Chit Chat about Math

We discussed a number of challenges that we felt were important to student learning and I've left of these below.

- Children having a range of knowledge but not being able to apply it correctly.

- Children revert to early number strategies as these are the most prominent in their brain even though they have more effective ways of solving problems.

-Children having gaps in knowledge either from Covid or from not retaining knowledge from previous years.

- Children not understanding how they can move onto the next step in their learning.

- Children not having the self-confidence or self-efficacy to learn from others and apply that learning in different contexts.

As we reflect on the many challenges we have identified in mathematics we realise that this is a massive area to study and look into. We wanted to choose the biggest ticket items for each class or group and really understand how we can make a difference for the children and there is. I told her up, perhaps looking at children understanding the gaps and their next steps as being something I could do in my classroom. I also discussed how building self-efficacy, self-confidence and sharing of knowledge could link nicely to Hannah's extension group.

Collecting Data Picture Vocabulary

During my data collection phase I talked with my CoL colleagues and they suggested that will early data pointing towards a need in vocabulary some data on oral language might help to understand the challenges for students in their learning. 

For this task I asked students to tell me what they noticed in the picture in as much detail as they could. 

What I noticed:

• Children trended to state what the could see with little or no descriptive language. 
• Some descriptive words were used including, swirly, beautiful, colourful, windy. GL used the words old fashioned and asked questions. 
• BJ talked about the thing that attracts internet. This was a good example of missing vocabulary. 
• GA4 described things as big, short, colourful and beautiful. 

What questions do I have:

1. How do I build the vocabulary needed to talk in detail?
2. What vocabulary is most critical to help students read across the curriculum?
3. How can I developed students ability to build vocabulary knowledge independently? 

Student Voice- What we say about reading and the teaching of reading.

 

Present findings from this inquiry about your teaching. Ensure qualitative data includes rich descriptions of your teaching and quantitative data is clearly presented. (WFQ 9)

I conducted a survey for two reasons. One I wanted to gain some student voice on how they felt about reading and their own strengths and areas of need. I also wanted to see what they had to say about my teaching strengths and needs.

It was interesting to see what they had to say. Here is a link to the survey. 

Questions

1.I like reading..

Scale of 1-5 Not at all - it is my favourite

2.What I find hard in reading is...

3.How many books do you read in a day?

4. How often do your teachers listen to you read?

5. I get to talk about my book

Scale of 1-5 Never-Always

6. My teacher helps me practice new words

7. I can ask questions about my book....

Here is what each of the 8 student here on the day of the survey said. 4 children were alway and I will add their data on as soon as possible and 1 child has left the school and therefore is no longer in my target group. 

Summary of results:

Question One: This question asked about attitude toward reading. Mostly they had very positive attitudes toward reading with many saying it was their favourite thing to do. This did not surprise me as even though they struggled they always try so hard and get read every opportunity they have.

One children put 1, I ask why he said "It is hard."

Question Two: All children stated they found new words hard. Many said accurate reading without stopping. Interestingly using the pictures was challenging for some as was talking about the book. Most felt they understood the stories well.  

Children said they read 1-3 books a day. I feel this could be increased more to get more mileage. Perhaps a question about where they read might help paint a picture of how to increase this. Children all said they read to their teacher 3-5 or more times a week. This means I am getting the group coverage that I need.

Most children felt they got to talk about the book a lot however I cam concerned that there is not equity in this. One child feels like she never gets a turn to talk and this worries me. Asking questions is something they feel they get to do less, however this is much more regular than I expected based on my observation and teacher notes. 

This graph is the most interesting to me as it shows wide inconsistency between kids. It does not suggest if this word work is new sight words or topic specific words. Perhaps adding a question about practicing small words I know would help to understand this better. 

From this I am sure I need to work on this area in my teaching more. 

Self Study- Observations of my past reading teaching

Present findings from this inquiry about your teaching. Ensure qualitative data includes rich descriptions of your teaching and quantitative data is clearly presented. (WFQ 9)

This post shows the what I noticed about my teaching through observing a video. I looked back at the Class Onair lesson and noted what I saw in the first 5 minutes of direct instruction using the questions I had planned when identifying the areas to best help me identify my strength and gaps, see this blog post. 

Sadly I did not have an opportunity to get another teacher to observe at this stage of my inquiry due to Covid 19 measure and time restrictions. I hope to video more and get support for an outside observer to help me unpack this more in term 3. 

This video shows part reading lesson with my target group in early 2020. It is looking at a non fiction text and I wanted to look back a note how often I used the key strategies I hypotheses would cause change in reading achievement and reflect on these. 

How often do I provide specific vocabulary instruction? 

I got children to use the pictures to help them understand vocabulary. We used the the content page to look at words we did not know. During the lesson most of the focus was on topic specific vocabulary. I pulled out two words with the whole group to look closely at. Before reading students identified children 6 topic specific words. 

What does this vocabulary instruction look like? 

