Building Vocabulary through Context

Building Vocabulary

In a previous inquiry into reading I learned that new Vocab and understandings can be built up over time successfully, when the texts and learning content are themed around a similar context for consecutive number of weeks.

Therefore it is my hypothesis that this can also be applied to maths learning. My maths planning and teaching centres around a "topic" for 3-5 consecutive weeks. In most cases this will probably be a Strand focus and all the problem solving stories and questions will centre around that strand. The multiple part problem design of the DMIC questions, seems to work perfectly with Strand and Number combined problems i.e Unit Conversion and multiplication, or finding the area of shape then subtracting.

In doing this, I am hoping to build up a vocabulary knowledge base that will build over time and mean that they are capable of more complicated problems and stories. While also having a platform on which to build or gain more concrete understanding around unfamiliar maths vocabulary.

In Term One I felt like this worked really well in the two contexts that I chose. Instead of doing a whole week or 2-weeks on Measurement, we spent 5 weeks, but only focussed on specific measurement knowledge when it came up. Otherwise it was simply was just the context in which we solved our number problems.