Tuesday 1st May - what's next?

Last year I was really on top of my goal as it was something that affected my every day teaching and I could really see the benefit of it for the children. I haven't felt the same way this year. Group work happens most weeks in the classroom, but not collaborative as such. This last inquiry topic (space) has been independent based and so there has been much opportunity to do so much recently.

So for the next 7 weeks my plan is to...

The next inquiry topic will involve the children working in small groups - 3s I think. This will provide us with a great opportunity to really focus on our collaborative skills. I will try and record more of how it goes in order to provide further evidence. 

Also in the maths planning I will add a more collaborative task once a week. There are some really nice diagnostic questions from White Rose on this site:
https://diagnosticquestions.com/Quizzes/Go#/67524/5863685
What is really lovely about them is that they are multiple choice, which relieves some stress for the weaker children and it will also provide opportunities for discussion if they disagree with one another. The children will have to agree as a group on their answer and be able to give an explanation for it - this could be recorded on Seesaw. An example is here:

I also forgot that I had a book from my previous school which is actually called 'Groups Work, Collaborative Problem Solving for all Abilities'. I think the class are now ready for some of these challenges. The aim of each activity is for them to work as a group to solve the problems. 

At the end of the term I will use the 'how effective were your group' which was used right at the start of this goal. After each group has filled it in, we will compare it to the one they filled in last time and see what progress (hopefully) has been made.