I have mentioned before the challenge of answering A03 questions and some strategies I employ. A03 style questions are when our students are required to make connections interpret results and evaluate solutions. The easiest way I remember it and explain to student teachers is it's those questions that are open ended and they could go many different routes to find the answer generally with a full blank page underneath. I am forever looking for current relevant research that can be easily applied to my maths lessons. Last year while studying a course on a MOOC for the Friday Institute about learning differences I came across something that may help. Yes I can't quite see how course on learning differences lead me to this, but it did, and I am grateful! It just goes to show you should read as wide as possible because you never know what it will turn up. One of the things that came out of one of the pieces of reading for this course was SLED.
sketch
label
explain
discuss
It got me thinking about these complex a03 style questions where we could easily sketch a picture of what the answer might look like, the painting of the floor plan or the number of marbles in a bag whatever the question maybe about.
We can label underline key parts of the question. Now instead of explain I switch this to estimate. This was to relieve the pressure of the learners to immediately hit upon the right answer. They are allowed to roughly approximate first. Generally they are correct but with the pressure being off it really improved their confidence in giving these types of questions a go. So the learners could estimate how many tubs of paint how many marbles in a bag and then we could discuss our answers with our peers and then choose the correct strategy for solving the question. The power in relieving the pressure in making it an estimate was immediately evident with my groups. Learners openly admitted that previously they would have skipped this type of question but were now willing to give it a go. We now had a strategy where we could pose, pause, pounce and bounce! We could now have those meaningful discussion that deepen understanding that I keep seeing in other subjects lessons!
This is a rough example of a simple A03 question using SLED:
Being brave I asked my learner's to SLED an A03 question before the lesson. We then discussed on tables and then as a class different approaches to the same problem. Again I believe powerful learning takes place where misconceptions or different approaches to the same problem can be explored. It was an instant hit with my learners. We then began thinking about how they could adopt this in an exam. We changed discuss to DECIDE for exam situations. This is when after you have estimated, you may have created 2 or 3 different options you must decide on the correct working out and clearly state that as your answer. I like to remind students at this point that multiple workings out will attract lowest marks available and remember each question is a new opportunity to leave an impression on an examiner.
Here is the same ratio SLED problem with the decide element added, the original working has been left in for this examples purpose but would normally be crossed out:
I like this approach as it gives confidence to tackling complex A03 problems. It provides a crutch for learners to hold on to. It promotes discussion in maths lessons, it’s not always right or wrong! It promotes deeper understanding by looking at common errors and misconceptions. One mature learner, I won’t say her age, said that this strategy gave her the confidence at work to plan her response to requests and improved her stress levels, so it worked outside the maths classroom too!
