???????? PRIMARY SCHOOL
Maths Smart Goals applicable to ALL Staff at ???? PS regardless of year level:
(not in hierarchical order)
1. Make all lessons in maths engaging for the students
2. Apply the lesson structure for maths on all occasions –
- Warm-up (5 – 20mins): engage the students
- Introduction (5 – 10mins): Identify and Articulate the maths to the students; outline the task; use a ‘kid demo’ if necessary; make your expectation of the students clear to them [this IS NOT teaching time].
- Student activity (25 – 35mins): this where explicit teaching at the point of need occurs – be mobile for maths; work one-on-one or take small focus groups as necessary or take the whole class for a mini-lesson if warranted/required.
- Share/reflection (5 – 10mins): essential students talk and/or write about their maths with the focus on what they found out not simply on what they did
3. At the beginning, during the introduction and throughout the lesson – place ‘key words’; on the board – with matching symbols (eg. multiply X) where possible.
[This is crucial in empowering students in maths and facilitates your requests to have children write and
talk about they found out in maths.]
4. Be ‘Mobile for Maths’; – provide immediate feedback.
[As a teacher be amongst your children, this way you can teach explicitly AND provide the immediate
feedback so central to improving student learning outcomes.]
5. Have high expectations of your students in maths.
[Children are highly capable at reasoning/thinking mathematically – expect it of them. The clear
implication here is that it is vital to allow the students to show you what skills/prior knowledge they
‘bring to the table’, rather then tell them what you know as a teacher. This is particularly relevant in the
lower grades – they are little – and/but highly capable.]
6. Plan sensibly and effectively
[sensibly by calculating as accurately as possible how many actual teaching days you have available in
each term; effectively by allowing days for revision; integrating maths into the Inquiry unit where
practicable and being aware of content areas of maths that can be integrated such as time and fractions
and 3D objects and volume/capacity.]
7. Develop (with other teachers at the same year level) units of work in maths that make the sensible and effective maths planning ‘come alive’;
8. Regularly use open-ended problems and activities to cater for the range of abilities in classrooms
[these should be evident in the developed units of work as should be the lesson structure]
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