their own learning.  A kind of reverse cognitive effect.

In the shower, where all best thinking is done, I was pondering my part in modelling best practice and the changes I might make.  I fell to thinking about the Homework Diary, much prized in our school but quite frequently neglected by me.  It was high on most teachers' lists when we met to discuss the organisation problem.  I'm not  in the habit of checking that it's used every day or that parents sign it regularly.
Maybe that was a change I could make?
I can see the benefits -  the discipline of daily use, the ongoing record, the parental involvement and the sheer tidiness of it.
But I still have doubts that it's worth it.  I teach in the lower end of the school.  The time it takes to get all children to legibly record their homework is great and - I can't rid myself of the belief - better spent on other things. I have a class website and the homework is laid out there every Sunday in advance and looking at it generally requires parental involvement too.  

So that's that box ticked. There are other advantages too.  Parents can check while at work and relay the information to child minders.  They can come home and have an informed conversation about homework - 'how did you get on with all that addition in Maths?' There are links to useful websites for games and videos - much more than I could ever write on a board. I have offered to provide a print out for those without an internet connection but nobody has ever asked me!

Validate and Encourage or Punish and Deny?

For older students there is the argument that, well, they are older, so recording their homework in a diary should not be such a big deal.  But it is because, with honourable exceptions they just don't do it.  I witnessed one entrepreneurial young man being ticked off for using his phone to snap a photo of the homework written on the blackboard. Other kids really do have excellent memories.
When we teachers talked about organisation we also discussed education's role in preparing kids for the real world.
The real world wants kids who snap photos of their homework. And shouldn't we validate and encourage safe use rather than punish and deny children's connections to the digital world?
Yes, the key word should remain 'organisation', but not on the teachers' terms. Let kids get truly organised by deciding their own tools, be it the diary, the phone, the website, their memory or something we haven't even thought of!

We teachers have to relinquish the kind of old fashioned control which has us holding all the cards and deciding all the rules.
That way we actually free up the kids to take real responsibility.
Now what else could I get organised?

It's heartening news - the new Junior Minister with responsibility for Gaeltacht matters, Joe McHugh, doesn't have great Irish.   He had it, through primary and secondary school and he is from wild and beautiful Donegal, a cradle of our native language, but he's lost it.

Great!  That really is good news.

There's always been that gap, whether real or perceived, between those who can and those who can't when it comes to the cúpla focail.   Those who can are blessed with the knowledge and wisdom of an ancient language, beautiful in its intricacies, history and very utterance.

And those who can't are frequently intimidated and put off by the sheer wonder of it all.  They would dearly love to be a Gaelgoir, to even try the cúpla focail, but where to start and sure they'd only be looked down on for their efforts!

Deputy McHugh can lead the way - make an example of himself and make the rest of us put up or shut up!

Aside from inspiring the adult population, think what a positive reaction to Deputy McHugh's appointment could teach our young people.  Not to be an expert but to have love and passion for a subject, not to know everything but be willing to learn, to stand in front of others and admit to not being perfect, to ask those who know more to lead and assist - well isn't that exactly how we want our children to behave?

And isn't that pretty much where we all are?  In our connected world, in our world of daily discoveries, no one has finished learning, no one can finish learning  - ever.  We all have to stand up and shout out that we are prepared to keep on learning, to make the commitment to be a life long learner.

It would be great if the Gaelgoir and non Gaelgoir alike could come together on this, make this a rallying point for the language. Go at it heart and soul.  There should be no shame in being willing to learn.

Otherwise do we may prove the inverse of the old saying:

Tír gan anam - sin tír gan teanga!

Fed up with the bad press the teachers often attract?  Don't just sit there and despair - blog.
I've been blogging for a while now but have been keeping it firmly within the family - the teacher family.  My blog attracts a worldwide readership and in turn I read blogs from Cork to California, Texas to Tenby and Melbourne to Mayo.  Most importantly I gain a lot in the professional development sphere and hopefully give a little.
But education is a complex set of relationships and our bad press rarely is a spill over from the
teacher - teacher dynamic.
With long summer holidays just around the corner we'll definitely be the focus of a few talk radio shows and a vocal anti teacher brigade.
In reply we tend to bite our tongues and  just wait for it all to blow over but aren't communication and marketing the key to every profession's success?  Why do we teachers tend to keep some of our best efforts all within the family?  Blogging, tweeting and pinning to each other around the clock and around the world is just not enough anymore.   We're getting things done in new, dynamic ways and hardly letting the news outside the virtual staff room
Making a brief foray outside that virtual staff room I recently blogged while in a five day school trip.  Understandably the parents of the 11 and 12 year olds, some of them on their first nights away from home ever, were a little nervous of sending their babies off to the wilds of Donegal on a short Irish language course in the great Coláiste na Rosann
Yes, and despite advice to the contrary, they had their mobile phones firmly in hand but still.......
Well, blogging filled that gap.  Reassurance straight from the horse's mouth so to speak.  The blog gave them a daily blow by blow account, with the photographic evidence, of what their offspring were up to and yes, they still had all their limbs!

