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.

Inequality in Education: Dr Pedro Noguera

Dr. Pedro Noguera was the keynote speaker at a workshop run by the Pacific Research Symposium on January 28th. His presentation highlighted the barriers to education faced by males of colour (African-American and Latino) in the US and provided parallels to a similar plight being experienced by young Maori and Pasifika men in Aotearoa/NZ.

He urged us to acknowledge that the current solutions/education institutions are 'not working' for them and argued that the system, that encourages inequity in education, needs to change. He offered up examples in NZ (Kia Aroha School) and the US (Eagle Academy) of new learning models where a student's culture/heritage is an asset and provides the platform for building success at school and sets them up to access improve life circumstances/opportunities.

I found his talk very thought provoking - what kind of role models do our children have to look up to - professionals? sports stars? entertainers? what expectations do we as teachers have for our students?how can we as teachers keep our kids engaged and motivated in their learning?

Term 4 2107 - Inquiry Update

In Term 4, I wanted to explore how I could use modelling books more effectively to scaffold my priority students to improve their problem solving strategies. 

I had initially thought that taking photos of the working out recorded in the modelling book would be sufficient but have realised this is not necessarily a great leap forward as I have really just created a digital version of the original modelling book. 

After talking with my inquiry group leader, he explained that if I am to take the modelling book to the next level I need to make it a resource that will allow students to 'rewind their learning' so that at a time and place that was convenient for them they can access previous work.

This made total sense and it would be possible to achieve this by simply adding an audio track (from myself or ideally the students themselves) that would allow anyone using the online modelling book to have instructions to guide them on how to use a given maths strategy.

This innovation is something that will be useful across all subject areas so that any prior learning can be shared for others to access.

What a year 2017 has been! It has taken a while to wrap my head around the Teaching as Inquiry process and navigate the process of how to reflect on my teaching practice when as a Beginning Teacher there feels like there is still a lot more learning to be done.  

To get real benefit from this reflective practise, I want to have a clear focus (subject area, target students) and then quickly gather relevant historical data as a starting point. I then need to be more methodical in how I select, implement, monitor and analyse how a change in an aspect of my teaching practise will positively impact my target learners. Bring on 2018!

Fractions and Decimals with Jo Knox

Today Team 5 had the opportunity to watch Jo Knox in action with two different Maths groups (one at Stage 6 and one at Stage 7). The aim was to see her teach students to convert fractions into decimals.

DIAGNOSTIC TESTING Jo asked a series of quick questions to gauge the groups understanding of fractions and decimals based on examples from the Numeracy  Development Project (NPD) resources or ‘Pink books’.

MATERIALS - Decipipes are a really effective tool to help support students to understand the basics of fractions and decimals. They are also easy for students to manipulate, able to break/build up both representations of both fraction and decimal numbers. 

STRATEGY MODEL Start students off using materials then progressing to Imaging and then Materials as students show greater fluency in their use of a given strategy - see NPD Book 3 p5 

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MODELLING BOOK - Number equations were recorded in a modelling book in plain view of all students. A handy reference point for the teacher to guide students in their thinking and to record in themselves (see next note).
STUDENT THINKING - Jo regularly asked students to explain their answers. The focus was on how they got an answer, helped to highlight can be more than one ‘correct’ solution; extended this to give specific roles to members of the group - split group into three - one group explained their answer, while a second group modelled the answer using materials (decipipes) and a third group recorded answer in modelling book - this approach ensure all students were fully engaged!

PLENARY - at the end of each group’s session, Jo asked the students to reflect on what they had learned and together they co-constructed the WALT for the lesson in kid’s language - she feels that sharing the WALT at start of lesson isl ike giving away the punchline of a joke upfront

Example 1: WALT Convert fractions and decimals by turning them into tenths, hundredths and thousandths

Example 2: WALT by add numbers by taking one off one number and adding to another to make a whole number

So many golden nuggets from this session! I would like to try out co-constructing WALTs with my students - it will be interesting to see if what I had planned to teach matches up with what students feel they have learnt.

Term 3 Inquiry Update: Rich Learning Activities

In Term 3, my priority students changed and I revamped my inquiry focus question to investigate the extent to which the format of maths problems will influence the problem solving abilities of my target students.

My latest hunch was that the format of the questions I gave to the students was impacting on their ability to be successful in problem solving.
A PD session with Jo Knox highlighted the benefits of using open ended, rich learning tasks (like the 'Giant's Hand' activity to the right) as a way to engage and challenge students. She explained a resource bank is available on the nzmaths site. 
I chose rich learning activities that matched the term topic of Geometry & Measurement. To explore the concept of perimeter further, I chose the Parking Cars task for my priority group. Students needed to work out a new car park layout for a specific number of vehicles.

First we unpacked the problem in our group session and clarified key details e.g the dimensions of the parking lot and the required car spaces. I was explicit in telling them that there may be more than one possible result. Despite some initial hesitation to this 'new' kind of problem after the discussion, the students were all super keen to head off and be the first to work out a possible solution. Working with a buddy or on their own, some made a screencastify recording to explain their 'solution'.Samples of student work are below:

Click here for Junior's full blog post

Click here for Kerstein's full blog post

The open ended and real-life nature of the rich tasks totally engaged the students and without any prompting from me. They willingly took longer to work through different options and were less focused on finding the 'right' answer. Their end solutions highlighted how students had interpreted (or misinterpreted) a problem and so provided me with a useful starting point for a discussion to find out more about their thinking process.

I was really pleased with the students' positive response to the 'rich' task and would like to use them with all the groups. The challenge will be to find tasks that are appropriate - not too hard or not too easy - and linked to the given maths topic being reviewed.

As Term 4 kicks off, the next hunch I would like to explore is how modelling books can be used to effectively scaffold my priority students in problem solving strategies.

Google Exam - Success at last!

Google Exam Post Script: After a disappointing first effort, I was keen to take another shot at the Level 1 Google Exam.

I lined up a test date with others from the course on the second week of the holidays but unfortunately, a slight hiccup with the retake process from Google foiled my plans! Not to be defeated, I finally took the test again on the last weekend of the holidays - no pressure!

Well, I am pleased to say the wait was worth it - I passed! This success has really made me appreciate just how much I learnt on the DFI course last term - again a huge thank you to Dorothy, Gerhard and Matt! Hmmm, is it time to think about Level 2? Watch this space...