Finding Out More

 To understand more about the school-wide problem of mathematics we worked collaboratively together to create three surveys. These Surveys looked at teacher opinions and thoughts about mathematics. The thoughts of the senior management team about mathematics and our school. Most importantly for me what the children felt they're learning in mathematics and how important it is to them. By collecting this data we are getting more perspectives and understanding the problem from a range of point to point of view.

Survey for Senior Management

Surevy for teacher: Surevy for Children:

Thinking about the problem

The challenge in student learning that I have identified for this inquiry is the ranging abilities in maths and how do we address these within the classroom setting while drawing the strength of all students. 

This is important to me because initial testing with the children along with Manaiakalani data has shown that there is an increasing gap between the ability of children in mathematics.  This is representative of the wider issues in New Zealand education. Overall this leads to a problem of data suggesting that children are failing in mathematics when in fact what I've noticed in my classroom is that many children are excelling in particular areas of mathematics while others are struggling in the same areas.

Over the years many teachers have identified the complexity of language in mathematics and have explored this in their inquiries. Over the past few years Manaiakalani has identified a shared pedagogy for reading and writing. At the school we are aware of the increasing challenge and catering to all students in mathematics and making sure that learning in mathematics is accelerated over the year. As such, Danni Stone, Hannah West and I have come together to think about the way in which we can accelerate mathematics by using opportunities for extension groups and collaboration within the classroom. 

Our initial plan: In her role as creative space teacher Hannah has the opportunity to pull children out and work with them on specific targeted projects which will allow them to accelerate. As such we have discussed that she may take out a group of extension children from year three and four to work on their gaps and push them to think creatively in mathematics. From this wonderful opportunity I hope to draw what she is doing in her extension program and look at ways to create collaboration within my maths classroom. I believe that there is a real need for children to be aware of their gaps and strengths and how these can be developed over the year.

 I wish to include more assessment and discussion with children about their learning and gaps in order to make sure that they are able to fully understand their next steps. At this stage in my inquiry I'm looking at gathering data to fully understand each child's gabs and strength and formulate a plan for sharing these with the children in a way that is meaningful. Look forward to continuing to collaborate in this inquiry and hope it will provide a way forward for maths in a diverse classroom.

Getting Started with position and orientation

We have had so much fun over the past two days jumping into the site that we received from our student teachers.

We started by looking at prepositions through a Kahoot, Drag and Drop prepositions activity and movie making.

I have loved every minute of teaching this unit so far and the kids feel the same. Please check out this blog post to see what the kids had to say.

What we liked most was that every video the student teachers made connected so well to the learning task. They had a clear understanding of what the class need and made it fun and exciting.

Our first thoughts on the site:
 

Kahoot:

Prepositional language:

A gift for me and Room 21

This term I have had the wonderful privilege of working with Debbie, Karen, Aamel and  Lucy during their two week online practicum.

From the moment we first met on Google Meet I could tell they were a hard working bunch of ladies who were eager to learn all they could on their journey to becoming incredible teachers.

On Thursday the 25th of June at 2:35pm just after saying Good Afternoon to my outstanding year 3/4 class I open my emails and ran full of excitement to show my Co-Teacher what my student teacher had created.

In just two weeks they had clearly taken all we had talked about, looked closely at my class blog, the learners blogs and the curriculum and this had lead to a very special and exciting gift not only for myself but for the learners of Room 21.

This site aptly named Maths Fun, is a sequence of learning for the topic of position and orientation. From the moment I opened the first page I was filled with excitement for what the learning would look like in my classroom. Like I said to the training teachers "I am in love with what you have created!"

Here are the reasons why:

The home page has the cutest  introduction videos from each of them really letting the learners see who made this for them. 

The topic of the site is clearly introduced. 

They have used Kahoot, which they knew from discussion is engaging and exciting for my class. 

The topic is broken up into clear parts which would make up lessons or week long units. 