The blog was hugely popular and as our school has quite an international flavour it went global.  In less than 100 hours it had 1,400 page views across 11 countries and still growing!  Tweeting leading up to each post at the day's end gave the whole process an enormous energy.
For those few days we were most definitely a community.
Communication is key for every profession and so is marketing.  The teaching profession never more so.  We are proactive, dynamic and working all hours so let's tell the world outside the staff room.
Blogging ticks all the boxes and it's fun!
You can read the Donegal blog here.

It's a question that never goes away:

How best to help children maximise their learning?

Yes, suitable resources, technology, sound teaching practices, the best teacher training, a good school environment and parental support matter but as the old saying goes 'you can bring a horse to water but you can't make him drink!'

And you can't make children learn.

At our school we have spent some time thinking about how best to foster independent learning. We felt it was a much bigger matter than simply acquiring a set of skills such as the ability to do fractions.  

Every day we witnessed children's learning being inhibited by other factors .

Some life skills were decidedly underdeveloped.

We were spending more and more time dealing with matters outside the core of teaching and learning - lost books, forgotten homework, petty disputes, indifference, lack of self awareness, communication difficulties - the list could go on and on.  

A group of teachers put together some ideas, surveyed the whole staff (using google docs) and now we have a set of agreed priorities that as a staff we have been  implementing across the whole school.

Google Docs made the survey easily available to all teachers.  And collating of results is done for you!

Now our students get a cohesive, simply understood message from each teacher every day.

So how did we go about it?

First off, we asked all teacher to prioritise the following skills:

• independence of thought and learning
• respect for oneself, the authority of the teacher, fellow students and the school environment
• personal responsibility for one's behaviour, attitude and conduct
• organisational skills in relation to time-management, belonging, homework and learning
• problem solving, abstract and higher order thinking

All very important and of course inter-related but we couldn't tackle all at once.  The teachers voted to first deal with organisational skills and independence of thought and learning.

After a lot of brainstorming we brought these down to two very simple mnemonics. 

S C A T and R A P 

SCAT (meaning 'go away') is what we teachers tell students when they approach us for help - in cases where we know a task has been adequately explained and modelled but the student's listening skills, concentration or motivation might be lacking.  We recognise it might not go down well in those classrooms where teachers like children to work in silence - but a busy buzz or work chat are surely preferable to stagnation!

S - stop and think!

C - check around you, what are others doing?

A - ask a classmate

T - teacher is a last resort

R A P encourages the children to think before they belt out the classroom door at the end of the day.

      R  - Record

A - and 

P - Pack

Simply put - have they noted down their homework and packed the correct books?

Of course SCAT and R A P mean different things in different classes.  Younger children will still need support as will those students who genuinely struggle with organisation, listening or concentration.

And this is not a quick cure.  It will require a lot of perseverance on the teachers' parts and parental support too.

The good news is SCAT and R A P have caught the imagination of the students and they have even been moved to compose their own raps to go with them!  For other students making posters or 
Powerpoints have given them ownership of the terms. 

No one is foolish enough to think we have invented a 'cure all'.  We have made a start while knowing for sure, in education, nothing lasts for ever!  

Will having Honours Maths in the Leaving Certificate make you a better Maths teacher in Primary school?

On the face of it - 'NO'!  Second Class and I will not, any time soon, be exploring this:

Solve the simultaneous equation:

 X + Y +  Z = 16

  5/2X + Y + 10Z = 40    

2X + 1/2Y + 4Z = 21

                                                      

           

On the other hand the ability to reason, think conceptually, problem solve, sequence, think in the abstract and apply rigorous proofs - well those skills will never go amiss in a classroom.

So maybe the answer is 'YES!'

Or maybe we are asking the wrong question.

