Measurement: Planning the Tramp

Planning the Tramp

In this task, I took the following information out: the average speed, the scale with the distance operationalised, rates info relating to average speed and the rest break times.
Why? because I wanted to  so to speak, "open the task up" and create more real, authentic learning opportunities with a focus on problem solving and the strategies used therein. I wanted them to think more and ask/create Questions to find out useful information that could help them solve this.

So the students themselves made decisions about this stuff and let them go for it. Along the way we had some interesting discussions about how long the tramp would take. Having calculated how long the tramp would take based on their own measures they had calculated that the tramp would take between 17 to 20 hours, this of course, created much debate about whether or not this was practical and/or realistic to achieve in a day. Further discussions were then created about which measure would have to change.

Sustainability & Conservation

Responding to texts

As part of out theme of Sustainability and Conservation, we (room 10) have been interacting with oral, visual and multimedia texts, This learning has included using reading strategies that involve making meaning of texts at both the literal and inferential level: what's right there in the text and what's not, requiring us to think some more and understand the context (the situation) in which the author is trying to communicate a message.

This has meant improving our own understanding that "Good Readers" connect to a text, activating their prior knowledge - feelings, thoughts, experiences, questions - in order to make meaning. We have been actively sharing these responses and responding to oral, visual and multimedia texts, sharing/discussing our different understandings and connections.

Geometry and Measurement

This term our learning focus is on measurement, with my own emphasis on integrating the geometry strand, so that the strands are not taught in isolation.

What follows is part one and two of a teaching sequence with some evidence of learning conversations, classroom activities and learning tasks that show the learning process.

The videos also hopefully highlight activating learners as instructional resources for one another – where getting students involved with each other in discussions and working groups can help improve learning.