Maths Cafe 2015-style.

Since embarking on my journey into the Maths Cafe it has been through several distinct phases of evolution.  Any one of them could be worked in any school or with any group of staff or students, which is what makes it such a powerful idea in my book.

Stage One.  Single teacher, single class.
This is the most basic level of Maths Cafe.  One teacher using it with one class of students.
It is the stage that I have documented in my Teachers Matter Magazine article, and one that can form part of an individual teacher's inquiry into pedagogy and teaching techniques.

• It takes very little additional resourcing, and poses no addition timetabling issues.
• It allows the teacher to become comfortable with the whole way of working, and allows them time to teach their students the skills and strategies they will need to become self-directed learners.
• It can be expanded in a number of ways:  into other subjects in the same classroom, through maths lessons in other classrooms, through the whole curriculum in one classroom, throughout the school.

Stage Two.  Every teacher.  Individual classes.

This is the next stage of evolution that Maths Cafe went through at my school.  I spent 2013 in Stage One, developing and refining the procedures and protocols for Maths Cafe, and in 2014 it was adopted in every classroom in our school.  

• Each class was a separate cafe, with each teacher planning and implementing Maths Cafe at a pace that suited them and their students.
• Each teacher only tried this delivery method in mathematics, and with their own students.
• At the end of 2014 we had doubled the number of students assessed "at" or "above" National Standards in mathematics (as a proportion of the school, compared with the end of 2013 data)
• There is very little extra resourcing needed, and no timetabling issues.

Stage Three.  Every teacher, across the whole school.  Limited subject range.

We tried this at the end of 2014.  For the last three weeks of the year we ran a whole-school Maths Cafe on Geometry.  Each teacher taught one aspect of the Geometry curriculum, and taught it across all curriculum levels - and thereby across the whole school.

• All students got to know each teacher - useful for playground interactions, and to alleviate any classroom moving anxieties in preparation for the new school year.
• All students got to work with a range of other students from different age groups.  Even if they only saw them learning in their own room while the students came for a dish of the day, they developed an appreciation of other students as learners on a journey rather than judging them as 'better than' or 'not as good as'.
• Younger students became more confident to enter the "big students' room" on other business ie running messages because they'd been there for a lesson.... and survived!
• Playground interactions between different ages of students improved, and those niggly playtime issues that can appear when you have 5 year olds and 13 year olds co-existing seemed to disappear.
• Resourcing needs to be co-ordinated - and teachers need to provide appropriate smorgasbord activities to the other classrooms, backing up what they have been teaching at the correct levels for the recipient classes.
• Timetabling becomes an issue.  Children need to move en masse, and times must be adhered to in order for the Maths Cafe to run smoothly.

Stage Four.  Every teacher, every child, the whole mathematics curriculum.

This is where we are currently on our journey.  We have run a whole-school Maths Cafe since the beginning of this year, and we are currently approaching Addition/Subtraction in this way.  One of us teaches number knowledge, one of us focuses on place value, and one of us teaches the add/sub strategies.

• The pros and cons are similar to Stage Three - there are lots of benefits, but teachers have to be more organised and need to co-ordinate student movement for maximum time benefits.
• There is an additional level of accountability among staff.  Each teacher's effectiveness is somewhat dependent on the other staff doing their bit properly too.  That means planning thoroughly, providing appropriate smorgasbord activities, sending the right children to the right places at the right times, and assessing promptly, accurately and filling in the information in a place where all staff can access it.
• In bigger schools this stage might cover a syndicate or teaching team.  We have 50 students currently and 3 classrooms, so the whole school approach works for us.  I probably wouldn't undertake it this way if we had 600 pupils!

Stage Five.  Every teacher, every child, every curriculum area, every minute of the day.

I've tried this in my own class, but not with the whole school yet.  

In my mind it becomes the ultimate MLE.  

• Children access the learning that they need (self-identified or identified in conference with their teachers), and are self-directed at other times. 
• Teachers become facilitators across the age ranges, playing to their own strengths and interests. 
• All teachers know all students, and co-operation and collaboration are evident in the teaching body and the student body.
• Technology becomes an invaluable tool in the personalisation of the learning process, enabling students to review previous learning times, to book future learning needs with appropriate staff, to research new information or skills, and to work collaboratively with classmates or other learners at an appropriate level.

