Celebrating Creativity In Learning

Today in our staff PD, we celebrated the creative work that we have done with our children. Dorothy was speaking to us about the power of Learn, Create, Share and asked us to have a think about an activity this year that was a creative and successful part of a child's learning journey.

I had a think back to an awesome reading activity that I did my a group called Thor. It was super engaging and helped to push the boys to think more deeply about the text.

Goal Setting In DMIC Maths

This term the focus of my inquiry was goal setting and reflecting in DMIC maths.
If you look back to last term's inquiry update, I began using the goal chart that you can see in the photo above. I wrote names under each goal. However, to make it easier and more engaging, I printed out student's faces and students get to stick their own face on the chart! They have found much more enjoyment in getting to stick their faces up and I am able to refer back to this chart during the lesson to remind children of the goal they chose.

I have found 'group norm goal' setting to be very effective. Students choose their own goal, which gives them more ownership/responsibility over their learning!

Inquiry Update, term 3

Creating a rubric

At the beginning of term 2, Sue, Khismira and I created a DMIC rubric. On the left, you can see a large rubric with images. This is the rubric that my children can see in class. On the right are the criteria for each colour level. Throughout term 2, I explained this rubric to my class and gave students feedback on where they were on the rubric. I was really surprised with how engaged my groups were with it. Students would often ask me where they were on the rubric and if they had improved. I was honest with them, and explained exactly why they were at a certain point. 

Changing our view of success in maths

After a while, I decided that instead of them asking me what colour they were, they could decide by themselves through self reflection. As we wrapped up each DMIC lesson, I would ask students to write their name on the book and colour in what they personally thought they were for that lesson. I was intrigued when I saw that Lesieli marked herself as red - meaning no effort. When I asked her why, she believed it was because she got some answers wrong. It was at this point that I stopped the whole class and straight up asked them "who thinks they suck at maths?". They all raised their hands. When I asked why, they all said the same thing, "cos I get the answers wrong". 

From that moment, we've been working hard on changing our view of success in maths. I remind my class that it isn't about the answers, it's about their effort. It's about everything that is in the rubric and there is nothing about correct answers in the rubric. Just listening, speaking and working well with peers. 

It was interesting to see that when I reminded Lesieli that her success wasn't about right or wrong answers, she changed herself to gold, 'buddy teacher'. And she was spot on.

If you skip to the video on slide 5, you will see the golden moment we had after our chat about what success looks like in maths. What a change in the general vibe!

The power of self reflection

On slide 3 you will see a Group Norm Goal poster. My team leader Helen found this online and I thought it was brilliant. Instead of focussing on the rubric, I am now using this every lesson. 

I have printed this poster and keep it on my whiteboard where everyone can see it during maths lessons. Before each lesson, students choose their own goal. I write their name in that box and then we have a quick discussion about what those goals would look like. I purposely don't choose the goals for students because I want them to take ownership of their own goal. At the end of each lesson, they are now reflecting on their chosen goal. It's been great to see how honest some of their responses have been. We still have a lot to work on when it comes to self reflection, but I have already seen students begin to take more ownership of their effort and behaviour during lessons as a result of choosing their own goal. It's also been awesome finishing lessons on a positive note, where students focus on their goal rather than focussing on how many answers they got wrong.

I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes!

Inquiry Focus for 2018

Hello 2018! I am now teaching in a year 3/4 ILE with 80 students. I am teaching alongside Helen King and Zac Moran, who I am very much looking forward to working with and learning from!

This year, Pt England School's overall focus is 

Acquisition Of Language. 

I chose to focus my inquiry on the Manaiakalani Achievement Challenge #6 - Lift achievement in maths for all students year 1 -13. 

DMiC Maths

This year, teachers at Pt England School are learning how to teach DMiC maths from Bobby Hunter. As this is going to be a huge change in the way that I have taught maths in the past, and therefore a challenge, I decided it would make sense to focus my inquiry around this! I am currently a little nervous about this new approach at teaching maths, as I know that I will need to step back and allow my students to do the talking! I am also slightly hesitant about mixed ability grouping, however I began doing this in my class at the end of last year and saw it's benefits. I'm really looking forward to this new learning journey and seeing how it not only helps our students, but also improves my teaching.

