A Teachers experience

From embedding Realms of Thinking into my classroom lessons, I have watched my students go beyond mastering the basics to connect and apply their understandings to real world contexts. One of the most encouraging outcomes of this approach to teaching and learning is seeing first-hand my student’s increasing autonomy and ownership over their learning. This changed my role away from explicitly leading the class, to supporting and provoking my student’s individual interest for deeper inquiry. Because they had ownership over the line and depth of inquiry they were really engaged  and more intrinsically motivated.

These photographs depict my Year 10 Math lesson where the students were exploring quadratic functions and their real life applications. Through a problem solving/problem-finding challenge students were provoked to consider numerous possibilities that took them from ‘what is’ to ‘what might be’.

Denise Flanagan
Senior School Maths and Science Teacher