I would love to hear about your Maths Cafe journey.  Which stage are you on?  Do you have any tricks or tips to share with us?  How have you adapted it to suit you own circumstances?

Let me know by emailing me: jo@willoweducation.co.nz or by leaving a comment on our Facebook page or website.

I look forward to hearing from you.

More games for you to try

I hope you found the instructions for Knock Out 9 and High Score easy to follow. 

Once you have taught your students how to play them, you can ask them to come up with some ways to adapt or improve the games - and you'll be amazed at how creative they can be.

I've put together a couple more games for you to try with your classes, again with suggestions for ways to adapt them to suit your classes.

Have fun!

Maths Cafe - the story so far

This post appeared on the Willow Education website (my company - specialising in educating educators) and also in issue 27 of the Teachers Matter magazine.

I’ve been teaching for a long time –long enough to see fads and fancies come and go in the world of education- but one thing that I’ve always stuck with is ability grouping in my classroom.  I guess that’s because when I trained at Cambridge University it was held up as the epitome of good child-centred teaching, rendering it possible to target teaching to specific needs and differentiating to take children’s capabilities into account.

So for more than twenty years that’s what I’ve done, firmly believing that it was the right thing to do.  However, I am a reflective practitioner, and in 2013 I began training to be a Maths Support Teacher, which involved taking a post-graduate paper through Massey University.  One of the readings that I did for an assignment really struck a chord with me.

It was an article by Rachel Marks discussing the way that ability grouping affected children, regardless of whether they were in the top group or one of the struggling learners who we label “Circles”, Green Group or something else designed to disguise their position in the academic pecking order.  And this article made me think long and hard about what I was doing.

There were lots of things in my classroom that took my time away from teaching:  controlling the behaviour of children who were supposed to be working independently, keeping the children in my teaching group focused on their task, motivating the children to push themselves academically, trying to make them take responsibility for being independent workers and thinkers, getting them to set academic goals and strive for them, and enabling the children to reliably self-assess their learning and progress.

I wondered if there was a way to make all these things happen, and it occurred to me that forcing the issue of grouping actually created many of these situations. I did a bit more reading, and came to the conclusion that the groups had to go.

So I came up with Maths Café.

Welcome to Room 3’s Maths Café.  Take a seat and relax.  The menu today features seasonal dishes of addition and subtraction strategies and everything is served with a side order of fun and humour. Today’s Dish of the Day is “adding up in our heads by using a tidy number and compensation”.  If you have ordered that dish, then please remain seated.  If that dish is not to your liking then please feel free to choose from our smorgasbord.

This is how maths is taught in my classroom.  The whole class will have enjoyed an Appetiser together (usually a game or quick thinking challenge) and then the Dish of the Day is announced.  Some children will have already ordered it at the beginning of the fortnightly cycle, and some will decide just today that they would like to take part in the teaching session.  At the end of the lesson we will come back together and share Dessert – often a game or a chance for children to feedback to others what they have learnt during the lesson.

It has taken a year to refine this system and to teach the children the skills they need to make it work, but we have got there.  The children love the fact that they are in charge of their learning – behaviour management is no longer an issue in my maths classrooms except for asking some of the games groups to maintain an appropriate volume when they get carried away – and it is having a positive impact both on our results and on our children’s perception of themselves as mathematicians.
How does it work?

This runs on learning cycles of 2 – 3 weeks.

1. At the beginning of a learning cycle I post the various strategies and lessons that I will be teaching.
2. The children check their maths profiles in their portfolios, and order the lessons that they think they would benefit from (the Dish of the Day).  They order by writing their name onto a waiter’s pad next to each “Dish of the Day”.  The Dish of the Day and the waiter’s pad are displayed together on the relevant day so the children can check if they ordered it or not.
3. I decide the order in which I am going to teach the lessons.  The objectives are taken from several levels of the curriculum to address the varied needs of my class, and I try to move between levels each day so that different children will spend time with me.
4. We begin with an Appetiser – something to get the children’s mathematical brains warmed up.
5. Any children who didn’t order today’s Dish of the Day lesson move off to choose from the Smorgasbord – a whole range of activities linked with the focus in the room, and including
   1. number knowledge activities,
   2. basic facts’ practice,
   3. some group problem solving activities,
   4. games and
   5. computer programmes.
   6. Some of the children will be finishing off a Doggy Bag from a previous Dish of the Day.
   7. Some will put in an order for a Second Helping of something they previously ordered.
   8. The Dish of the Day group might be just 1 or 2 children, or it might contain 15 depending on the lesson being offered.   If there is time, I may offer 2 Dishes of the Day.
   9. Once children have had their Dish of the Day, they take a Doggy Bag activity to do independent practise of what they’ve just learnt.
   10. When we have had a substantial helping of mathematics, we come back together and celebrate with a Dessert (feedback time, plenary session or maybe a number game on the board).

