08Oct 2012 by Tracy Weston No Comments

AP: Scenario 1

Awareness of purpose
Scenario: Finding three fractions that adds up to one whole Country: Norway Grade (student age): Grade 7 (age 12-13) Contributed by: Ove Gunnar Drageset, University of Tromsoe, Norway Context The teacher has five years teaching experience. The lesson is halfway through grade seven. The competence goals in the Norwegian curriculum are not formulated for each year, but are given after the completion of grade 4, 7 and 10. The students have only met fractions like ½ and ¼ used in everyday situations prior to fifth grade. The competence goals regarding fractions after grade seven focuses on calculations using positive and negative fractions, and placing fractions on a number line. In this case the teacher asks the students in plenary of suggestions to a task that many found difficult. The task…
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08Oct 2012 by Tracy Weston No Comments

AP: Scenario 2

Awareness of purpose
Scenario: Franca solving a story problem with the students. Country: Italy Grade (student age): Year 4 (age 9-10) Contributed by: Marco Bardelli, University of Padova, Italy Context – public primary school, national curriculum The Italian National Curriculum emphasizes the development of students’ number sense through realistic mathematical problems where the estimate of numbers can be performed. The mental calculation has taken great importance  and the students should manage the control of their reasoning.  Moreover the National Curriculum underlines that students should be able to solve mathematical problems with different strategies. Franca is teaching volume measures to her pupils. She has already explained the litre and its submultiples as a measure of capacity. In this lesson she wants to show her pupils how to use mental calculation in a story problem…
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08Oct 2012 by Tracy Weston No Comments

AP: Scenario 3

Awareness of purpose
Scenario: Jim teaching construction of bar charts from tally charts Country: UK Grade (student age): Year 6 (age 9-11) Contributed by: Fay Turner, University of Cambridge, UK Context – national, curricular, professional, other Jim was a student teacher in the final term of a postgraduate teacher education course. During his final school placement, he was teaching a unit about data handling to a Year 6 class.  In a previous lesson he had shown them how to make tally charts to record the frequency of different phenomena. One of the displays in the classroom consisted of a number of different bar charts that the pupils had made previously.  At this time, curriculum guidance for mathematics in England suggested that pupils should be able to use tally charts by Year 4 and…
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