Now I get it !!!

I was working in for a Gr 3 class earlier this year and part of the day required a maths lesson, which was fine by me as I just love teaching maths!

One boy in particular seemed to be having a very hard time trying to do his work and was very frustrated and starting to get angry.

The lesson was on subtraction, where renaming and trading was required.

As I sat with this boy and tried to see where his frustration was coming from, I asked him to show me what he had to do and to explain it as he went.

This immediately pinpointed his problem, as he said "We have to do it this way, but I just can't ever understand how to do it"

When asked if they were shown other ways, or encouraged to explore other ways, I got a very firm "NO"!

I could see that the language he was being told to use and the format was rather clunky and confusing, not just to him, but also to me, so I said "Let's try it another way".

The eyes bulged back at me, so I reassured him it would be okay.

With just a slight tweak in the language being used, and drawing a simple arrow to show what he had to do next, we did a few examples together, then I left him to try a few on his own.

After about 3 minutes I suddenly heard this excited squeal from across the room..."I get it now!!!!"

That just made my day, and reinforced a number of things.

* There is more than one way to complete maths problems

* We need to encourage children to explore multiple ways of completing tasks.

* If children are told to keep doing something in a manner that they do not understand, they will not understand it at all.

* If children are showing that they are having difficulty, talking with them gives them the opportunity to explain their thinking, rather than us looking only at the final product.

It was great to see the transformation with this boy during this lesson, and hopefully he will have approached the next lesson, and maths in general with a much more positive mindset.