Hi everyone,
What a beautiful sunny bank holiday Monday.
While I spent time yesterday preparing and planning work for the week, today I took time out to read in the sunshine and it was blissful. I am now catching up on emails and sending out individual plans for some of my pupils for the week ahead. We have a Maths theme for the Family Challenge this week which I hope will work well.
Over the last few weeks I have been using the Problem Solving Activity Books from Gill Education with my class. We had PDST training in school from a member of their STEM team and they outlined how we all use the RUCSAC approach, but the children will still struggle with identifying which method to apply and how to solve the problem.
So I decided to plan out a strategy a week for the children, ideally if I started in September it would be a strategy a month. This week I am focusing on the strategy Working Backwards and my class can access the ebook on Teams.
I like these books as it is purely focused on the Problem Solving approach on that particular week. There is a new strategy introduced in the book every 6 weeks. In the other weeks it focuses on Strand Units from the Maths Curriculum. It is an ideal workbook for home or even for the classroom.
Each day has three levels of questions, bronze, silver and gold. The questions get increasing difficult to allow for differentiation in the class. Some children may focus on the bronze questions only. There are ideas for group work and pair work and also for the children to self assess their learning at the end of the week. Ideally it would be best in class setting for discussion and group work but for the moment it is bringing structure to my day. Further information on these books can be found on Gill Explore website.
As part of the problem solving strategies I am also using the nrich website and setting them some of those puzzles too which directly link to the strategy each week. There are different levels to challenge your class.
If you have any questions on these books or resources send me a DM
Stay Safe
Aistear Muinteoir
Aistear Múinteoir 