My name's Mary Psaila. I'm a Grade Six senior unit teacher.
The students in my grade are very well-behaved, eager to learn...
Their abilities vary quite considerably.
I have students working well below the expected level
and well above the expected level.
I believe that by having open-ended questions,
a lot of open-ended work,
that caters to the differing abilities because if...
Rather than just having closed activities and you have to work out
different, you know, worksheets for different students,
if there's a rich question or a rich problem-solving activity
then the students enter at their level
and take it as far as they can take it.
In the lesson today you'll expect to see
students working at tables at their own pace
using a simple formula to turn numbers into palindromic numbers.
So they'll all be completing...
They might be doing different numbers and at their own pace,
and some will be challenged with harder numbers.
OK. You can write them backwards. Good. Good. Good.
Does anybody know what they're called?
-Molly? -CHILD: Palindromes.
Palindromes. Who's heard of a palindrome before?
What else can be a palindrome? Sage?
-CHILD: Numbers. -Numbers. Dates.
And somebody produced a little...some steps,
a little rule for making every number a palindrome,
and that's what you're going to be exploring today.
I'll always look at the resource and think, "OK, if I'm..."
and think of a particular student in mind
and what would that student need to complete the activity,
or how would that student perceive that activity,
and on the other extreme,
how would my student who is working well above expected level...
..how will that student be challenged and be engaged?
Oh, you're seeing the reversals here? Oh.
So you'll go 38, 83?
CHILD: Yeah.
MARY: Oh, OK. I haven't seen that before. That's good.
CHILD: And 29 and 92.
So if 29's worth testing, then 92 would be worth testing?
Eight plus two.
What's really important is that you're neat with this, OK?
It'll be 11, 22, 33, 44...
It goes diagonally like that
and then on the opposite side it goes diagonally like that and we are...
Have a bit of a conversation with your partner and explain -
before you explain to the whole class and to me -
explain why you've shaded in some numbers
and why you have left some numbers blank.
(CHILDREN CHATTER)
I think the lesson went fantastic today.
All the students were engaged and the students of differing ability
still entered the task enthusiastically
and were working at their levels.
I thought the lesson through,
in that I did want a whole-class focus to explain the process first
and for them to all understand the process,
experiment with working out
and actually having that time to work out which numbers are worth testing,
and then come back to the carpet and come to a consensus,
and then they went off and solved their numbers.
And I like the way that we finished off with the maths300 program
and the possibilities
of putting in any number they can imagine
and looking at the steps done for them on the computer program.
So next session they will have a laptop
and they will just experiment and explore with different numbers,
and I think they'll really respond to that and enjoy it.