Mathematics at OGPS

This year we are having a big focus on Mathematics at OGPS. It’s a chance to reflect on our current way of doing things and continue to learn and improve the Mathematics experiences of students, families and staff.

Looking forward to sharing more of our Mathematics learnings with you regularly.

What is ‘productive struggle’?

Productive struggle is when our students engage in effortful practice to build their skills and move beyond passive learning. Giving students the space to work through an issue or problem and arrive at a solution on their own helps them develop persistence and resilience as they pursue that solution and reach their learning goal.

‘As students engage with a task, they must be mindful about the strategy they employ and assess whether it is productive. When they find they are at a dead end, they must be willing to abandon one strategy for another. When students labour and struggle but continue to try to make sense of a problem, they are engaging in productive struggle.’ Marian Pasquale.

Productive struggle is not based on a “sink or swim” approach. Productive struggle is about developing strong habits of mind, such as perseverance and thinking flexibly, instead of simply seeking the correct solution.

What does it look like in the classroom?

We talk a lot about being capable of doing ‘hard things’ at school. That we’re at school to challenge ourselves and if it was easy all of the time, you might not necessarily grow in your knowledge. We explain that we’re going to provide a ‘just right’ level of challenge. That the teacher knows the students so well, that we will work through tasks that targeted level for students. They might have specific enablers to make the tasks more achievable.

In our Maths lessons we encourage students to show that persistence and work through the productive struggle. They might access ideas from others, problem solving strategies, an enabling prompt, discussing ideas with a peer, a clarifying question, a discussion with the teacher, an extending prompt. We offer opportunities for students to solve problems in a variety of ways, explaining and sharing their learning to celebrate it!

Thank you

Ann Miller

Learning Specialist