July 9, 2013
Day 1, and we’re at our first school: Raffles Girls’ Primary School! After a subway, a bus, and a lot of walking, we’re still ½ hour early. They welcome us in and give us a bonus tour before our planned program.
Raffles [named after Sir Stamford Raffles (1781–1826), a British statesman, Lieutenant Governor of Java and founder of Singapore in 1819] was established in 1844. They have 2,000 students and over 100 teachers. Their morning session is for P3-P6, and P1 & P2 come in the afternoon (their school is being expanded starting next year). They are 1 of 9 schools in Singapore to have a Gifted program—based on an exam in P3, students are selected for this group of pupils whose curriculum is more challenging to push them farther. All other students are in heterogeneous classes, though Maths and Mother Tongue are separated by ability or, well, mother tongue :)
The first class of the day is a P4 (Primary 4= 4th grade) gifted group during mathematics. Unlike the other classes of 30+-40 students, gifted classes generally contain 20-25 students.
After a warm introduction from the class, the students go straight to work! They start a warm up that will help them summarize their previous lesson and reinforce prior knowledge needed for todays lesson. In groups of 4, they draw figures on big paper that follow a rule and rotate every 5 minutes:
Draw a figure that…
1) has only 1 pair of ⊥ lines.
2) has only 1 pair of perpendicular lines and 1 pair of parallel lines.
3) has 2 sets of perpendicular lines.
4) has only 1 pair of ⊥ lines and 2 pairs of ∥ lines.
5) has 2 pairs of perpendicular lines and 2 pairs of ∥ lines.,
Students were not allowed to repeat a figure.
Some of the papers had the word written, while others used the symbol…what a great way to reinforce the connection right out of the gate!
Students all referenced their notes during this activity. They were all organized differently. Later, we asked how students learn to take notes. The teacher said that students are guided, but expected to write down what is important for them. This high expectation for students was repeated throughout the day.
After 15 minutes, students came to sit on the floor. They discussed various figures and noted similarities. The teacher asked questions like:
1) Do these figures share similar properties?
2) Could you create a __ sided figure with these properties?
3) (When a student questioned the validity of a response): How many of you do not accept that response? Why?
This type of questioning was exciting to hear, as were the responses from the students; they were using higher level language and explaining their thinking!
Ten minutes later, they were diving into the lesson of the day. Students were asked to explore the possible number of points of intersection from differing number of lines:
No. of lines | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | n |
Possible no. of intersection | 0,1 | 0, 1, 2, 3 |
|
|
|
|
Max no. of points | 1 |
|
|
|
|
|
They began by drawing examples on the board. Questions and comments that stood out to me from the teacher included:
1) “Based on ____, are there any properties that____?”
2) “Based on ____, is there any relationship between ____ and ____?”
3) “It is important to explore this and look for relationships between…”
4) Writing a word bank on the board, “Write key words first”
While students were working as a whole class, the teacher pushed their thinking by noting “I said lines, not line segments” and “She says this has two points of intersection, I say there are three. Why do I think that?” Students were obviously comfortable with making mistakes, and looking to their classmates to help them solve problems. It was also clear by the way she interacted that the teacher appreciated trying new things (changing the lines to line segments), even if it was not a part of the lesson. The students were aware that she would continue to push them, and were furiously scribbling in their notebooks to try to figure out if three lines can be drawn to have 4 points of intersection.
Then the group work began (at 10:35), and students were tasked with filling out the table above and drawing their evidence on a poster. After a quick discussion in each group for how they were going to organize their posters (I had noticed leaving organization open-ended in other aspects of the lesson, as well), they begin to Draw and Explore. The teacher rotates, answering questions and guiding students. While some students were putting information on the chart, others were trying out different ideas in little notebooks. (When I asked, the students said that they can try things out in their notebooks before presenting it.)
After 20 minutes of work, groups were in varying levels of completion. The teacher passed out a worksheet she had created with her organization of this question as the students cleaned up. She announced that the students should complete the worksheet in order to be prepared for the discussion tomorrow. I really liked that idea, giving homework a purpose.
We were so excited after seeing a lesson that pushed the students so far and gave them so much responsibility for their learning. While we were told that lessons like this are not done every day, the teacher said she tried to do them more often than not to keep students interested and engaged, and to keep them pushing themselves and problem solving.
Other things that stood out to us during the visit to Raffles:
1) Each school gives a twice yearly assessment (much like our benchmarks). Students are judged for growth based on these assessments, as opposed to a national exam yearly, and vary from school to school.
2) Many people reiterated the importance of completing the spiraling curriculum every year. The next teacher needs to know that students have the background information needed for the next level of the spiral.
3) While the teachers had never heard of sprints (which we use at our school), they mentioned using ‘mental sums’ (which sounds like our ‘mad minutes’) occasionally to aid students in learning their sums and times tables. They mentioned that these were the first thing to go when classrooms get busy, since the conceptual understanding must be held to a higher level of importance than math facts.
4) We noticed, and teachers emphasized to us, the philosophy of teaching from concrete->pictorial->abstract, something that has been very important to us as we implemented Singapore math at our school. In the P1 classroom that we observed, we saw the teacher reinforcing addition and place value with unified cubes and place value mats. We we're very excited to see some elements we have also used in our classrooms!!
5) The strategy of group/partner work was implemented in all of the lessons we saw that day. Students are very used to solving problems together and discussing their ideas.
6) Lastly, hands on activities we widely used from addition with unifix cubes, to measuring volume with water and different sized water bottles, to figuring out how many ways you can draw a geometric figure with certain properties. The teachers stressed the need for hands on activities to keep the girls engaged and grounded in the conceptual math concepts.
And something that really stood out to us, when we inquired about formatting of lesson plans, was:
1) The idea of turning in weekly lesson plans was new to these teacher and administration, and they asked us questions about it.
2) All teachers do nightly reflections about their lessons:
a. What did I try?
b. What went well?
c. What would I change?
3) Beginning teachers are observed by supervisors (experienced teachers).
Wow! Day 1 in Singapore was fantastic!! It was so great to see Singaporean math in action, and compare and contrast them to what we do in our school. If today is any indication, this trip is going to be amazing!
Thanks to the teachers, staff, and students of Raffles Girls’ Primary School! You were so welcoming and willing to take the time to answer our (many, many, many) questions. What a great start to our Singapore experience!
Arriving at the school
No comments:
Post a Comment