If you are as old as I am and remember back to the introduction  of the 1999 curriculum and the amazing buzz created around Maths.  The professional development courses which accompanied the curriculum changes set us alight with ideas and we all returned to the classrooms as reformed Maths teachers. 

We didn't need Honours Leaving Certificate Maths to teach the new curriculum.  We needed time, willingness to change, leadership and professional development. 

And we needed it to be ongoing.

Out with the books!

In with the manipulatives!

But it didn't last.  Slowly we drifted back to the ways of old.

'Quiet please.  Take out your Maths books.'

(Groan from class)

So what can we do now?

Re-introduce the centrality of  continuous professional development.  If you are reading this you are a Twitter user and therefore regularly connecting with your world wide Personal Learning Network to develop new thinking and use old and new, tried and tested, crowd sourced Maths teaching strategies.  

The Department needs to get in on this - embrace the changes, encourage, share know how and generally show leadership.  And the great news is that crowd sourced Personal Learning Networks are free! 

We need an IT curriculum from the early years.  

Children should be taught in  a structured, hierarchical  In my school we introduced extra curricular IT and coding.  Parents lined up to explain that their child was already a computer genius.  But the truth is that most children are genius at gaming. They have a lot to learn.  Children who develop programming or coding skills develop Maths skills in tandem.  They also learn that failure means 'keep going' and  that requires perseverance and resilience - and all teachers know important those skills are especially when it comes to problem solving in Maths.

There is a cultural and familial context for Maths.  

Parents regularly come to me and ask,

 'How can we help with maths?'

They quite often and self consciously add that they weren't much good at Maths themselves or they hated it or they had a terrible teacher.  And I say 'Yeah!  Me too!'  And then I ask them questions such as:

Does your child set the table at home?  Do you pair off the knives and forks?  Count the plates?  Work out how long it will take to cook dinner and what else could be done in that time?

Do you play board games regularly?  Do you ensure that your child loses sometimes?  Yes, loses. 

Do you sent them upstairs with a list of things to bring down?

Take them to the supermarket and discuss the value, size, expense of an item?

Do they ever have to work out the change?  Do they know what change is? (I've discovered a lot of children more readily understand the concept of 'cash back'!)

I could go on forever.  Maths in the form of sequences, time, numbers, strategies, failure, is all around us.

But, quite often, parents really want to know

 'What book can I buy to improve his Maths?'

'Books are important, I reply, 'they are what you use for practice when you understand the concept.'

Give more time and resources to Maths in schools.

Fact: Up to 30% of Finnish students receive extra help with Maths in the early years. As an experienced teacher I can see how that works.  It's simply a matter of one teacher not being enough at times.  Not just in the explaining, support mode but also in assessment.  Getting down and dirty with Maths, using manipulatives and IT each and every day, differentiating teaching and learning must all be observed, conclusions must be drawn and action plans for improvement made. I frequently tell the story of the student who made it to fifth class, getting good results in Maths but had no understanding of base 10.  Could add, subtract, multiply and divide with aplomb but had no concept of tens and units.  It mattered.  Because when it came to adding and subtracting Time - where base 10 is not the default concept - she simply couldn't do it.  And since she was doing so well - on paper - no one noticed her lack of basic Maths' knowledge.

                                                             30% extra help = SUCCESS

Teachers need to plan for change too.

How often do we education professionals, working in the field of small children and adolescents  equate complete quiet in the classroom, books on the table, pencils in hand and look of puzzlement on faces with success in the classroom?
We shush the children into complete quietness, getting a glow of satisfaction when they are all doing their book when the maths classroom should be buzzing with activity and conversation.  

There is a time for quiet work with the books - when the learning is done.

The HOW TO of greater success in Maths is easy.  

Honours Maths imposed from the top?  Naw!

Let's have some Honourable Action from the bottom up!

Why every child should do religion

For the second class I teach religion is one of their favourite subjects.  We light the candle and immediately fall quiet. That moment is in stark contrast to so much of our day. We settle in, listen to each other more respectfully and even the quietest amongst us shyly proffers a little something.  Indoctrination to any great extent - well I don't see that as my role.  I leave that to the experts.  For First Communion, to take an example, each dioceses has a perfectly good system parish based programme with the greater emphasis rightly on the links between home and parish.

So what do the children get out of religion class?  What do we get out of it together?