The instruction look like writing on specific words on the table. We broke them apart and some sight words were mentioned. It also used visuals like the pictured to get children to state words they would encounter in the book before they had to decode them. 

Does it relate to a sight word or topic specific word? 

Material is a topic specific word. We did look at the word 'mat' which is a word family sight word but missed the opportunity to look at how it connected word families. 

Funnel- Again this is a topic specific word. They used syllables to work it out and the sight word fun. 

How often do the children talk about the book? 

At the beginning of the lesson I used lots of why questions to get the children talking. They did not ask questions. Children had lots of opportunity to explain they words. However one child took control of this most the time. They did not take turns speaking and I did not step in to help them with this. 

Is this retell, connecting to their experience or asking a question?

The discussion centred round the words in the story. Child were not encouraged to ask questions or retell the story. This in part was due to the nature of the text. We did talk about what the book said. 

Strength:

From this video I can see that I have a strength in introducing and supporting children with topic specific words and finding small words in bigger words. I am also good at asking why question and open questions like "What do you notice about..." I noticed that I got the children to explain the content page, but not really what a funnel was and that was a missed opportunity. I am good at listen to the children and catching moments to ask them to check for errors or help them understand words. 

Areas to work on:

There was no support in this lesson for sight word knowledge building, which I see as a real gap. I know that this group know a lot of sight words but they definitely still have gaps or they would be moving much faster. I did not give the children opportunities to ask questions and most of the the discussion was student to teacher not student to student. How can I get this more and skill be their to support them? 

Use the baseline data for a picture of student learning

Explain how some of the data you have used to build a profile of the students’ learning will be used as baseline data at the end of the year. (WFQ 6)

Comparing data is an important part of teaching as inquiry as it allows us to see student progress and hopefully acceleration. Here is a link to the post my initial data. I am planning to use each piece of data in the following ways:

Reading Level:

I will look at the reading progress in the running records, these will be collected at least 3 times during the year. This will show changes in reading ability, decoding skills and comprehension. I will look specifically at the vocabulary in the books to see difference in known vocabulary and words attempted. 

Star Data: 

I will look at the overall star data and see if progress has been made in this test. I will also look at specific sections to see what improvements have been made in the areas of vocabulary. 

Student voice survey:

After the lockdown I will conduct a student voice survey to get student feeling about their own reading ability, confidence in reading and what they feel would help them. I will conduct this again at the end of the year to see what has changed and if this matched their formative and summative data. 

Teacher notes:

I will continue to take snapshots of my own notes taken during reading lesson and see if these match the the data I am collecting. 

As an additional interest of my own. I would like to take a reading book and look at the common vocabulary between the reading book and a piece of student independent writing. While I have not done a baseline sample of this I hope to do this after the Covid-19 Lockdown. 

By comparing all this data I hope to have a rich picture of students reading, focusing in on their vocabulary knowledge and confidence. 

Student Challenge

5. Share your findings about the nature and extent of the student challenge. Make sure it is clear what evidence from your inquiry supports each finding. (WFQ 5)

At the beginning of the year we as a school discussed a need for accelerated shift in reading and maths across our school. This linked to the data we received from the researchers and our own school data. As a staff we talked about the challenges our learners face in vocabulary. This is an area we have not yet found the answers too. 

My Target group is made up of three are year 3 and the remaining 9 are year 4s. On the right is a graph of my whole class running record data, from this it is clear their is a huge ability difference between these children. 

From my teaching notes in term 1 I said:

"This group struggled with beginning sounds. They were not thinking about the meaning of words. They also struggled with the words 'shouted' and 'he'. We worked on beginning sounds finding words that start with k, f and s and writing them on the table."

These two boys "use each other a lot listening to each other ideas and not trying without support. I need to do more work with them on attempting and self checking."

"This group weren't attempting challenging words. We looked at how to break them into parts and they also did not know some of the animals." 

Over all these comments and the data point to struggles with vocabulary, letter knowledge and confidence to try and perhaps a fear of failing. I want to explore this more in a student voice survey.

The star data paints a similar picture for me. It raises the question, why are there such big gap between learners and what can be done to address the gaps in the area of vocabulary and confidence. 

I think based on the data that there is a significant need for more vocabulary exploration, amount of vocabulary children are exposed to and building of confidence as reader and more generally. Children need to be able to take risks and learn from failure and that is a huge area of develop in see. 

Developing a bigger picture using data

As I continue to develop the picture of my learners I have drawn on a number of data sources to form a wider picture of mathematics achievement and vocabulary in mathematics.

First I looked at the gloss results as discussed in my previous blog post. Then I explored the PAT results and looked at these by section of the test. This painted an interesting picture. I noticed that learners tended to have more knowledge than strategy and that within my target group a number of students struggled with the Strand aspects of mathematics.

I also collected student voice discussing with them their thought on mathematics. I also talked to learners and made note of the vocabulary which they understood.

From this data I now have a clearer picture of what my next steps in my inquire and the areas within mathematics that I need to focus on as I continue my inquiry.

