Book Da Teacher

As a part of my inquiry scan I asked my children via a google form: "Is there anything your maths teacher could do to help you improve more in maths? If so what?

20 children responded to the survey question but only 7 answered the question in it's entirety. The others opted to simply answer yes or no without explaining what I could do to help. Out of the 7 who responded in full 4 of them said something along the lines of "spending more time with the teacher". This surprised me as the introduction of the maths tumble meant I was seeing each group regularly. I asked those four children to elaborate on what the wanted and they all mentioned they wanted one on one or smaller group time with me. As it turned out when I asked the class to close their eyes and raise their hand if they would like to have more teacher time in a smaller group setting 4/5 of them raised their hand.

With 20 kids indicating they would like more time with me to help them in their maths learning I have initiated 'Book da teacher'. The children can book in a 10 minute time slot with me using a google sheet via our team's website. The 2 conditions are: A maximum of 3 people per session and the children must come to the session with something to work on or a problem.

'Book da teacher' is now in it's second week of running. To my surprise in the first 2 days no one booked in. When I questioned the kids about what was going on it turned out they were confused as to what they should come to me with. After some further elaboration the booking sheet started to fill up. It is still early days but I am hoping that this initiative will be a small step towards lifting the maths achievement of my kids.

Hearing from the children.

In order to better support my maths children in their learning I wanted to find out more about their own level of mathematics confidence and how much support they receive from home. Below is some of the data from a survey given to the children.



1 - I don't enjoy it at all         5 - I love learning maths at school

This result surprised me. I assumed that most of the responses would have been around 2 & 3. It is encouraging to see that most of the class do enjoy learning maths at school. Further investigation will be needed to find out what I can do to help the 2 students who don't enjoy learning maths at school.
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1 - Not confident           5 - Very confident

Again these results surprised me. It was encouraging to see that 38% had some confidence in their maths ability and it was pleasing to see that none of the children had no confidence.

Interestingly while 65% of the children could think of two adults in their life who had encouraged and supported them in maths only 42% said they get help with their maths from anyone at home. On further investigation for most of those children who indicated 2 adults support them in maths, one of those adults was a teacher.

There are a lot of takeaways from this data. I am yet to work out how this data will affect my teaching and lessons however it has given me much to think about.

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