Fractions, Decimals & Percentages Unit Overview

Here is a link to the mathematics unit I created and taught throughout the majority of my placement. Each activity was adapted to different learning needs and abilities, and activities were either added or modified as a result of formative assessment throughout the unit. The implementation of this unit was hugely successful and beneficial to all students' learning. This week we will be wrapping the unit up and doing a summative assessment, which will be used alongside the diagnostic assessment to make judgements about how students have progressed.

Fractions, Decimals & Percentages Unit

Week Six - Curriculum Areas Reflections & Assessment

It has become clear that students learning is progressing steadily in numeracy, however it seems to be more challenging in reading and writing. This could be due to the interest levels of students in these areas; they all enjoy maths and lack interest in writing. It is also a result of minimal full classroom days this week. On reflection, it is clear that next week needs to again have similar learning focuses in reading and writing (continuing with the thinking hats and wrapping up persuasive writing). In numeracy we can move forward into finding fractions of amounts and try to wrap up the fraction, decimal & percentage unit with a form of summative assessment.

In terms of my teaching, the biggest success was in getting group rotations sorted and finding a way to manage these effectively so I can maintain targeted group learning. In numeracy this has been very beneficial. I now need to work towards how I can improve targeted group learning and maximise their discussions and justifications within these sessions.

Here are links to the reflections and formative assessment in each main curriculum area.

Writing ; Reading ; Numeracy

Week Six Planning - Full Control

This week was a short week due to various interruptions resulting in only two full days in the classroom. Planning therefore continued from last week but with adjustments made based on progress and engagement from last week.

On Wednesday we were privileged to have a dance company perform Pasifika and Matariki shows to our school. The students loved these performances andused these to create a micro oral language unit that linked into our reading focus of using the thinking hats. We spent time after the performances using the jigsaw grouping strategy to use the thinking hats to interpret the messages behind the cultural performances. Each student loved the idea of learning through discussion and the various group activities maintained everyone's engagement for the entire afternoon.

Here are links to the weekly planning for each curriculum area, including the micro unit.

Micro Unit ; Reading ; Numeracy ; Writing ; Thinker's Writing Keys ; Weekly Overview

Week Five On-Going Curriculum Area Reflections & Assessment

Here are links to my reflections and formative assessment processes from week five planning. Multiple adjustments were made to original planning based on engagement levels and interruptions throughout the week. Overall these topics are taking longer than I plan for, so once again this weeks planning has overlapped into week six plans. Better to over prepare than under prepare!

Numeracy ; Writing ; Reading

Week Five - Full Control Planning

This week's overall topic continues on from last week - The NZ Flag Debate. I originally planned for this to only be a topic for one week, however all students were very interested in this topic and it worked really well with all learning focuses. It also became clear that there were gaps in their learning in some areas, so the original plans needed to be adapted and extended for another week. In reading we will continue reading articles about the debate but move the focus towards comparing and contrasting different viewpoints, and may try to use 'kahoot' to create quizzes on the debate. Writing will continue with creating a persuasive piece of the flag, but focus on setting individual goals and group assessing at the end of each session. Maths will focus on the survey and bar graphs they made last week about what our classroom thinks about the debate, whereby we will learn how to analyse and convert the data into fractions, decimals, and percentages. Inquiry will continue with the cultural music focus, with an aim of bringing that to an end this week and being able to move into sport next week. There should be plenty of variety and group work this week, ensuring engagement levels remain high and their achievement of all learning intentions persists.

Here are links to each area's weekly overview.

Reading ; Maths ; Writing ; Weekly Overview

Week Four - Curriculum Area Reflections & Assessment

Here are links to my on-going reflections and assessment for each major curriculum area - Reading, Writing, and Maths.

Writing ; Reading ; Maths

Week Four - Full Control Planning

I have begun full control, so my planning now consists of overall units that are split into weekly overviews. Here is an overview of my planning for the week for each main curriculum area. The topic focus this week is on the NZ flag debate. We are focusing on persuasive writing and will work towards writing a persuasive piece either for or against changing the flag. Within that they are reading articles about the debate to identify the author's opinion and reasoning. In mathematics we are learning about fractions, decimals & percentages, so at the end of our 3 days in class they will conduct surveys to see what each student believes and why, graph the data, and find percentages and fractions of their graphs. Many changes have occurred over this week already, so at the end of the week I will upload all of my on going reflections that have resulted in modifications being made to this planning.

Numeracy ; Reading ; Writing ; Whole Week Overview

Reflection On Students' Learning - Decimal Maths Unit

Here is a link to reflections from each lesson in the decimal unit.

Reflection One ; Reflection Two ; Reflection Three ; Reflection Four ; Reflection Five

Decimal Unit Plan

Here is a link to my first Maths unit for this practicum. It is based on an assignment for University that needs to focus on a 5 session unit around an aspect in number. My students are focusing on decimals and it is clear they are lacking knowledge to be able to apply this to additive strategies. The focus for this unit is to develop their knowledge of place value and extend them towards applying this in the additive strategy of place-value partitioning for addition and subtraction. I will carry out ongoing reflections to adapt and modify the following sessions. These reflections will be posted on here throughout the teaching sequence. 

Maths Unit Plan - Decimals

Examples from planning - Second Year

This is a unit I planned during my second year practicum working with year one students at St Mary's School Rotorua.

Year 2 planning - Measurement unit