Focus Group Data

As we wrap up testing for term one I wanted to take a closer look at the  Gloss Data for my inquiry focus group.

This is a Gloss results by section compared with the end of the year Jam results. The red shows areas where the students score has gone down and the green where it has gone up. This illustrates that an area of need is in fractions. Some students also need support in multiplication and division.

Language and Gloss

During Gloss testing I noticed that the learners often said "I counted",  "I thought it", "I just knew it" or "I added it" They often needed prompting to explain what they added, counted or thought. They also required prompting to explain how they added or counted.

For this learners it often took two to three prompts before I had a full picture of how they solved the problem and even then they often reversed to a picture or objects when explaining. "I did this one, then this one" Rather than using words to explain what they had done.

This supports my hunches and teacher judgements that vocabulary is a need for these learners.

Mathematics is a real world skill!

This year my inquiry will focus on mathematics. I want to support learners to have dialogic discussion and apply computational thinking as they develop real world maths skills within a real connect.

It will Focus on the Manaiakalani Achievement Challenge 6: Lifting the achievement in maths for all students years 1-13. 

http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/

I am extremely lucky that this year our school is working with Bobby Hunter and the DMIC team to help our learners develop their mathematical understanding and become problem solves who use big mathematical ideas, work together and use mathematics in a real world context.

Bobby came to talk to us on ur teacher only day about the history of mathematics teaching and learning in New Zealand and the history of deficit thinking that is ingrained into teaching practice.

There are a few main points that I gained from this learning that I want to share as I think about how DMIC researcher and pedagogy can link in with and support my inquiry focus in 2018.

1. What works for diverse learners therefore it works for all learners.

Bobby talked a lot about a need for maths to be culturally responsive and grounded in a context that is meaningful to learners. She stated that if maths is not in the meaningful context students become disconnected and their fore develop the dislike for maths that leads to disengagement.

This discussion reminded me of my own experience of maths, which I have to state was the opposite of what Bobby was talking about, I love maths at school, It had an answer and I could work backwards and forward to check it. However often my friends would say when will we ever use algebra (this could be any mathematical concept) once we leave school. I think this disconnection between the maths and its purpose was what Bobby was talking about. If we teach maths in a real context when learners will know how the maths can be used to once they leave school.


2. Values
There are a number of different values in the class:
-Those of the students cultures that they bring to school.
-The teachers values
Just to name a few.

We have to consider these values and draw upon the cultural values of our learners in mathematics.

One Bobby said that I really relate to is:

You want to affirm the cultural capital of children in front of you. What they come with are strengths and we need to build on these strengths.

We often forget the everyday maths that comes from the family values that the children are exposed to at home. This might be thin like spatial knowledge and knowledge of patterns drawn from sewing or weaving or simple everyday task like hang the washing or making beds.

Interweaving culture and maths allows children to connect with each other and see inside each others worlds. Finding something that really matters to a student allows them to open up and be the centre of their learning.

One value that Bobby talked about a lot was service.

Service

One of the teacher said that for pasifika children, the pathway to leadership is through your service. It is not about yourself, you have to serve others before yourself. Pasifika children are drawn to service and this can often have a cultural disconnect in the classroom

As teacher we need to think:

What are the core pasifika value? How do they play out in the classroom?

What are your core Values? How do they play out in the classroom?

3.High Expectations!!!!!!!

This to me is the most important thing. We have teacher must have high expectation if we want our learners to raise to meet them. Struggling is not a bad thing, we learn the most when we find learning challenging and we have to be resilient and push yourself and others to find answer.

We must tell learners This is going to be hard you will struggle but it will be great when you get through it. You must tell them. Mathematics is not just one day. It can happen over time as they struggle with the thinking.

Inclusion, Inclusion, Inclusion!!! Everyone needs to be involved.

Working together doesn’t just happen you have to structure it.

This is only the beginning of what Bobby talk to us about if you would like to see my other notes please visit this Doc.

Give all this learning I have a lot of thinking and learning to do but I am excited to link this in with my inquiry as I grow as a teacher and think about how I can make maths cultural responsive and engaging for my learners.

Manaiakalani Teaching As Inquiry Framework

My 2018 CoL Inquiry Focus

"Increasing Mathematical ability,  using coding to build computational thinking and vocabulary"

The Manaiakalani cluster are always working together to overcome challenges for our learners with a focus on specific achievement challenges that exist with our community of learning.  

In 2018 my inquiry will focus on the CoL achievement Challenge: 

Lift the achievement in maths for all learners in years 1-13. 

I will be using the Manaiakalani cluster inquiry framework to focus my inquiry and make my learning and teaching visible in 2018. This framework has been co-constructed specifically for Manaiakalani schools drawing on the New Zealand teaching as inquiry framework and using the Learn, Create, Share pedagogy as a guide for inquiry. 

Throughout the year I will label my blog post to make sure it is easily accessed by others. I will label them using the Learn, Create, Share structure. 

Click on this link to see blog posts organised by label-Inquiry links