Making changes and encouraging mathematics in my classroom and whanau community

Many of my students feel mathematics is too hard for them especially when it comes to Decimals and Fractions. I am sure many teachers can agree with this. I have noticed throughout my teaching that many students have huge learnings gaps in decimals, fractions and also percentages. 

At the moment, our focus through our DMIC programme is on decimals, fractions and percentages. I have noticed that I am teaching mathematics with a lot more passion than I ever have. 

Reflective question: Have I been so focussed on my literacy pedagogy that I have neglected Maths? 

 

I am encouraging my students to learn their times tables from 2 - 12 as this will help them with their basic facts knowledge and also with their multiplicative strategies. It is part of an on going home learning focus we have and majority of the class 80% are learning their times tables at home. I also received some feedback from parents during our Three Way Conferences that they were happy to see their children learning their times tables. Some parents also expressed they are quite the experts at recalling their times tables. 

Reflective question: How else can I harness whanau support in my Teaching as Inquiry in Maths?

Our school distributes our school newsletter every month. In our class page I often used to put maths questions which we were solving in class for whanau to solve. Not one whanau responded. 

Reflective question: What do other schools do to encourage whanau participation in student learning?

As I have been on leave for Term 2, I am now having to decide what my focus will be for this teaching as inquiry. I have identified my curriculum area of focus and now reflecting, analysing and reflecting on the changes I will make to my practice to accelerate student learning. The other outcome I hope for my teaching as inquiry is to change the mentality of my target group from 'I am not good at maths' to 'I enjoy learning in maths and I can do this'. Where in literacy we aim to encourage life long readers, I am aiming to encourage life long mathematicians. 

Ero review report on Mathematics

It is important when inquiring into a curriculum area to look at what the literature and what has been happening in this curriculum area in other schools. I came across a review conducted by ERO titled: Teaching approaches and strategies that work KEEPING CHILDREN ENGAGED AND ACHIEVING IN MATHEMATICS published in 2018. 

The review was one of a series of reports on teaching strategies that work. It featured strategies and approaches which were observed in 40 primary school from across New Zealand. The schools came from a database of 129 schools with rolls of 200 or more where the proportion of students in the upper primary years had increased in their achievement. 

Raising achievement in primary schools: Accelerating Learning in Mathematics (ALiM) and Accelerating Literacy Learning (ALL) June 2014 This report shared how some primary schools were using the Ministry-funded support projects Accelerated Learning in Mathematics (ALiM) and Accelerated Learning in Literacy (ALL) to enhance learning and raise achievement. 

The report found that, in schools where teachers’ involvement in the ALiM and ALL projects had accelerated children’s progress, 

• students were active partners in designing their own learning plans; they were supported to monitor their own progress; they knew what they needed to learn next; and they were able to provide feedback about the teaching actions that worked for them. 
• parents and whänau were formally invited to be part of the process; they were involved in workshops to develop home activities and in frequent, regular, three-way conferencing in which teachers emphasised progress and success.
•  teachers knew they were expected to critique the effectiveness of their practice and to make changes; they had a willingness to seek both positive and negative evidence of progress; and they were open to new practices that make a difference.

The report discussed that, for schools to be effective in accelerating student progress, they needed:

• leadership capability 
• teacher capability 
• leaders and teachers with assessment and evaluative capability 
• leaders with the capability to develop relationships with students, parents, whänau, trustees, and other teaching professionals
• leaders and teachers with the capability to design and implement a curriculum that engaged students.

The report states that 'in schools where mathematics achievement was improving, and leaders knew the reasons for this improvement, teachers had usually participated in well-planned and targeted professional learning and development (PLD). Leaders had identified each teacher’s strengths and needs and then organised internally or externally facilitated PLD to respond specifically to those needs. They carefully selected teachers from within the school who could lead development work successfully with their colleagues to spread the agreed practices. They made time available for these selected leaders to increase their own knowledge and to work with others'. 

The above statement highlights the value in identifying staff members which strengths in the curriculum areas of focus. For example, the schools in the report identified teachers who had strengths in mathematics and gave them lead roles to implement good practice across their schools. 

Other valuable insights I took away from this report were the use of teaching practices which my own school have been implementing  throughout the years. These practices include: mixed ability grouping, using Talk Moves, teacher collaborative planning, problem solving approach and using Teaching as Inquiry. 

I reflected on how these teaching practices have been introduced, implemented and then the focus on continuing these practices slowly diminished as time passed. I also have noticed it is not highlighted to our new teaching staff as they begin their teaching in our school. Thus highlighting a break down in how we as teachers have a uniform understanding about practices in teaching mathematics. 

From this report, I will move on to discussing with our teachers what their mathematics programmes are and how they implement DMIC which is our current school wide mathematics focus. 

Choosing a focus for my inquiry this year

After assessing my students this term, I have found that there is a great need to focus on Reading and Maths for their learning. I have analysed my data and found that most of my students are below their expected achievement level for their year level at the start of this year in Reading and Maths. 

After sitting through many 3 Way Conference conversations with my students and their parents, I have also realised that a lot of my students have identified Maths as a subject which is hard for them to achieve in. Through the Gloss test, I identified that many of my students struggled with answering the ratio and proportions questions. 

As I have been focussing on Reading in my past inquiries, I feel I have confidence in continuing with what I had learnt from my previous Teaching as Inquiries and implementing these into my classroom programme. Therefore, I plan to tackle the challenges with Maths this year. It is an area I have not focussed on in my Teaching as Inquiry for some years but an area of great concern in my teaching at the moment and it is reflective in my class data and also student voice. 

