| How can you develop your pupils’ understanding of calculation strategies? |
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Research taster
Pupils often make more progress in mathematics when they develop their calculation skills explaining the strategies they use.  How can you help your pupils refine their skills in mental calculations?
Your evidence
You might find it useful to start with an exploration of how you conduct 'question and answer' exchanges with pupils. You could choose three five minute periods during one of your lessons (beginning/middle/end, say) and record what type of questions you use and how you handle pupil responses during each period. Strategies to consider are the use of open as well as closed questions and the use of pausing, prompting and probing to encourage pupils to explain their reasoning. Did your actions achieve the results you wanted? What other approaches might you have adopted? (Adapted from Reflective Activity 13-1f) Moving forward You might like to explore the use of open questions like “Why did you think that….”, “What do you think we should do now….”, “Can you link the next step to what you learned in the last lesson?” in your lesson planning. You could arrange for a more experienced colleague or coach to observe your lessons to help you explore your pupils’ responses to your open questions more deeply and to investigate the links between increasing the emphasis on explanations and pupils’ calculation skills. Would you find it helpful to watch other colleague using these approaches? Find out more  Askew, M., Brown, M., Rhodes, V., Johnson, D. and Wiliam, D. (1997) Effective teachers of numeracy London: School of Education, King’s College LondonYou might also like to read the following digest from the Research Informed Practice Site: Understanding graphs – does metacognitive questioning help students develop and refine their mathematical ideas? |
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