Our middle year's Maths classes started the school year with a 'Week of Inspirational Maths'. These lessons engaged students in a variety of rich tasks that enabled them to inquire, problem solve, investigate patterns and further develop a growth mindset. A growth mindset is vital in mathematics as it enables students to work hard and to persevere when challenged.
Within the Maths Pathway Program, we encourage students to problem solve and seek help from many different sources when they are challenged by maths. Firstly, we encourage students to look at worked solutions and then work backwards to try and understand the problem. If this doesn’t quite help, students are also encouraged to watch a worked example in a video. From here if students are still challenged, they can be directed to peers who have already mastered the concept for support. Learning from peers is beneficial, not only for the student receiving the support, but also for the student providing it. It is when students have to explain their mathematical ideas, they are able to further cement their understandings. Students are also encouraged to seek help and guidance from their classroom teacher.
We do not expect that students can instantly grasp how to access these support aids. We work extensively with our students to help them build their skills. Over the last couple of weeks, we have implemented activities to help support building these skills. We find in Maths that when students try to watch a video for help, they watch it once and become frustrated because they still may not understand. We have implemented lessons where we show students how to learn from videos. This may include watching the video more than once and pausing the video while they work through the problem being solved. We have used origami and balloon animal videos to explicitly teach students skills for learning from videos.
If your daughter is struggling with her Maths homework, please ask her if she has watched the video and what she learnt from it, this may help her overcome the challenge she is facing.
Kim Thomas
Middle Years Coordinator/Maths Teacher
