Learning and Teaching

Throughout Term 3, teachers across all areas of the school have been challenging themselves and their students with Mathematics lessons that provoke deeper understanding of concepts and engage students in critical and creative thinking through problem solving. One way in which we have been challenging students has been through the Launch, Explore, Summarise lesson structure. In lessons like this, students are ‘hooked in’ during the Launch phase, encouraged to investigate and collaborate to solve a problem during the Explore phase and then the teacher and students engage in meaningful conversations about strategies and new learning during the Summarise phase. 

A fabulous example of Launch, Explore, Summarise in action was a data investigation in Year 3 this week. The Year 3 students were so courageous with their learning and made connections to previous understandings as they interpreted data which was presented to them in a variety of ways. They identified what made a graph easier to interpret and then used these understandings to develop their own data representations. They were able to choose the data which they represented and were given opportunities to do further research to add to the data sets as well. After the students had completed their graphs they completed a Gallery Walk. They walked around the classroom looking at their peers’ work and used sticky notes to add observations and data evaluation comments to the graphs. The learning from this investigation was so powerful and they were highly engaged throughout the whole learning process. They should be very proud of themselves and I can’t wait to see what they do next.

Emma Davies

Maths Leader