Quick Inquiry Update

PROBLEM: My kids struggle to explain and justify their thinking and reasoning in maths.

WONDERING: How can I develop the mathematical dialogic discourse ability of my children?

Anecdotally my target group are making progress in their ability to explain and justify their mathematical thinking. They are speaking with greater confidence and are using the word 'because' more frequently. They still often need teacher prompts but I'm finding they don't need as many teacher prompts and are more willing to share their thinking.

The waka prompts have been helpful in giving the kids something to launch from and they they are using them more frequently without me reminding them to use them. Unfortunately the kids still like to play with them and they can be a distraction but they are more useful than not. It has been great to see some of the kids request to not have waka prompts as they are confident they don't need them.

This week I will again be recording and measuring the mathematics discourse of my kids. I just hope the data reflects my anecdotal notes.

The power of co-constructing the WALT

One of my significant takeaways from PD with Jo Knox was how she co-constructed the WALT with the children at the end of the lesson. The WALT was written in language the children used and could understand.

I have since done this with my maths groups and it is working a treat and has a number of benefits.  By co-constructing the WALT the children are reflecting on their learning straight after the lesson and it has helped them cement the lesson content.

I have also seen higher levels of engagement when co-constructing the WALT.  By not letting the cat out of the bag at the start of the lesson there is an element of the unknown. This unknown creates a level of curiosity within the children which leads to greater engagement.

Finally, it has empowered the children and given them greater agency over their learning which can only be a good thing right?

If you haven't done this with your class you should give it a whirl. At the very least it's nice to mix things up a bit for both you and your kids.

Perfect Punch - Ratio Lesson

The learning intention for this lesson was to solve word problems involving decimals and to justify your thinking. The video shows snippets of the whole teaching process from the introduction of the problem to the children explaining their thinking to the class. Check out the full lesson plan and child generated content here.

An interesting issue that arose was the children didn't read the question properly. The question asked was,  'How much of each drink would Jack need to make punch for 30 people' but the children read it as, 'How many batches of punch does Jack need to make to serve 30 people'.  Once the error was highlighted they were able to join the dots and do the maths but the problem was they didn't realise the error themselves.  This is a common issue for our kids, they struggle to understand either the vocabulary in the word problem or knowing what it is asking them which then has a detrimental effect on their maths. My next steps involves  unpacking the word problems with the children and guiding them to make sure they fully understand the problem before proceeding with solving it.

A challenge with create tasks

This term my maths class has been studying measurement. This lesson involved the children estimating and measuring distances then comparing the difference between them. It aligns with my CoL inquiry as it has a hands on/materials and a create element to the lesson. Being a hands on and a create based task made for high student engagement which was great to see. Unfortunately high engagement doesn't always mean learning. One challenge I find with create activities is the children get so caught up in the create aspect of the task and neglect the actual content of what they are creating. Often leading to videos with mathematical examples that are not accurate or clear.

This was a Google Class OnAir episode. For a full lesson plan, reflection and examples of the children completed activities please go here.

Decimal Place Value - Jumping the gun

It has been so great to see my kids develop their decimal place value knowledge (and fraction knowledge) by using materials. This has concretised it for them and helped them connect with the knowledge. Having had success with this I thought great they've got it and I gave them an activity that would see them solving addition and subtraction problems that includes tenths and hundredths...without using materials.


This was an epic fail on my behalf.  In my excitement I jumped from using materials straight to using number properties totally by passing imaging. As you can imagine the kids found this too hard (although some managed). We ended up working through the problems altogether in their group in order to complete it. I learnt a valuable lesson. Wishing and hoping my kids will get something doesn't work. I need scaffold the next steps more effectively in order to get further growth. Lesson learned.

Defining success

I just finished watching a video of  Graeme Aitken who presented to the Manaiakalani school leaders about collaboration and teaching as inquiry. His presentation was full of wisdom and he had a great way of explaining things so that even the simplest of teachers (myself included) could understand.

Graeme stated that as teacher's we are only trying to achieve 3 things:

1 - More interest/enjoyment of learning
2 - More confident children
3 - More achievement success

While I agree (as I'm sure the Ministry of Education (MOE)  and many others do) with these three goals I think the education sector has a long way to go in regards to recognising all of them. In my opinion there is greater weighting to goal number three. At the end of the year I'm not reporting to senior management or the MOE about the interest/enjoyment levels of my children or how confident they are. I'm reporting back on their achievement levels.  As a teacher I really want to have children who are interested in/enjoying learning and children who are growing in confidence however it's really easy to focus solely their achievement levels as this seems to be what matters most and what defines success.

Listening to Graeme was a great reminder for me to not forget about goals one & two. Graeme said real success is when you get an intersection of the three goals. When you get children who are interested, confident and achieving. I really like this definition of success and it is one I will be adopting. While it's not an easy task it takes into account the wellbeing of the children which can only be a good thing right?

Manaiakalani Community of Learning

“Recognising and spreading sophisticated pedagogical practice across our community so that students learn in better and more powerful ways...”

The Manaiakalani Community of Learning is working together on this task using the expertise existing in of our community of learning.

In 2017 for my inquiry I have selected the following CoL achievement challenge 

#6. Lift the achievement in maths for all students years 1-13.

More specifically my focus question is :

How can I significantly improve my Year 7 & 8 kids mathematical knowledge within a Learn Create Share pedagogy?

The teaching as inquiry framework I will be using in 2017 has been specifically co-constructed for Manaiakalani schools using our familiar Learn Create Share structure.
The elements in this framework share close similarities with other models New Zealand teachers use.

I will be labelling my posts as I update my inquiry throughout the year to make the content easy to access.

Labels:

LEvidence, LScan, LTrend, LHypothesise, LResearch, LReflect,

 CPlan, CTry, CInnovate, CImplement, CReflect,

SPublish, SCoteach, SModel, SGuide, SFback, SReflect

Label Key:

LEvidence	Learn - Gather Evidence	CPlan	Create - Make a plan	SPublish	Share - Publish
LScan	Learn - Scan	CTry	Create - Try new things	SCoteach	Share - Co-teach
LTrend	Learn - Identify Trends	CInnovate	Create - Innovate	SModel	Share - Model
LHypothesise	Learn - Hypothesise	CImplement	Create - Implement	SGuide	Share - Guide
LResearch	Learn - Research	CReflect	Create - Reflect	SFback	Share - Feedback
LReflect	Learn - Reflect			SReflect	Share - Reflect