Topics:

Each topic is engaging with awesome activities such as battleship, find the Pokemon (using the children's own creations), Movie making with positions and a Quiz about directions in our very own school. It is clear to see real thought has been put into this. 

I want to once again thank these wonderful training teachers for their hard work. I can't wait to test out this amazing site with my class and I am sure they will love it as much as I do. 

I will share how it goes later this week. 

Online Student Teachers

Ever since my first day in the classroom I have waited eagerly for the day I would be able to have my own student teacher.

I guess this is because of all the amazing Associate teachers I had and the many mentors who have supported me since then. Looking back I know that each one of those people gave me a gift. From all I have gain curriculum, from some I learned patience from others I learned to have high expectations and from all I learned to be a teacher is so many other ways.

So when the opportunity arose to be an online Associate Teacher for the group of training teachers in the graduate program I literally jumped for joy. This was it, my chance to give back the gift so many wonderful teacher had given me. Little did I know that I would get a much greater gift from my student teacher than I could ever give them.

Before our first meeting I emailed the training teacher to set up a time and shared with them this video that the children in room 21 helped me to create to give the teachers a feel for our classroom.

This movie is movie is just for your Debbie, Karen. Aamel and  Lucy.

Only moments after I sent the email I had response and the lovely ladies had commented on our blog.


Only a few days later we met on Google Meet for the first time. Our meeting was a whirlwind of ideas, information and conversation.  I tried my best to collate all we talked about into a Google Doc so that they could refer back to it. I also gave them their task description, as these student teachers could not be with us in person they were asked to look through the kids blogs, comments and collaborate to create a set of learning activities to meet the students needs.

I asked for, During level 2 we look at position and orientation. This proved to be a challenge for the children. They struggled with the vocabulary of position: in front, behind, beside, under, over etc North, South, East, West and so on. They began using grid coordinates and needed more work on this. It would be great if they could have a learning experience using a range of positional language and working with grid coordinates. This will be with the learner in my class working at and above a year 3 level.

From this we discuss them each taking an area and creating a task for the learners. We talked about games as a way of engaging the children. We talked about the interests of the kids and how these can be motivating factors in learning.

During the two weeks the training teachers had to create their learning activities I had a range of questions from them. However these questions for the most part were content and learner focused and not digital skill focused like I had expected.

Reflecting back I remember 3 days before our second meeting feel concerned that I had not supported them enough when I heard other teachers talking about their training teachers asking for digital support.

What I learned was that if they had needed it they would have asked but they like any great team had been drawing on the resource of each other, the internet and the university and had save only the questions about my learners that no one else could answer for me.

The site they create is exceptional and therefore deserve a blog post all of its own. I feel so privileged to have had three amazing student teacher, who are self driven, hard working, thoughtful teachers  already. They have shown me they take children learning seriously and what to use all they know about a group of children to create content that inspire and challenges them.

Thank you so much Debbie, Karen. Aamel and  Lucy for inspiring me with your passion and commitment to children's learning. 

Maths, So what?

If we think about Maths and what we have been doing. Do we feel it is achieving all we want for our learners?

Many of our learners need physical materials to connect with the problems they are facing and teacher scaffolding to understand how to use these materials.

We want to maintain all the good things we have learnt in the last 2 years in DMiC the use of open, challenging problems but develop more scaffolding, structure and connection to the progressions. 

As we look into this more we will develop a stronger picture of all the curriculum levels and what it means when creating an OTJ for learners. 

We had many positive things from DMiC:

The power of group norms for all learning areas. 

We were challenges about culturally responsive practice.

We were challenged about the view of ability groups. But we must remember that it is not all or nothing. We must remember to think about who could belong well with whom and work well with whom. We want children to experience working in many different ways. 

Now that we have things that we know work we need to have a scope and sequence for our learning. After looking at the many the team leaders and SMT decided we would use these New Zealand Curriculum Maths Connecting all the Strands. 