I've noticed that students find it difficult to verbalise themselves when explaining how they worked out a problem. There are several reasons for this - students could be nervous when speaking in front of their peers, they might still be comprehending the problem, they may not be interested or, they're not confident with their maths language. I often hear children say 'I plussed the numbers' and 'I got the answer, but I don't know how'. Students need to practice explaining their strategies out loud so that they can learn the mathematical language that will help them to become confident when problem solving. This is what DMiC Maths is all about, therefore, my big question for the year is:

Will the use of the DMiC process in maths increase mathematical vocabulary in my students?

Flexible workshops

This term I decided to change up the learning groups and instead create needs based workshops. The reason why I made this change was because the learning groups were too big (with a large class size, we reached up to 8-9 people in each group). It became too difficult for students to share their thoughts with each other in the large groups, let alone hear me while I was teaching. The range of abilities in the groups had also changed a lot over the year. Students were varying too much in the stages that they were working at, so, it was time to mix it up!

Each week, the workshops changed - it has been very flexible. For example, if the focus that week was fractions, I would group up students based on the stages they were currently working at. My class also enjoyed this because it gave them to opportunity to work with people that they didn't usually get to work with. The current workshops are now smaller than the learning groups that I had in the beginning of the year. The one issue with this, is that it means I have more groups to see, which can make it difficult to see each group enough in the week. I will be working on this next term as I need fair time with each group!

Term 3 Maths Inquiry: What's my plan?

At the end of term 2, my team had a PD meeting with Jo Knox. Jo was working through maths OTJ's with us and explained how much weight strand knowledge has when making an OTJ. It was at that point that I realised I hadn't covered anywhere near enough strand yet. So, I set a new inquiry goal for maths: to teach strand maths at least once a week.

This term, we definitely met that goal! I spent several weeks working on measurement with room 6 and saw a lot of lightbulb moments! Learning about measurement is great because there are so many different ways to use materials and get creative. My class found it quite refreshing and really enjoyed learning. What I loved about measurement, was that we could integrate it with multiplication and add/sub strategies. My students didn't realise they were using these strategies because they were having so much fun!

Needs based workshops: 
Strand maths went so well that I didn't realise how fast time flew by! I sat down this weekend and made a maths plan for the rest of the year. We have very little time left until testing in term 4! Yikes. I've thought about what I'd like my students to achieve by then and decided that workshops might be the best way to help them to get there. At the moment, our maths groups are very diverse in terms of knowledge and the strategies that my students use. Therefore, the workshops will be needs based and I will choose which students I will need in each workshop. I realise that I not only need to focus on the strategies in these workshops but also context. My students need a lot of practice with word problems as this will help them to understand the strategies. I'm hoping these workshops will be helpful!

Term 2 Inquiry Reflection

Here's an update on my inquiry for maths. This term, my key focus was fractions. I am happy to say that we had a successful term learning fractions!

I want to have an honest chat about Maths Whizz. Last year, as a new teacher, I was introduced to this maths programme. I didn't know how useful Maths Whizz was and sometimes used it as a time filler. I didn't focus much on the progress that students made on this and didn't pay enough attention to what my students were learning on it. As a result, my class wasn't very motivated when using Maths Whizz and possibly didn't make as much progress on it as they could have.

This year, however, I learnt that Maths Whizz is an amazing learning tool! I've been tracking students' progress daily and make sure to show their progress on our screen so they can see how they're doing. I often set focus tasks for the class on Maths Whizz, depending on what we're learning at the time. I find this really useful, as it gives them another opportunity to practice what they have recently learnt with me. Maths Whizz is also very useful when I'm trying to find the gaps (and strengths) in students' learning. It shows me everything they have learnt so far and highlights what they have been struggling with.

Every Friday we have prizes for the students that make the most progress on Maths Whizz and I encourage my class to aim to get the 'green tick' by Friday. As you can see on slide 4, my class has made great progress on Maths Whizz this year! They began the year with making an average of 0.9 progressions a week, and in June they made an average of 3.6 progressions a week. Very proud of them and happy to see that they're excited to use Maths Whizz.

My goal for next term is to spend more time teaching strand maths. After a PD meeting with Jo Knox, I realised that strand is a huge gap in my teaching. I also realised how much weight strand maths has when making a maths OTJ for our year 5 and 6 students. I plan to begin by teaching measurement, and am currently trying to think of creative ways to do this!