Intervention

It has been a strange few years for the children in my class but also for myself. We have noticed a widen of gaps in all curriculum areas. In order to address these gaps especially in maths I have been looking at simple things we can do each day to make mathematics facts more memorable. 

One way I have done this started early in term 2. Once the class were settled. We started doing some maths revision everyday. This was an opportunity not only for children to practice but to ask for help and for me to constantly assess their developing knowledge. 

 

Another way we did this was by creating some songs to help us. My intention was to make more of these but this term has been so busy and my focus has been spilt with time spent working on writing as a focus for my Manaiaklani Class Onair lessons and time spent focused on reading and reading fluency for this also. 

We are all at different stages with our knowledge and to help each other we are making dances to some cool songs we found online. 

First our teachers helped us to select some facts and songs to sing. 

We choose this song about bonds to 10 and this song about doubles. 

Then we worked in 3s and 4s to come up with some cool moves to help us stay fit and learn our maths facts. 

We hope you like our dance moves and would love a comment in you try it out in your class. 

Bonds to 10 

 

Doubles 

 

Creativity, Collaboration and Music

A huge part of my inquiry this year has shifted away from the elements of mathematics to the elements of collaboration and creativity. 

My hope is that by providing these activities for collaboration and creativity the children will be able to apply this learning across the curriculum. 

This lesson focused on building these skills and it was incredibly positive the way in which my class engaged with each others. 

Through this activity the children worked on expressing the values of our class as they see them in a song. 

See Class Onair lesson 

 

Causal Chain

This year my inquiry focus is year was on Mathematics and trying to support learners to gain basic facts knowledge in a meaningful way. 

I believe if I focus children on developing basic facts in a number of ways while building a collaborative classroom learners will be more confident and collaborative in maths. See the Causal chain for the process I hope to take. 

 Click here to see Causal Chain

Creating, Collaborating and Coding

Mathematic can often be seen as a right or wrong type subject. Well there are many ways to solve problems the goal is the find and answer. This often makes it hard to get excited or collaborated. 

One things we have done this year to try and build this collaboration was finding ways to integrate. This lesson was a good example of this. Feel free to check it out. 

See Class Onair Lesson 

 

Gathering information

Mathematics is a huge topic and covers a wide range of knowledge. To help me understand where the learners are at in some of this knowledge I created 3 levelled Explain Everything activities. 

These Explain Everything activities asked learners to respond to a range of voice prompts. 

These were drawn from Maths progressions I located when searching from another school. See here. 

 

From these assessment I noticed that some learners:

-Struggled with Teen and Ty numbers 

-Find remembering specific facts hard

-Struggle counting backwards 

-Struggled with fractions  

-Struggled to motivate themselves when working on a longer piece of maths. 

Reflecting back and developing knowledge.

 

Mathematics has been an area in which I have seen a lot of change in values and perceptions during my 6 and a half years of teacher and even prior to this in my training. 

Looking back through my blog and earlier Inquiries I saw that impact of this quote:  

"Mathematics research is marked by debates over how to define mathematics, and these debates influence how maths is taught. Some schools of thought define maths as a set of formal rules and procedures that must be mastered to the point of automaticity, while others see it as a creative endeavour and a space for discovery." Education Hub 

DMiC which we focused on in 2019 had a strong focus on maths as discussion, as argument and creative thinking. It suggested that by solving problems concepts of mathematics would become known and develop and build student skills and ideas. 

Earlier in 2017 we focused on  the skill set required for mathematical understanding. How do we assess specific skills and teaching to develop from one stage of knowledge to another. How do we make sure children know where they are at and where they are going? What facts do they know and need to learn. 

Since then I like many teachers I am sure have struggled to find a balance. The curriculum for mathematic is wide reaching and covers so much ground each year with year 1 building into year 2 and that building into year 3 and so on. 

The Education Hub suggests that we don't let these ideas knowledge vs creativity become dichotomous but rather look at how they support each other. 

We all know that effective mathematics teaching is central to developing well rounded children who can grow to take an active role in society but what does effective maths teaching look like. 

Teaching and learning mathematics at primary school written by Fiona Ell and Dr Lisa Darragh for the Education Hub in 2021 suggests it is: 

• In Mathematics one size fits all approach can be the easy way out for teachers, a text book or web sit. This however does not address the needs of learners and teachers are better placing themselves as adaptive experts using data and observation to carefully plan for learners needs.
• Teacher knowledge is central to the teaching of mathematic. There are often sticking points that teachers and learners struggle with that can lead to confusing down the line. 
• Readiness or teacher perception of readiness can impact what they cover with learners. 
• "Ability" can become a limiting factor for  teachers and students 
• The idea of a trajectory while useful can also mean learners get stuck because it is seen that one piece of knowledge is needed for moving on. 
• Engagement and understanding that engagement in central to all learning including mathematic is important for teachers to have. 

So what now. I fully understand that mathematic is a context area of teaching and learning and that I need to examine my values, ideas and skill as a teacher in Mathematics. I plan to look at more literature that discusses how mathematics can be best taught.  

Term One Data: A first look

As Term 1 approached I was filled with excitement for what my inquiry might be and the benefits it might bring to my teaching and the learning of my students. 

I had seen the positive impact that movement and song had had on learning in the past and during lockdown I again saw the excitement and eagerness of the children to engage in Jump Jam and other physical activities even from home. I began to wonder if this could help to combat the challenge we were having in Mathematics were children were struggling to retain the key facts and ideas needed to solve more challenging problems. 

As you can see I got excited and may gave jump the gun a little bit. 

Coming into term one things were not normal (if normal is even a thing anymore). The omicron wave swept through our community bring down class numbers and meaning constant change. Luckily my team planned together reducing stress but as limiting the amount of data collection I could do for my Inquiry. 

In mid February I collected some data with the learners in front of me. I looked at their Mathswhizz Levels from their placement tests. 

I also asked the 9 learners present at that time to complete a survey about their feels towards maths and how they view their ability. 

Majority of the learners stated that they always or often enjoy solving maths problems. Only one of the 9 children said never and one said sometimes. 

We asked about their use of counting and ability to remember facts. Most said that they count to solve problems with only one learner saying they never did. They had a more positive view on their ability to remember facts with 3 stating always, 2 sometimes, 2 occasionally and 1 never. 

What this shows is from this small sample they are aware that while they enjoy maths there are areas that they struggle with. 

I hope to redo this survey and a parent version in early term 2 when more learners are at school.