We are social beings. We like to connect. (Positive) Connections are affirmations.

I love my year 7 maths class. They waltzed into the classroom today singing the Perimeter song I taught them 2 days ago -they were impressed that I trawled the internet for ideas to make my lessons interesting….for them. They were engaged in the discussion about Area. They rose to the challenge of my prodding questions that required recall of  topics they learned months ago. They glowed from being complimented on their mathematical thinking (use of shape and number properties for reasoning). They revelled in my digressions (granted, most were part of my connectionist approach) – we revised Properties of Shapes, Properties of Numbers, Adding Decimals, Powers/Exponents and Algebra. They bantered with each other but quickly were on-task as required. They were enjoying maths. Most of all, they enjoyed my declaration that I loved the class.

It’s taken me a while but many of the things I wanted them to learn – aside from maths topics – came together today.

• a classroom is a community; everyone has a voice worth listening to and everyone is a resource for the other
• use what you’ve learned previously to help with your problems now
• you don’t need to be an A student to enjoy maths
• self-reflect and evaluate and then challenge yourself; easy is boring
• it’s not just about the answers, it’s about the thinking and reasoning
• notes are reference items, especially if they’re not from the textbook
• learning requires risk – have a go

It was lively, even noisy at times, but it was a good learning environment.

I thought I’d highlight some of the things I did right today, if only to remind myself later that these are good teaching strategies to foster learning.