Total Teaching Blog

Alarmed by the news of NZs declining results in Maths? https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/124512951/a-generation-has-been-failed-in-maths--can-new-zealand-turn-that-around Or are you concerned about the growing trend that kiwi kids just don’t like reading? https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/117952158/classroom-disruption-decline-in-reading-blamed-for-poor-test-scores?rm=a Or just worried about the issues facing our education system as a whole? https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/81496845/student-achievement-is-improving-in-new-zealand-but-internationally-kiwis-are-slipping--report?rm=a Total Teaching is here to help.  First of all - in a hurry, getting the kids in the car, the bath or to bed and you don’t have time to read all of this? Click here and one of our teachers will reach out soon. Now, for the slow and measured approach - It is not all doom and gloom. We believe that our teaching is here for all students. Every student benefits from additional sup...

Maths in the Early Years There are many ways you can begin to introduce maths in the home in the early years. We at Total Teaching believe in the 2 Minute Noodles method of making short but frequent conversations with your children about learning a routine in your home. With this series Maths in the Early Years, we hope to give you ideas of how you can weave math skills into your everyday routines. Counting at Home We are very excited to be joined by one of the youngest members of the Total Teaching Team. Billie (4 years old) will show us some of the different ways she practises her counting at home. She also talks about a show that gets her excited about Numeracy - Numberblocks. You can find them on Youtube or Netflix. Counting Bears As she counts up to 5 and up to 10, you can see that she is touching one bear for each number as she lines them up. This is a great strategy you can model with your own children.  Joining Groups of Bears When adding a group of 3 bears to a group of ...

  Challenge yourself to a problem solving task! In this series one of our teachers works through a problem solving task showing you how they would solve it and common misconceptions students have when solving it. Try solving the problem on your own first before watching the solutions in the video. ___________________________________________________________________________________ This week's problem is The Escape from NZ Maths Can you help Georgia, Aria, and Oliver with their shopping? Watch the full video of how we work through this Shopping problem. We focused on Georgia’s problem to look at decimals and place value. Watch at your own pace and pause when you need to. Did you use the same strategies or do something different?  This week we asked Year 5 and 6 students to attempt the problem. From this we can see some common mistakes many students make when working with decimals.  Looking at Georgia's problem, we are trying to solve 5 - 1.10. An answer that popped up a lo...

  Challenge yourself to a problem solving task! In this series one of our teachers works through a problem solving task showing you how they would solve it and common misconceptions students have when solving it. Try solving the problem on your own first before watching the solutions in the video. ___________________________________________________________________________________ For this week's problem we are taking on a more challenging task - The Escape from NZ Maths Can you figure out when the prisoner can escape? Watch the full video of how we work through The Escape problem. Watch at your own pace and pause when you need to. Did you use the same strategies or do something different? The first important step is figuring out what is the important information in the question. What do we need to figure out and what information do we already have? At this point you can start to think of what strategies you might use to solve this problem. We started with finding common multiples o...

  What can we learn from 2 minute noodles? As Kiwis we have all had Maggi 2 minute noodles at some stage in our lives. As a food it is fairly mundane, not the most nutritional, but is simple, easy to prepare and gives us sustenance... but a fairly forgettable meal.  Unusual segue to an education concept but stay with me… I want to introduce ‘2 minute noodles’ as a way to communicate about your child’s education. Daily Routines For Total Teaching, 2 minute noodles is a simple idea that we want to share with you.  Just like the mundane food, we want to use the mundane routines in your life as an opportunity to communicate effectively with your child/ren.  Look for 3 opportunities each day to create a ‘2 minute noodle’. When you sit down for breakfast, make lunches, drive/walk to or from school, brush your teeth, get ready for bed etc. Use this as a time to have a discussion - no phones, no distractions, just one on one interactions. Then make this a routine, make it a ...

Challenge yourself to a problem solving task! In this series one of our teachers works through a problem solving task showing you how they would solve it and common misconceptions students have when solving it. Try solving the problem on your own first before watching the solutions in the video. ___________________________________________________________________________________ This week's problem is  Triangular Numbers from NZ Maths Watch the full video of how we work through the Triangular Numbers problem. Watch at your own pace and pause when you need to. Did you use the same strategies or do something different? When attempting this task, many students make this common mistake. Another strategy is drawing out each triangular number until you get to number 10 and number 20. Try this strategy to challenge yourself. We hope you enjoyed challenging yourself with this week's problem solving task and finding out what teachers would expect from this task.  For more free education...

In this reflection I will discuss Lesson 3 in my learning journey on mathematical mindsets from Jo Boaler at Stanford University. Find my reflections from lesson 2 here.  In Lesson 3, Jo introduced the idea that our brains want to think visually about maths. Building students' mathematical understanding doesn't just mean strengthening one area of the brain involved with abstract numbers. It means strengthening connections between areas of the brain and the visual pathways. Visual Representation and The Brain Jo Boaler, Stanford University As children get older - between the ages of 8 and 14 - they develop the ventral visual pathway (shown in orange). The brain becomes more sensitive and specialized in representing visual number forms. This showed an important and increased interaction between the two visual pathways - VTOC/pFG and IPS/SPL. This indicates that the brain becomes more interactive as children learn and develop, connecting the visual processing of symbolic number f...