Nonsense Questions
By far one of the most useful parts of the day for me was the idea of nonsense questions. In simplest form, all non-essential mathematical language is replaced with random words, such as:
A question like this puts native speakers and EAL students on a level playing field, where no-one knows what bimbles, gloops or flobs are, but should be able to do the mathematical calculations required to answer the question.
A further extension to this might be to give them the original question and then highlight the words that were unimportant to the understanding of the question.
We were advised to use the Oxford Primary Maths Dictionary for EAL students, as it has useful pictures and descriptions of mathematical key words, e.g.
Fractions: the bottom part (denominator) tells you the number of equal parts. The top part (numerator) tells you the number of those part you are dealing with.
However, this definition made no logical sense when considering 8 over 5 for example, or when doing algebraic fractions. Instead, the division definition might be more appropriate:
On a slight slide note, one of the teachers at the school found a memorable way to introduce top heavy fractions, with a little help from Katie Price...
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| Jordan Fractions: memorable top heavy fractions |
Interesting Teaching...
Although not directly related to EAL, I saw a few examples of interesting teaching today as well.
Speed, Distance Time Graphs
Rather than asking the pupils to answer a list of question on SDT graphs, the teacher instead presented them with graphs and asked the pupils to tell their story.
I give the following as a pupil example:
"I was on my way to Nottingham to see my friend Georgia. It took me 3 hours to get there and my speed was 60mph. I then arrived and spent 1 hour having a poo. Then I took Georgia's dog for a walk at a speed of 5mph. My average speed for the whole day was 38mph."Units and Measure
In preparation for lessons on unit and measure, pupils were asked to answer the following questions:
- How much coca-cola is in a can?
- How far is it from Oxford to London?
- How tall are you?
- How long is your fingernail?
- How much do you weight?
