Room 16 has been working hard to develop our confidence and thinking skills in maths using rich problem solving tasks. These are challenging real-life maths problems that have more than one way to solve the problem, rather than number equations. Mistakes are valued as a key part of the learning process. Children are showing resilience and a growth mindset as they try different approaches. They work collaboratively, in mixed ability groups, to share ideas and help each other, with support from the teacher. Each member of the group needs to have a collective understanding so they can all explain their thinking. Tasks have different levels of challenge to cater for our different student abilities.

Quotes from Room 16 students:

“We need to use our creativity to decide which materials we should use to help us solve the problem.”

“We use our critical thinking because we need to think of more than one way to show our thinking and prove how we solved the problem.”

“It’s hard because we have to work out what the problem is asking us to do before we can even start.”

“It’s fun because we work together on problems and we can help each other.”

Ngā mihi Room 16