Religion class is great for a chat, a walk down memory lane, glimpses into the future, to find out something about someone that we didn't know before.  All of us get a great sense of ourselves and of others - and that's impossible in Maths class! In fact there is little other chance to encourage reflection and meditation at school or at home.
For that little while there is great warmth among us and for me an overwhelming sense of having facilitated some good.
If our class never went beyond that  - well that would be enough.  But there are more reasons to study religions, many, many more than reasons not to.

"That is God."

"-What?" Mr Deasy asked.

"-A shout in the street," Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders.

Ulysses, Chapter 2

A knowledge of religions underlies the understanding of great literature, art and of ancient cultures - Yeats, Joyce, Shakespeare (just in English), Michelangelo, Caravaggio, the Egyptians, - the list is as long as the history of the human race.
To know the cultures of others - their art, literature and beliefs - is to find a cultural context for themselves in this crazy world where all certainties are up for grabs. Symbols - as simple as a supermarket candle-  guide the way to the more complex symbolism each and every one of us encounters, every day.
From a young age all children should also come to see that all religions bear some responsibility historically and now, for wars, inequalities and bigotry.

And whatever our creed the impulse to give thanks and to forgive is profoundly human not religious.

Our little democratic ritual - everyone gets to light the candle at some point - has fostered a love of ritual, again so culturally important and personally enriching.  

We wouldn't be without it!

Time to Crack some Holiday Eggs?

• Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/midiman/125332356/

Just a thought or two on the Easter holidays.....why are they at Easter?
The advantages to year on year fixed term times between Christmas and Summer surely should prompt a rethink.  Isn't it is time to rid ourselves of a pre-secular, pre-industrial not to mention pre-tech societal footprint on our increasingly demanding school year?
Most children know little of agricultural life other than it involves cute baby lambs - but their school year is still defined by it.  Likewise they know more about the life and times of the Easter Bunny than the birth and death of Jesus. Whatever the rights and wrongs of it, Easter is now a commercially driven, fortnight long chocolate fest.
Teachers and students would benefit from a planning calendar with defined lengths to each term - and for the long stretch from Christmas to summer to be sliced in two depending on the appearance of the first full moon after the March equinox has no educational foundation whatsoever.  Following this pattern - laid down in 325 A.D. -   makes a mockery of the science of learning.
For older students - and their teachers -  taking state examinations in early summer the psychological effects of a short summer term after a late Easter are enormous and potentially quite detrimental.
Younger students would also benefit from a more predictable rhythm to the school year.
Taking the holidays out of Easter doesn't mean taking the Christianity out of the school programme  - the Easter story will retain its importance for those who choose so.
It is a change long overdue - and it's hard to make an omelette without cracking some eggs !

Making Kids Cheer for Irish

Selfies -as Gaeilge!

In our school we collaborate endlessly -mostly online- to make Irish fun, relevant and productive. Early on in our efforts, which began a number of years ago, we vowed to adopt only student centric lesson plans and to critique every idea we have on that basis and that basis alone.  We also vowed to review all lessons -if they don't work for the students then they are unceremoniously dumped.  The fact that we work so much online means each of us can add and subtract from lesson plans at will.  If I have a brainwave over breakfast - well the iPad is never far from hand.  We post comments, look at changes each of us have made and ensure the progression of a topic up through the years.
It makes for pretty seamless Irish language teaching and learning - or for any other language for that matter.  
This week we wrote stories about ourselves - the usual 'Mé Féin' scéal.
Except we called them 'Selfies -as Gaeilge'.
Ah, rebranding - it really works.
Then it was out to the yard with our 6 iPads and working in groups, each student had their few minutes of fame - relayed back to them in technicolor glory on the big screen (the whiteboard).  
They were all totally engaged.  The mere facts they were holding an iPad and making a video were worth many thousands of words.  We encouraged them to dress up for the shooting and to use props relating to their hobbies.  They brought anything from riding crops to camogie sticks. 
In short, it worked.

Ten Year Olds are Wowed by 3D Printers!

