A New Year and a New Grade

I am starting a new experience this year and I can`t wait for it to begin.  I am making the brave switch from seven years in junior to grade two.  I can`t wait to share all of the cool experiences and the learning that I am pretty sure we will both (students and more importantly me) be doing.

As I have often expressed in my other posts, change is a good thing.  Want I am really looking forward to is the excitement that primary students bring to learning.  I think this is just the coolest thing ever when their light bulbs go off and they have experienced something new and exciting.

I hope to do a better job at posting then I did last year.  You can also check out our students blog site at: www.kidblog.org/MrSosGradetwos.

Reflection on Classroom Practise and the types of Talk moves/ Questions I ask

I am in the process of analysing my research for my thesis.  My thesis is on the impact my questioning had on student learning of fractions.  I was quite surprised at the amount of questions I asked and the types of questions I asked.

 Have a look at the chart below:

Types of Questions	Amount of Times Asked	Talk Move	Big Idea	Both	Doesn’t initiate any discussion
T- Building on	49 (16.9%)		49
T- Introduce new strategy that has not been developed	14 (4.8%)		14
T- direct teaching	27 (9.3%)				27
T- Go Beyond	75 (25.8%)		75
T-Compare	2 (.68%)		2
T- Initiation- response- evaluation	7 (2.4%)				7
T- Interrogation	73 (25.2%)	23 (31.5%)	50 (68.5%)
T- question unclear	3 (1%)				3
T- Scafolding	32 (11%)		32
T- shares strategy	8 (2.7%)	8
Total of Questions:	290 (49.3%)	31 (10%)	222 (74%)		37 (12.8%)
T- Air Misconceptions	27			27
T- answering with another question	32			32
T- Echo's students words	15	15
T- Letting students just talk	9	9
T- Monitoring students	22		22
T- no confirmation/ in order to push beyond	14			14
T- relate back to context	7		7
T- relate to other problems	11		11
T- Revoicing	39			39
T- Student revoicing	5			5
T- Think, Pair, Share	19			19
T-Wait Time	27			27
T- Checking for understanding	71			71
Total of Talk Moves	298 (50.7%)	24 (8%)	40 (13%)	234 (78.5%)
Totals altogether	588	55 (9.4%)	262 (44.5%)	234 (39.8%)	37 (6.3%)

The chart is split into two different groups Questions (in black) and Talk moves (in red).  I tallied all of them together and in a three week unit I ask or did a total of 588 talk moves/questions.  This first of all surprised my that I ask or did so much.  Most of the time we often think of teaching as just standing there and lecturing, not getting the student involved.  however, that wasn't the most surprising stat.  What really got me going was that even though I may have done more talk moves then asked questions the majority of these actions were related to a big idea.  I wasn't just trying to get the kids to talk about the subject, I wanted them to articulate a big idea of point in mathematics.

So I ask you to think about your practise.  What types of questions are you asking?  What are you doing to make your students talk?  What is the majority of your time in a unit spent on?  Just some things to reflect on.