Nikki Knight Talk

Today we had some Maths PD done by Nikki Knight. She talked about Modelling Books, Reflection Questions and Diagnostic Questions.

We looked at all of these things in depth and I took a lot out of this that I want to start using in my classroom.

For the most part my modelling books aren't bad. I'm putting in the dates and WALTs and who's there, but there are a few things missing. I knew they could be better, but today's session showed me some ideas that I'd like to use. For example, I saw some modelling books where students cut and pasted work in the book and where the teacher took pictures of the students working. Going through the Numeracy Project Books (the new Book 5) also gave me a really good resource for some diagnostic questions to use.

In discussions with other teachers we also talked about some interesting ways to do reflective questions after maths lessons (as opposed to just practicing the things they've learned).  I'm hoping to get a set of questions to ask students at the end of maths every day and get that up and running by the end of the week as that is not a difficult thing to do. In fact, I'm going to go do that now.

I'm also going to look to make the activities/questions more relevant to the children.  Looking at my modelling books (and thinking about what I've been doing), I realize I haven't been doing that as much as I could be.

I feel a bit energized to improve my maths lessons at the moment so the next step is to go and actually do some (or all) of these things).