Going deeper with DMIC

We have now been doing DMIC (Developing mathematical inquiring communities) and it is time to look back and step up our game and move forward. 

We talked about embracing new ideas and how the hardest part of this is letting go of the old, things that are not working so well or need to be let go to get more.
One of these things is the numeracy project it was discontinued in 2009 as it does not address the needs of all learners we as a country have done something no other have in slitting strategies and knowledge. We shouldn't however throw out the key ideas of the numeracy project it is about changing the delivery of the learning.

Reflecting back:
We have all learnt so much and this means that things are moving faster. We now have more confidence and this has had a huge impact on the way we teach. We also still have challenges but these are more around going deeper and exploring more the balance of child and teacher talk and norms and mathematical discussion.

Arguing Mathematically:
We want kids to challenge each others. It is easy to get kids to agree it is harder to disagree and provide a reason when you ask "why".  Kids need to be challenged when they are right as well as when their answer is wrong. Pushing for hands down allows kids have more opportunity and pushes them to try.
It pays to use a bit of wait time when using agree and disagree as this provides time to form opinions and they will have more to share. We want kids to be able to justify why and how they did things so that the process of the mathematical thinking is the focus of the learning not just the answer.
We must require that there is an individual and collective responsibility for learning and sharing.
We are teachers and we must still model what we expect them to say.
We need to be specific with our praise, we often say that was great but need to state what was great and why so children really understand.

You can connect easily with our school value of better together. 

DMIC-Our Journey So Far

Starting any new journey is hard. You often feel unsure especially when you are unsure of the distantation is. 

Source:https://pixabay.com/en/ancient-stairs-staircase-fortress-577064/

As we look at the how we have started I noticed that across the school we have many of the same questions, experiences and concerns.

Things we are thinking about?
-Where to pitch the problem so that it works for all learners and extends all learners.
-How to get talking happening.
-How do we build routines for DMIC when we are developing new spaces.
-Listening to each other.
-Setting up norms of talking and setting up values of family has worked really well in years 7/8.
-They are not use to searching their thinking.

This goes against everything they are use to so there is a lot of norms changing that needs to occur.

Bobby suggest that student who are confident in mathematics may push back as they felt success in doing their work and this is a different and they may not feel as successful in this approach. While students who were less confident may feel a lot of success as they feel a part of a group.

Bobby suggest that snappy maths, launch a problem send them away bring them back share and re-launch and send them away to do another similar problem.

Social groups are who is going to work well with each other and support each other these are not always friends.

Year 4 up Setting up a lesson

-Social and strengths grouping that does not mean friends. You want to make sure learners are in group where discussion and arguments are happening. 

-Class slit in half or near half, seen on alternate days, students can be pulled in because they need more support, they have a great idea to share with a class or maybe for management reasons. 

-Grouping should be thought about really carefully. You can group all the quite kids together or group based on cultural strengths. We need to keep thinking about the groups all the time. Put the kids together who take over all together. 

-Groups of four at this level. 

-One challenging task, if a student can solve it on their own it is not challenging enough. We want children to learn that their a multiple steps in solving a problem and that at each level you are learning something new. 

-Multiple representations and recordings.  

If we take the example

There are 9 people at church and 23 more arrive. How many are there all together. 

Most children will flip that around 23+9. Some will make it 22+10. Some will then count on others will use base ten. 

By thinking carefully about this we can pull out a number of big ideas and all learners will learn. 

Lesson pattern

Years 4-8

Years 1-3

We need to talk about the norms every day. Talk about working as a family and provide examples of who family work together. Everybody sharing in the making of something together that no one persons owns it. 

In the sharing you have select someone who can extend the learners and support the big idea. 

The explicit teaching occurs during the sharing back. This happens through taking the learners ideas and lifting them up. 

When learners are doing independent work. Make it purposeful by making sure it is tired to the big ideas or pervious learning. 

-This could use a rewinding of student learning. Provide tasks that are similar to student previous problems and use videos of the first problem to support revision learning. 

