Learning Through Doing is a new approach to teaching mathematics that we have started to adopt here at Larrakeyah Primary School. Learning Through Doing is a mathematics program that we implement across Transition through to Year 6. Its approach complements the school’s focus on hands on learning and using concrete materials to improve mathematical understanding.
Lessons are provided and outlined all resources required to teach all concepts of maths. Those being number and algebra, measurement and geometry, data and statistics. When we implement a learning through doing lesson in the classroom, we will always begin with a warm up. The warm up might be some sort of maths game that might be a bit of revision for some topics that we’ve learned in the past.
And it also could be some sort of fluency activities, such as maths mentals. From there, we move into a whole class explicit teaching of the content for the day. Then we move on to a opportunity for the kids to have some hands on learning through independent or small group tasks. Having a starting point for our lessons has ensured that our teachers are further differentiating their teaching to meet the needs of all students in their class.
We differentiate the content for our wide range of learning abilities and use concrete materials to assist in their understanding. Learning through doing does not provide assessment tasks. Our teachers create these on their planning days to ensure they have a comprehensive understanding of the requirements of different year levels.
We aim to ensure that these assessments give our students a chance to reflect their true ability. We are not the only city school who has adopted this new way of teaching. We are excited to be able to work alongside another school, which is like ours, have the chance to moderate samples of work and also learn from one another.
Learning Through Doing aims to help all students develop a love of mathematics as lessons are engaging, children are encouraged to be inquisitive, and it teaches our students the methods that go between concrete to abstract.
