Marubitshi: "learning talk"

The focus of this cell is “learning talk”. Through collaborative planning per grade we use Shayer lessons to challenge our children to be active thinkers, whose thinking can be enhanced and challenged by others. In today's lessons we provided opportunities for the children to work on real life problems as a group and come to their own understanding. We use the dedicate time for Maths in the classroom to focus their discussions on the planned Maths intervention. It is an integral part of our daily planning, not an added “onto” but added “into” our curriculum. Talk is encourage to help children to come to new ideas, make up their own minds, reason for themselves and play a part in another’s learning. As teachers we hope to model “learning talk”.

For example, can you explain it a bit more to help me understand?

Each lesson is divided into 3 episodes with episode 3 as the extension for differentiation. At present our lessons are about the Number System. We start off each episode with whole class instruction,followed by concrete preparation, before moving onto partner/group work, cognitive dissonance and ending with reflection as a whole class. Exit-tickets involved informal evaluation for formative assessment. Next week we will be teaching and observing the ”learning talk” of our children in these lessons.