Moving from skip counting to basic facts

The children were very good at counting in fives. However none of them used basic facts the first time.

They then looked at how they could work this out using 10s. 

They struggled at first to work out how many groups of ten there would be. The either used the same number 10x6=60 or continued to skip count. 

It took a bit of practice but they started to get this idea. They talked about the number of groups being halved. 

Then they did a problems like 7 lots of 5 they then made 3 groups of ten and one group of five. They repeated this with 3s making groups of 6. Then 4s. 

This is a great strategy that I don't use as much as I could. I have been aiming to get them to using timetables that I have not pushed the way they could make different groups. I think this partitional thinking is key to developing a wider sense of how to solve addition problems. The problem that we use get different types of thinking.

Later Jo talked about moving children into solid stage 5 and giving them the basic facts knowledge they need for stage 6.

When we are teaching children multiplication when need to help children generalise by knowing families of facts 1x17 is the same as 17x1=. Then they can work out the easiest ones first 1x, 10x then we start to use the knowledge we have to find unknown facts. 

Math Learning Moving from equal sharing to repeated addition

Jo did some modelling for us develop our teaching practice around moving children from equal sharing to using repeated addition.

First she ask the children to skip count in 2s, 5s, 3s. Then she ask them to identify the written form of fractions 1/2, 1/4, 1/3 and 1/10. Some of the children could identify 1/2, 1/4 and 1/3 but done could read 1/10.

She then ask the children to share some counters. She asked them to share them fairly between the monkeys. The children needed support to understand the question. She did not give them the counters. None of the children answers. So Jo asked "How could we make sure they get a fair share if I give you the counters. The child gave each five rather than equal sharing. The children said we can use our timetables.

After identify where the children were at Jo began teaching. She started with two monkeys and 8 counters. How many will each get. Children found it easier and used doubles knowledge. Followed this with adding more counters. Student were good with doubble so they moved on.

They then moved on to 3 monkeys and 12 counters. Students again used timetables and repeated addition. They then discussed what fraction they had and practiced writing fractions and learnt about the denominator telling use how many groups.

They moved on the four monkeys the children said straight away they get 1/4 because the bottom number is how many monkeys there are. 

The way Jo used word problems in the way she talked I do sometimes but perhaps I need to do this more. I also think this reinforced the need for my to continue to do fraction recognition as often as possible. Also the importance of managing children so that everyone gets thinking time. Well this is something that I try to do it does not always happen as they are so keen to share. 

Maths Place Value

Today we are very lucky to have the wonderful Jo back with us to talk about Place Value.
Jo talked about it being important to make sure all place value learning was grounded with materials. By creating bundles of tens and grouping tens to make hundreds.

We need to make sure place value becomes our learners  friends by doing it every day.
This many look like give the kids numbers. They order the numbers, expand it, write add tens it. Say the numbers after and numbers before.
They should be provided with loads of materials in this time frame.

Remember the teaching model:
-Start with material.
-Move to imaging.
-Then to the more abstract.

Jo had some lovely helpers to show us how she would teach a lesson.
First she gave them the problem: 19+6 to see where they were at with addition. They struggled to explain their thinking.
After this she gave them some tens frames to she what their number ID was like. She did this with numbers between 1-10 and then teen numbers. They were very good at this.

Then they moved on to using counters to find 10 and numbers 9+4=13. Learners did this well.
Then they moved to imaging by putting the counters on the frames under the book. Then encourage the same thinking. 8+5 If there is 8 how many empty squares are there? They made a tidy ten. 10+3=13
Then she revised the numbers 6+9 and encouraged them to think about what number would be easiest to make a tidy ten. Children did not add to the 9 but added to the 6. Then Jo modelled adding to the 9. Then she moved into 19+6=

She encouraged a lot of pair and share times during the group lesson.

The power of imagery. We noticed in this lesson that when they were prompted to image they had more success and felt more confident.