We are a DMIC school and have been doing the problem solving approach at our school before DMIC was introduced to our school in 2020. It will be a great opportunity for me to inquire into how DMIC is helping our students with their learning in Maths and also how our teachers feel about teaching using the DMIC approach. 

I have yet to identify what aspect my teaching as inquiry will follow with DMIC and maths this year but this will be finalised soon. I am quite keen to focus on Maths this year as I can see the great need for this inquiry focus with my current cohort of students. 

Introduction 2023

Talofa lava. As we embark on another exciting year I would like to take this opportunity to introduce myself. I look forward to working with our schools in our cluster this year. Wishing you all a successful year ahead.

2022 TAI evaluation

My teaching as inquiry for this year has brought me so much more experience as a an educator and leader. Working with my sample group of teachers enabled me to gain insight about the challenges and successes a team of teachers can experience when collaborating as a team on a specific goal. 

Our goal as a group was to accelerate the learning of our akonga in reading. We also wanted to change the way we teach so we were all on the same understanding as to what an effective reading programme is. It is fair to say we have not completely achieved the goal of identifying what an effective reading programme looks like in the classroom but we have certainly made a good start. 

What happened this year?

Collaborative planning - we had a lot of korero/talanoa about our understanding of what an effective reading programme is. What we currently do in our practice which works and what we could add

Using the Planning Fala (Manaiakalani Effective Reading Practices Survey (2022). Analysis of teacher responses by N. Rosedale (Literacy Facilitator) for the Reading Design Group) - this was a core element of my teaching as inquiry. The Planning Fala incorporated aspects of a reading programme which I wanted to incorporate into my teaching as inquiry and much more. We have added certain parts of the Planning Fala to our planning and teaching but need to incorporate more next year.

Interpreting assessment data - as part of my teaching as inquiry, I interpreted the PAT reading data for our senior school from the term one assessment and also analysed the term four data. I strongly believe data is an integral part of any teaching as inquiry. As a teacher, data can inform our practice and challenge us to make changes or to keep doing what we are doing if the data shows acceleration. The qualitative data I collected from my sample group gave me a lot of insight about the strengths and needs of the teachers I worked with this year. 

In class observations - as part of my inquiry, I also observed teachers in their classrooms teaching their own target learners. From the beginning of my intervention, I highlighted that my role was to work alongside our group. The observations were for teachers to receive feedback and feedforward through post discussions about their teaching practice in reading. I do understand that observations can be daunting for some teachers but I relied on our connections as teachers, team members and friends to eliminate this feeling. 

End of year data collection

My data set for the end of my teaching for inquiry for this year is a survey completed by my sample group in Term 4. The survey was sent in a google form and I have analysed the data using the qual analysis method Naomi Rosedale taught me. 

Qual analysis of my point 1 data collection

At the beginning of my intervention, I collected qualitative data from my sample group. There were no numerical information from the data set because it was a survey where the teachers answered the questions. In a recent PLG, Naomi Rosedale discussed analysing qualitative data in a quantitative way. This is called qual analysis. I asked Naomi if I could meet with her so she could go over this analysis technique with me. 

The meeting with Naomi was a very educational meeting for me because in the short time we met, I learnt so much from Naomi about how to analyse qualitative data. The analysis I have done of my data set is a very basic qual analysis. Naomi has shown me some other forms of qual analysis to analyse qualitative data but for a start, this is what I have done. 

This method of data analysis paints a much clearer picture of qualitative data. When I looked at my original data analysis in qualitative form, there were so many different information presented. However, when I completed the qual analysis of the same data set, I could clearly see some common trends in the data set. I suppose it supports a saying I have about quantitative data - the numbers tell a story. 

The overall theme I picked out from my data analysis were:

• There was and is still a great need for pedagogical knowledge needed for our teachers to plan and implement an effective reading programme
• The teachers all had different ideas about how to teach reading
• There was no common understanding of how to plan and teach reading
• There is a lack of connection with whanau with the reading programmes happening in classes 
• Key elements highlighted in the Fala Planning Model were not used in our current reading programmes 

I have just collected the last data set from my sample group from their reflections of our journey this year. I will do a qual analysis of this data set and post it in an upcoming blog post. 

Evaluating data for inquiries

Today's PLG for our CoL teachers focussed on how we analyse data. There were definitely a lot of great learning which I took away from the PLG. 

I have always thought about collecting data as qualitative and quantitative. Quantitative giving more statistical information with numerical values and qualitative where the information is more categorial. Today Naomi Rosedale did share that there are ways to analyse qualitative data to give more numerical information. I am booking a time to meet with her so she can give me more support in doing this. 

Data is really important in our teaching as inquiry. Whenever I analyse students data, there are always so many questions and wondering which come to mind when looking at data especially over a number of years. I always say that data tell a story about what is happening for our students and also our teaching as teachers. 

This year, because my sample group are our teachers, I have collected my profiling data using surveys and also quantitative data from the assessments of the target students in each teachers' group. As we are heading towards end of year assessments, I am very keen to see what the summative data will show in the students' assessments and also the end of year qualitative data from my sample group of teachers. 

"Just saying they have made progress because they have a higher test score or jumped xxx levels is not enough.

Need to compare to something more than just pre and post test data.

Are the learners in your target group making progress in comparison to... Norm, Data from last year, other comparative learners in school/cluster?" (PLG slide 63)

The information above from our PLG slides highlights the importance of comparing the achievement of our students to the norm, past data and also learners in other schools and clusters. I think this is important because if we just compare our students by themselves, then we will not know how they are achieving compared to other learners in the cluster or NZ. 

The template above from our PLG slides is one way we can compare our student data with the norm and a comparison group.