End of Year Reflection for 2018

As the end of 2018 draws to an end, I am pleased with the progress I have made in the following areas:
Success with Year 7 student flagged as student with high behavioural needs (on Autism spectrum). I have worked hard to build a strong positive relationship with him. This effort has paid off as he has been willing to talk through incidents as they happen and take on board advice on how to improve his decision making should a similar situation arise in the future. As a result he is much more reflective and better able to take more ownership of his part in ‘incidents’ and can recognise with minimal prompting how he could have handled a given situation better.

Developing self-confidence as classroom teacher - Due to maternity leave by two colleagues in Term 1 and Term 2, I found myself to be the 2nd longest serving member in Team 5. I have enjoyed supporting the interim Team Leader and new colleagues in the Team 5 space.

Embracing new DMIC maths pedagogy - I have really enjoyed taking part in the PD, having the observations/mentoring sessions and analysing/deconstructing my maths teaching practice. It has given me a greater appreciation for the vast content knowledge that is needed in order to do a decent job in guiding students in their maths learning.

Now looking forward to 2019, a few things that excite me having:

A fresh opportunity work on routines and transitions to improve behaviour management - my intention is start from Day 1/Week 1 with a strong focus on establishing group norms for my home class, literacy and maths classes.

Being able to get more time in class to tweak my teaching practice especially in Writing. Figuring out creative ways to engage students in writing. I would like to move away from formulaic checklists and somehow get students to respond more instinctively to writing prompt

Improve how I gather/analyse formative assessment as well as being more reflective of my planning and including differentiation.

Inquiry - Term 1 Update

TALK MOVES - A POSSIBLE SOLUTION?

The DMIC teaching approach uses maths problems rooted in the real world problems in contexts that are culturally relevant and engaging for students and linked to 'big' maths ideas.

For my inquiry then, as an initial starting point, I wanted to investigate how the use of TALK MOVES could support my priority students to improve their understanding and make use of higher level Maths concepts.

I need to working on building up the usage of the five key Talk Moves with my students and continue to encourage and prompt them to use key questions to engage each other in discussions around a mathematical problem.

Teaching Inquiry 2018 - Talk Moves

STUDENT NEEDS, DATA AND HUNCHES
I had originally intended to use this inquiry opportunity to examine how I could better teach my students the fundamentals for writing. This was based on my personal reflection that in 2018 I needed to improve how I taught this subject area.

However, after listening to the presentation by Woolf Fisher researchers at Tamaki College, I needed to change my plan. The 2017 results for students achievement across schools in the Manaiakalani cluster clearly showed that Maths was a bigger concern than Writing.

This realisation prompted me to check the data for my Maths class for this year. Based on National Standards benchmarks, only 2 students had achieved 'at' by the end of 2017, the remaining 27 students were sitting at either 'below' or 'well below'.

I wanted to focus on the band of students who are noted as 'below' in Maths. WIth the right intervention, there is a better chance of achieving upaward shift in 'below' learners than those who are 'well below'.  I then identified a group who I can best describe as being in Maths learning limbo - by this I mean that while they show capability in Maths they are stuck and not progressing because  I have not been able to move them to the up to the next level.  

Within this group I have identified six priority learners - all Year 8 students who achieved Stage 6 at the end of 2017. NB: Ideally they should have been hitting Stage 7. 

My hunch is that the progress of this group of Maths learners is being held back because they struggle to understand and then correctly apply higher level strategies. 

THE CHALLENGE AHEAD

Building on Maths PD last year with Jo Knox,  PES is rolling out the DMIC (Developing Mathematical Inquiry Communities) approach of teaching maths across the entire school i.e. from Year 1 to Year 8. Based on comprehensive research in the US around complex maths instruction, Prof. Bobbi Hunter of Massey University has developed a pedagogy that aims to deepen students understanding of maths - working in mixed ability groups to collectively solve maths problems.

The challenge will be to find out how to best to use the DMIC pedagogy to build confidence in priority learners so they are more likely to take risks to grapple with more complex problems - the payoff being they will develop their maths thinking and problem solving skills and progress to more complex maths work.

TALK MOVES - A POSSIBLE SOLUTION?

The DMIC teaching approach uses maths problems rooted in the real world problems in cultural contexts that are relevant and engaging for students and related to 'big' maths ideas.

For my inquiry then, as an initial starting point, I would like to investigate how the use of TALK MOVES can support my priority students to improve their understanding and make use of higher level Maths concepts.