When working with a group it is important to be able to hear and respond to the kids ideas and misconception.

Basic addition facts can be broken down into steps to learn.

Forming OTJs in Maths-Jo Knox

An OTJ draws on multiple source of data to make a judgement about their ability in comparison to national standard.  You can't just use one piece of evidence as this is hazardous to forming a true picture.

Type of evidence you will include are:
-observations
-conversations
-test data
and other group work.

To make a judgment you will need to use the The New Zealand Curriculum Mathematics standards poster, the standards books and additional illustration.

We also need to remember that just having the answer it is not enough it is about how they explain how they know it.

While the number is the most critical requirement, strand include geometry, measurement and statistics.

We also must remember that number knowledge is used to facilitate problem solving. Knowledge is important but it is there to help you with strategies.

When forming our OJT we need to think about are they able to do it independently and most of the time. 

We need to think about how we are tracking all of this data overtime so that we don't have to go back to each individual sources each time. This can be done in many ways.

Maths Professional Learning

The maths discussion we had today started by looking at how the curriculum, standards and numeracy framework line up.

Here is the cut up poster we put together.





Gloss
We look at a gloss problems and worked in teams to mark these and identify the stages.

Some important things to remember:
-Gloss is a mental test. Students who can do gloss questions in a their head are working at a higher level. If students have given you the correct answer but are struggling to explain this is when you might use water.
-You can reword the problem to change the context if it is not relevant to the learners but not the change integrity of the question.

IKAN-Aims at Testing number knowledge
The benefits of  this test is that it is quick, however we must remember that it has added pressures of time and recording pressure.

The box on the right in IKAN tell you more that the totals at bottom. Jo said that for her learners she gave them a chance to self correct the problems that they just made silly mistakes on so that they could focus their learning goals around real areas they need to work on.

Spider Graph
Help students to see exactly where they are in a visual format. This means that can see their areas of strengths are areas that they may need to work on. By highlighting the standard and the students results by the second set of testing they can see their progress.

Todays workshop really helped me to understand the assessments better and discuss these with other teachers.

Inquiry focus 2017

As I have discussed in previous posts the beginning to my year has be fueled by the idea that we are voyagers setting out to explore the unknown but always knowing where we are and where we have been.

After listening to the research feedback I had to think very carefully about my inquiry focus. As a school we are aware that the feedback suggest accelerate shift in reading but not as much shift in maths. This is why our inquiry focus this year is mathematics.

There are many factors that have influenced my think about my inquiry including, what Stuart McNaughton had said about interpersonal skills, key competencies and critical thinking and my dissertation in which I plan to focus on fluency video self modelling and peer feedback. This lead to think that feedback was a link between my dissertation and Stuarts ideas and that this could perhaps support critical thinking and discussion in mathematics.

This lead to my inquiry question: How does peer feedback affect progress in mathematics with my target group?

Peer feedback occurring in a maths group helping learners to form their picture of numbers and strategies. 

To start my inquiry I need to think about what this feedback looks like. I believe that it may be best in a discussion form in which student given feedback to each other including questions which opens up discussion about numbers and strategies.

I believe that the best way of achieving this discussion is to have open problems in which student work with different numbers (number that they choose from options given in context) using the same strategy. This allows them to given feedback around how they strategy worked and what they noticed about the numbers.

I still feel I have a lot of clarify to do and part of that process will be observing others to see how maths discussion happen around our school. This I hope will help me to develop my teaching to better support student voices in the feedback and discussion process.

It is also important that student share their maths on their blogs and that this is done creatively.
Some ideas I have around this at this stage are:

-Sketchnoting using google draw and/or pixlr
 -Video descriptions of what they did and why
 -using mini whiteboards and ipads to record problem solving.
- Audio/movie
- EE/educreations - Used to record thinking as group is working and solving.

I am excited to see how peer feedback can support discussion and build understanding in mathematics. I will keep you updated on my progress as I continue to inquire into my practice.