Inquiry - Beginning of term 1

This year, for my inquiry I am looking into my teaching practice in mathematics. I am interested in looking into how I am currently teaching maths, and how I can be making changes to my practice to best benefit my learners. 

Throughout 2016, I became aware of the amazing opportunities digital technologies are able to provide to redefine teaching of mathematics. I also realised that many learners are able to confidently answer mathematical problems when given scaffolding in group situations, however cannot always provide the same explanations when working independently or solving problems without scaffolds.

Ideas to investigate this year during my inquiry could include looking into the power of multi-modal learning in mathematics (use of audio and visual, tactile experiences to explain thinking), ability to self reflect, and development of strategies to use when working independently. 

In terms of my practice, I could look into learning experiences I am providing to learners in class, how I am teaching strategies in group settings, and how I am supporting learners who are working independently (how I am teaching strategies which could be used independently).

Overcoming the Challenge of Attributing Images

Whenever I have to use an image online which is not my own, many thoughts go through my head: How should I be using it? How should I be attributing the author? Am I giving the author enough credit?

If we struggle with this onerous, yet necessary task, we can only imagine how our learners must feel!

As part of teaching our learners to be cybersmart, it is important that we are modelling the best practice. After much pondering and reflection over the first part of the summer, I decided to create a poster which I would be able to use in my year 5 class. I needed some way of simplifying the process for the learners to help it become an automatic and painless process. A disadvantage of the attributions provided through commons.wikipedia.org is that they do not include working links to related pages for the photo. This can easily be fixed by adding them in yourself.

The poster which I created demonstrates a simple, step-by-step process, including decisions learners may have to make when using images online: