Mr F noticed one child was having a bit of trouble with their maths. She was getting fairly basic things wrong and getting a bit down about it.
With a bit of focused assessment, Mr F. developed a theory. He hypothesized that this learner’s challenge with maths was not a lack of understanding about knowing what to do, but arose from a lack of confidence in knowing that she knew what she had to do and a lack of confidence in relying on that knowledge. So Mr F started to work with her frequently in small groups and occasionally 1:1 to see if together, they could get her smiling at numbers again.
Mr F supported her in recognizing the strategies she was currently using to answer problems. She quickly realized the strategies she was choosing to use were not working and got a bit more upset. She shared this upset with Mum and Mum asked Nan to pass on this message to Mr F, which Nan did.
Mr F. reassured Nan and told her he was well aware of the challenges and was already working on it. Being upset is part of the true learning process as it happens when we realise we cannot do something we want to be able to do. In year 2, we call it being ‘In the Pit’ . Mr F had seen his approach was starting to work so Mr F told Nan to tell Mum not to worry and hold the faith.
Working again with the learner, now the ineffective strategies were out of the way, Mr F showed a few new models that might be used to think about what the numbers were doing. Pretty quickly, this learner was laughing and smiling, confidently answering questions about numbers to the point she is badgering Mum to give her two digit numbers so she can play the games we have learned together.
This transformation was so obvious that, when it came to deciding who should get the Star Learner of the Week trophy, the class pretty unanimously suggested it should be her.
Really, really well done everyone. A great team effort.