Planning Around Us

I had the pleasure of doing some planning with the Primary Division at Wexford the other day, and since they have solid long range plans in math, we decided to focus on what some of the struggles they had teaching math.

We decided to use the Freyer Model to help us organize our thoughts around what the one thing was that we struggled with in math.  We placed that in the centre of the organizer.  Then we gave an example of what it looked like in our classroom, and what the "ideal" situation would look like.  The last section was for us to create "solutions" to our struggles.  Here are what our finished products looked like:

The best part of the activity was the rich discussion we had as a group talking about solutions to our struggles.  In our discussion we were able to offer support and advice to each other; provide examples of successful strategies; clear up misconceptions that we had about math; and really get a chance to learn from each other as we work towards student success.