Sited on back to back campuses our moderately sized primary school enjoys a special relationship with Ireland's largest university.  For many students a journey which begins in our Kindergarten ends in that very university.
We don't exist in its shadow, we exist in its promise.
This week our computer study class - enthusiastic Scratch addicted 10 year old boys and girls - were invited to the university to see some 3D printers in action.
We descended like a cackling flock of hungry geese on the hushed halls of academia whose tenants were kind enough to smile at our enthusiasm.
Ushering us into a conference room, they judged the moment just right and immediately delivered the wow factor - the printers were already humming.     A scaled model of the Sydney Opera House, a button and some letters of the alphabet were scattered on the tables.
Then followed a brief demonstration on how to use SketchUp to design a 3D form, send the design to the printer software and begin the printing process.
Within minutes children who love to groan at the very mention of a Maths book were using virtual protractors, measuring angles, calculating millimeters, trying out circles for the size of their radii and transforming 2D shapes to 3D forms.
Then to have the opportunity to export those designs to the printer - well the sky's the limit!
I see a bright future for 3D printers in education - transforming what can be a very flat model of skills acquisition into one of many dimensions.

C is for Code

The most popular Maths station in my class at the moment?  The Coding Station - though symmetry did give it a good run for its money!  And before you think, well this is not for me, I don't know coding - neither did I!  I got one or two steps ahead of the students at the beginning and now journey along with them.

Why do it?  Well, talk about making Maths relevant usually throws up the truism that it needs to relate to the real world.

 For the 7 and 8 year olds in my class, technology is the real world.  Unlike adults - some - who are still in awe of it, they never question its relevance, usefulness or pervasiveness!

I am lucky enough to have an iPad for each of the children working at that station on any particular day and have structured the stations so that the  Coding Station is a weekly experience for every child. Having researched some of the apps available, I settled on Hopscotch as being most suitable for the age group.  Though we will use other apps as we go along. 

Initially the children played around with the app - the novelty of having an iPad was hugely motivating but it was noticeable how they randomly selected programming blocks and, I suspected, didn't make connections between individual commands and effect. They were just having fun. 

Fun is a great motivator.  They wanted to know more.  They wanted to produce something meaningful.

The Task Cards 

For each student to have a specific objective during each lesson I made some tried and tested Task Cards. Incorporating curriculum objectives was easy:

Higher Order Thinking 
Reasoning
Logic
Sequence 

and I threw in............. 

Shapes 

for good measure. 

The cards are numbered and the tasks progressively challenging. Step by step instructions guide the students onto completing programmes in which they draw shapes - triangles, squares and rectangles to begin.  Later tasks challenge them to finish an incomplete programme.  To do this they have to think in smaller, sequential and manageable steps - exactly the skills they need when tackling: 

Problem Solving 

Observing the students in those first days of coding was a little nerve wracking.  Were we wasting precious time?  They treaded gingerly at first - almost afraid to try new things, in case they got it wrong. 

The fear of being wrong is a great inhibitor and a barrier to learning. 

Well, coding has fairly debunked that notion once and for all.  

Collaboration is key.  Before coming to me for help, the students have first to approach their fellow students. The class now has some acknowledged experts, including some who have grown in confidence with the social currency they have gained!

Recording Maths activities is central to mathematical development so each Task Card comes with a worksheet.  

Coding is the new literacy and collaboration encourages communication.  Simply talking through problems and solutions - well that's simply: 

Deep Learning. 

At home technology can be the source of tension between parents and kids.  Parents boast that  their offsprings are whizz kids, secretly wish that they will be the next Steve Jobs,  while simultaneously lamenting the loss of childhood to computer screens.  Kids are self declared computer experts but it is mostly the case that their expertise relates to gaming tools.

Technology in school must be a positive, productive experience with an acknowledged learning outcome.

Coding ticks all the boxes!

Annette Black

'I want to do really hard work - in a book!' shouted Jane.

The truth was Jane and her partner had just discovered Venn Diagrams for themselves - at seven.  

In a relaxed and productive Maths session she and John had worked, chatting away - we call it Work Chat and you are allowed as much of it as you need - while sorting through some number cards from 0 to 100.  

The Maths session got off to a great start when I produced the equipment for each pair:

• 2 hoola hoops (borrowed from the gym)
• number cards 1 -100
• work cards ( you can view mine here.)

The work cards aimed to consolidate the children's number sense and to provide challenges for those ready to move on. 

Easy tasks included sorting the cards into odd and even numbers. One child was in charge of one hoop - for the odd numbers, the other for the hoop - for the  even numbers, so each had a designated task.   I chatted with the pairs at work and together we wondered who would have the most cards and how many each might have.  When the task was completed the children were asked to find any number patterns - which they duly did.  When they finished I sent them to look at the large 100 Square hanging on the classroom wall and to see how they could relate what they had just done to a different visual format.

