Antoinee’s experience I work with learners who have learning difficules. I tried out three acvies from the original case studies. What I did: Acvity 1-­‐ Data Handling


From the case studies I took the idea of doing a project-­‐based survey exercise to help students beer understand how to display data and how to compile and read graphs. Students carried out a survey in the centre. They chose the survey topic (the use of social media), the quesons and who they would interview. Aer the survey they came back into the classroom, collated the data and incorporated the informaon into a spreadsheet. Together they chose the best kind of chart to display their findings.


What I learned about myself as a praconer: Acvity 1-­‐ Construcvist approaches


Carrying out this acvity, and reading the approaches to teaching in the NALA report, encouraged me to reflect crically about my approach to teaching maths. Now I always endeavour to adapt a construcvist approach. This encourages learners to ask quesons and work collaboravely with the material, with each other and with the tutor. This data handling acvity helped me remember that the more involved the students are, the greater the level of their understanding is likely to be. Now, while planning my lessons I reflect on student involvement, and ask myself, is there a possibility of creang a project-­‐based learning experience? Or, can I include paired work? And, how can I get students to ask quesons, especially of the maths? For example, which type of chart will display my findings best? Why do we do this? What if I change the number — what will happen to the answer?


What I did: Acvity 2-­‐ Number Order


This was a new group of students who hadn’t wrien down or worked with numbers since leaving school many years previously. The acvity focused on place value and sequencing numbers. The students called out random numbers (from large whole numbers down to two decimal places) and the task was to write up the numbers on the white board with the correct place values, and then on paper in pairs to put them in ascending order.


What I learned about myself as a praconer: Acvity 2-­‐ Peer learning


Again, this acvity highlighted to me the value of student involvement and peer work to increase the quality of the learning experience. Previous to this I may have chosen numbers for the students to order but from this exercise I have come to see how allowing the students get involved in creang the material greatly increases their interest and ulmately their learning. Where possible now I try to include an element in all my maths classes where students are involved in providing the material.


What I did: Acvity 3-­‐ Measurement


I asked students to use a tape to measure a table and a sofa. Inially they didn’t know how to hold the tape or where to start reading the measurements. I showed them how to hold and read a tape and how to measure the length, width and height of the furniture.


What I learned about myself as a praconer: Acvity 3 -­‐ Teachable moments


This acvity helped me as a tutor to understand the idea of capturing ‘teachable moments’. Although this inial acvity was to learn to use a measuring tape correctly, during the class the students started to discuss the need to measure the doorway to make sure the sofa could fit through the space. We then went on to measure the sofa and the classroom doorway and used the Argos catalogue to pick out sofas we could and couldn’t fit through. This showed me that, where appropriate, branching off from the main topic to answer students’ praccal quesons can provide very meaningful learning experiences.


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