Teach-Primary-Issue-19.3

Take a leaf out of scientific experimentation’s book and conquer the Everest of maths teaching... I believe that great progress has been made in the last 10 years in maths teaching: we represent concepts using the CPA approach (concrete, pictorial, abstract); retrieval practice helps to consolidate learning and improve recall; and we have different strategies for building reasoning into daily lessons. Maths leaders promote consistent approaches to teaching and learning, helping children to make progress. However, there is one aspect of maths that children can still find so difficult – answering word questions. Despite our reminders to read the question carefully , children often choose the incorrect operation, misunderstand an important word, or forget part of a two-step question. In the Ofsted report ‘Coordinating mathematical success’ ( tinyurl.com/tp-Of- stedMathsSuccess ), point 92 stated that, ‘In some schools… children’s only exposure to solving mathematical problems was through answering the final few questions of a predominantly procedure-focused exercise. Often, many pupils did not reach this stage of the exercise.’ It is important, therefore, that we dedicate time to teaching our pupils to answer word questions. Just as we have a clear vision for how children become mathematically fluent, I believe it is important to have the same clarity about how we teach pupils to answer these kinds of problems. What does it mean for children to read the question carefully ? And how can we teach them so that they learn to do so? Spot the difference One tool that can be extremely powerful is to use pairs of ‘minimally different questions’, where children answer a pair of questions that have minor but important differences. First, pupils spot the differences between the questions. Then, their attention will be drawn to the significance of these differences. Consider this pair of ‘minimally different’ questions: (a) Jen has 6 grapes. Amy has 4 more grapes than Jen. How many grapes does Amy have? (b) Jen has 6 sweets. Jen has 4 more sweets than Amy. How many sweets does Amy have? We note the similarities: the names are the same, the numbers are the same, and even the word ‘more’ is the same. However, the questions have different answers! How can this be? When we read question (b) carefully, we see that Jen has more sweets than Amy. This means that Amy has less than Jen . We subtract, even though the word ‘more’ is used. This highlights why we have to read all the information in a question, rather than focusing too narrowly on what we consider to be the ‘key words’. The solutions to both questions can be shown with counters or with a bar model. Look to science There is a parallel between the use of minimally different questions and how we carry out a science experiment. In a science experiment, we change one variable and keep all the other variables constant. This places a spotlight on the effect of changing this one variable. The same principle applies here. Similarly, consider this pair of questions, deliberately used together to highlight the key differences in wording: Please read the question CAREFULLY GARETH MET CALFE “Pairs of mininmally different questions can be powerful” 34 | www.teachwire.net