How do you make sure the children learn enough?

Children are accountable for their choices.  If I think they’ve chosen things that are too easy I make them sit through the session anyway.  The same goes if they choose from the hardest sessions which I think are beyond them.  They do the session anyway (I might have underestimated them).  They get bored and it usually only takes one time to convince them to make appropriate choices.

How you make sure they are doing all the independent work?

Children are accountable for their choices here too.  They have to sign off each piece of work as they finish it, and I check halfway through the second week to see if they have done each piece well.  They are expected to do each activity on offer during the fortnight time-frame.  If they are not doing the work to the required standard, if they aren’t completing enough work or if they are spending too much time on the computer or playing maths games then they lose the right to choose for a specified period of time.

Do they all get the same independent activities?

No – each type of Smorgasbord activity is offered in a range of levels.  Children pick their own level. They become adept at choosing one that is appropriate for them.  Basically they don’t want to be bored because it’s too easy, and they don’t want to get frustrated because they can’t do something.

How do you work with a group that contains many different abilities?

I actually reverse the usual order of working.  Normally we introduce a new strategy or concept using materials, we move into imaging the materials and then we use abstract symbols.  In a mixed ability group I start by going through the strategy using abstract representations (numbers, symbols and equations) and then I pause to offer those who feel confident with the strategy the chance to take their Doggy Bag and get started on it.  Anyone who is not feeling confident stays with me, and we go back through the strategy using materials.  At any point when they feel confident, children can opt to take their Doggy Bag and move on.

Are there any downsides to Maths Café?

It does take a lot of setting up initially, but once you’ve got the routines and activities sorted out it is fine.  Also, you do that planning once every two or three weeks, and then work from it.

It also take a little while for the children to get used to working in this way.  They will need coaching in how to make those decisions – what lessons they need to order, which levels of activities are right for them, and why they should not just order every Dish of the Day (they do need some time to do their Doggy Bags and independent activities).

What are the benefits of Maths Café?

The benefits I have seen so far have been:

• A dramatic increase in student engagement and motivation
• A similar decrease in time spent dealing with behaviour management
• Students are much more aware of their learning paths – where they are, where they need to go and how they will get there
• Good or accelerated rates of progress for the majority of students
• A marked improvement in students’ ability to self-direct their learning  – this became obvious in many areas of the curriculum once Maths Café was embedded

And finally…

Having seen Maths Café in action in my classroom for 3 terms in 2013, my school Principal decided that we should implement it through the whole school in 2014.  Every student from our 5 year olds through to our 13 year olds used it, with similarly positive results throughout the school.

I have recently extended the idea into my Literacy lessons as well – and the children love it!

Games and more games

Maths games are a great way to get children involved, and to practise skills and strategies without realising it.
Most educators have a bank of tried and trusted games that they turn to again and again, but it is always good to introduce new ones as you find them.  I will be posting links to websites that I have found useful, and also some instruction sheets for games that I use a lot.
Feel free to use these, share them and generally spread the word.

Maths should be fun - let's keep it that way!

And to get you started, here are 2 games that my class love to play as an appetiser before our Maths Cafe, and also as independent activities on our Smorgasbord.

Welcome!

Welcome to "Maths and me".  
This blog is an opportunity for me to collect my thoughts about numeracy and mathematics. 
I will be giving some background to my Maths Cafe, and also documenting the journey from here as it continues to evolve and grow.
I will also post and share resources and ideas for other maths educators.
Please feel free to add comments, share your own expertise and enjoy the journey through all things mathematical.