Manaiakalani COL teachers share teaching inquiries

 

What a great afternoon sharing alongside all CoL teachers!   We all presented in a session to showcase our inquiries at the Annual Manaiakalani Hui.  It was great to share our inquiries with a whole range of people.   The audience I shared with were from a range of places:

• old teachers friends from across the cluster dating back over 10 years!
• core education representatives
• members of the Woolf Fisher Research 
• Manaiakalani Outreach Team
• new teachers to our cluster
• members of our Manaiakalani Hackers Team 

A few standout points for me was finding out from colleagues a common goal of having students AND teachers 'Explain Ready'.  Meaning:

a. students are ready to explain how they might solve a problem in maths.  

b. they are able to interpret what a word problem is actually asking

c. the need for educators to be more aligned in the terminology

d. the need think carefully of  the style of questioning and processing we need to promote.  

e. teacher choice of language and modelling will develop mathematical understanding to the point of being able to transfer knowledge and practice into other strands and curriculum areas.

As I shared in my recent post my inquiry falls under achievement challenge #4: 

Increase the achievement of Years 7-10, in reading, writing and maths, as measured against National Standards and agreed targets

Here is the presentation I shared..  I must say it was fun setting up the 3 panelled board - really made me think about what really needed to be shared given the limited space to display.  Thanks to the Manaiakalani team for their leadership in setting up this valuable opportunity for us all.  You are very welcome to visit my professional blog to read and see more.

Preparing and refining - Manaiakalani Hui 2017

Here's sneak peak at one piece from my presentation.  Come along and find out what it's all about!  Friday 25th August, Panmure Yacht Club 2 - 4pm.

Tomorrow we get to share our COL inquiries with the whole Manaiakalani Cluster. This will be taking place at the Panmure Yacht Club. Opportunities to share in such forums prompts to check and look again at the components that make up your teaching inquiry.

The team I am in are targeting the '#4 Achievement Challenge' which reads:
4. Increase the achievement of Years 7-10, in reading, writing and maths, as measured against National Standards and agreed targets.

My focus is specifically maths with a target group of learners who are sitting below the national standard, combination of boys and girls, year 7 and 8.   Our COL team for this particular achievement challenge are going to use the following headings to organise our presentation.

• What the inquiry is about
• Hunches
• Actions taken
• Successes
• Failures or setbacks
• Changes in the learning 
• Changes in our practice

I'm looking forward to being there the whole day where we will hear from our MIT Spark teachers, our student ambassadors from every school in the cluster, feedback from WF Researchers team and more.    Always a valuable time of learning and reflecting.  Kia Manuia!

Teacher talk is so important! Being 'explain ready'.

This afternoon was time well spent with Jo Knox and colleagues from year 5 through to 8.   The focus for our group PD was on the teaching and learning of fractions - ratios and proportion.   As the workshop unfolded it highlighted the following

- How we set problems to solve
- How we phrase our prompts and questions
- Which parts of a word problem to we spend time on teaching
- Which parts are redundant - not useful

This links to what I have found in parts of my inquiry.  The teacher's ability to articulate mathematical operations through to problem solving is significant in the learner's ability to advance in maths.   Where a teacher creates tasks effectively, use of correct terminology and mindfulness of scenarios learners may come up with - the thinking process of students is set up with greater stability.  The thinking process taken will prompt a transfer of skills across strands.  

Again I find myself reflecting on my own methods of setting up maths learning.  The language and phrases I use in maths to prompt the solving of various maths problems.   Jo Knox referred to the basics of how we describe fractions - what works and doesn't.   The part that doesn't work - showed thinking processes that were very limited and did not support the transfer of knowledge into other strands.   PD for myself - get explain ready for whatever scenarios students come up with in their efforts to problem solve.

The following are some helpful tips from Jo Knox's session.

• Some students in ratios use additive - stage 6
• We want to move into multiplicative
• ‘Launch’ of question. Ensure all students have access to understand the question. It’s not meant to trip up students. Explain different parts to allow students access to the question.
• Whatever your problem area. Do a 5 minutes piece with class daily. Maths wall could show the processes you want to teach.  
• Who can find keywords? etc
• Where are the key numbers?
• Redundant? Who can find words that are NOT useful
• Do exercise to picture what you’re trying to ask WITHOUT numbers. E.g. ‘I have money in this pocket and some in this one...how much do I have’. 
• Students will understand what operations you’re after BEFORE dealing with the numbers.

COL - my process so far

Let's walk it through:
1. Identify the challenge: acceleration of maths in year 7 - 10
2. HOW?   Empower students by showing them their data 
(Lenva & Jo)
3. Process: 
a. Identify areas of success / difficulty
b. Identify the WHY it was difficult 
c. Learn how to work through this - solve it!
4. Capture evidence of HOW to solve the problem 
5. Share providing evidence AND teach the next student!
Below is an example of student carrying out numbers 6 and 7.  Go here to see more from Hosea.


This week we have been learning to use 'screencastify'.  This was to explore the use of 'Screencastify' to explain how I/we problem solve.

 Can you see how I worked this problem out? Give me feedback if you think there's something else I could have added in my speech or screen capture.

Target group update - data from end of term 2

We've had a series of team meetings this term where we've had the chance to share our data in maths.  Alongside this our 'hunches' as to why behind the results.  As a team we agreed that in our efforts to teach basic fundamentals in addition, subtraction, multiplication and division we didn't branch enough into the 'ratio and proportions' area.  This meant our gloss testing showed a specific weakness in the solving of problems relating to fractions that sits in ratio and proportions.

Also - linking back to previous posts, the only going development needed in students being able to interpret word problems and be 'explain' ready when they do solve them!

Below I have data of my target students as of the end of term 2.

	Y7/8	2016	2017	OTJ
Boy	7	6	E7	At
Girl	7	E6	6	Below
Girl	7	E6	6	Below
Girl	7	E6	E6	Below
Boy	7	E6	E6	Below
Boy	8	5	6	Well below
Boy	8	E7	E7	Below
Boy	7	6	5	Well below
Girl	8	E7	E6	Well below

Green movement up - still not accelerated however.  Yellow no movement and red - slipped back.  This is based on gloss testing.