Success!

Many curriculum objectives had been fulfilled including:

• Estimation
• Number
• Pattern
• Sorting and Categorising

John and Jane - both  bright children - worked happily on sorting the cards into those greater than 20 and those less than 20.  We discussed who would have the most cards, they wondered where 20 would go as it was neither more or less than itself.  They told me the only way to work it out was to get on with the task.

Minutes later and with every card but one laid out in the hoops  before them they puzzled over 20 which Jane held in her hand.  I hovered, waiting to scaffold an answer is necessary.

More or less together they decided in a Eureka! moment to lay it between the two hoops.  

But in the physical act of doing so, it occurred to Jane to do this instead:

Another curriculum objective ticked:  

• Higher Order Thinking

Jane and John were utterly thrilled to discover this and their enthusiasm and example inspired all the others working at similar tasks.  Soon the floor was littered with Venn Diagrams!   Jane declared she had seen it before somewhere.  They went on last week to discover the relationships between counting in 5s and 10s and consolidating their grasp of   

• times tables

This week they will look at patterns while counting in 3s and 6s, then 6s and 9s.  I would like them to come up with this while looking at counting in 3s: (each column adds to 3, 6 or 9)

 3              6           9

12            15         18

21            24         27

30            33         36

More complicated in one sense, yet easier as it is entirely visual is the pattern which can emerge while counting in 6s: 

 0          6          12          18         24

30        36         42          48         54

                                                      60        66

While counting in 9s is simplicity itself - each number in the pattern adds to 9!

But I'm waiting to see.  Maybe they will have other ideas, perhaps I will have to scaffold a bit or we can share ideas.  I know both John and Jane and many others in the class are capable of grasping it.  But you see they a little stuck on this notion that hard work comes in a book.  

Parents, educators, society in general has long subscribed to the notion that children, sitting at a desk in communal silence, scratching away on a book with a well chewed pencil while a deep frown takes root on their little faces is a sign of hard work.  And only with that type of hard work will success come. 

Nah!  It comes with hoola hoops!

Annette Black

                 

Seven Year Olds, Maths and Higher Order Thinking - Mutually Exclusive?

Of course, the answer is 'No!'

But with a proviso - or two.

At seven, John or Jane has school comfortably sussed, knows what is expected of him or her and with indulgent encouragement from teachers and parents dishes it up in various measures.  

When it comes to Maths, there can be hiccoughs along the way, a groan or two when the Maths' books are called for - but  hey, there are only four things you really need to know how to do - add, subtract, multiply and divide.  You can even make that two, once you see the relationship between adding and subtraction, multiplication and division.  

So how hard can Maths be?

And then comes higher order thinking.

It begins with word problems.  Unsuspecting seven year olds can easily polish off the first few:

Seven birds were perched in a tree.  Three more came along.  How many were there altogether in the tree?

You can scaffold the process - colourful, interactive flipcharts, sticky dickie birds for everyone's little fingers and amusing role plays.

Gradually though, a little more oiling of Poirot's little grey cells is called for:

?     ?     ?     ?     ?

John  is eight.  Jane is seven years older.  How old is Jane? 

You use the word detective strategy.  What are the key words?  Which key words prompt you to add or subtract?

Some instinctively get it. Some Johns and Janes get it with a little help.  For others - a sizeable portion - it will be blood, sweat and tears throughout the most important and formative period of their life.  

And they still won't get it. 

?   =    :-(  

Wise and experienced teachers scratch their heads.  Staff room discussions are many. New ideas are pounced upon, quickly and expertly acted upon but soon after everyone is scratching heads again. 

Just like me.

Truly objectively looking at the problem while wearing my mathematicians hat, examining all the data carefully and using my own higher order thinking skills this answer was formulating itself:

Higher order thinking cannot be taught.  It is an innate skill.  You have it or you don't.

Gradually, though this paradox unwound and I realised:

Higher order thinking cannot be taught.  It must be discovered.  By everyone, for themselves. 

For two years now in my classroom Maths has been a voyage of discovery.  A busy, noisy, action packed time of the day in which old fashioned counters, technology and text books are used in equal measure and  to which everyone looks forward.

And I'd like to share it, so that it can be further tried and tested.

And changed.

Next Week's Post: 

Jane seeks a lifebuoy!

Jane Grapples with Self Reliance and Discovery

'I want to do really hard work,' shouted Jane,  'in a book'.