Contributing to Manaiakalani

To help support me to narrow down my inquiry focus (i.e. choose which of my many ideas to actually focus on), I have been chatting to colleagues to identify areas of need.

Yes, reading is still at the forefront of our minds and an area of focus here at Pt England. Across the cluster we have recognised an issue with students getting stuck at an 8-9 year old reading level for several years. But we have amazing research and a variety of CoL inquiries that have confronted this problem. 

At the moment we have a cluster wide reading intensive, where the Manaiakalani researchers are giving teachers practical support and suggestions that will shift our learners. This programme is based upon research in our own classrooms - it's the next level of inquiry! 

I think it is quite clear what needs to be done - after years of inquiry and this reading intensive, we really need to put the suggestions from the researchers and other CoL teachers into practice. 

So while it is a school focus, and I do have 3/4 of a class at an 8-9 year old level (which I am thoroughly enjoying), I think I would do better to focus on a different area. 

I also want to highlight the work that Latini Ilaoa, Amy Tofa, Robyn Anderson and Clarelle Carruthers have done in this area for years. For those of us not on the intensive, these teachers inquiries also offer a lot of insight into how to shift our students in reading.

Okay. So if moving these 'stuck' students has been a passion project/ inquiry focus of mine for the last four years, where does that leave me? What else could I offer the cluster?

Well, my first passion project was my multi-modal approach to maths teaching in 2017. It was the focus of my dissertation and something I was making good traction with until our school changed to a DMIC approach - meaning that I had to drop what I had learnt in the years prior.

While my maths teaching has been 'good enough' over the last few years, in that I've supported my students to make decent shift, I wouldn't say I've been an adaptive expert. At most I would say I'm a routine expert (or routine competent more like!). 

But, I did have a good thing going in my dissertation - I put a huge amount of work into it, hours of research and reflection so I would love to put more time into it.

I also have identified a vague area of need in the school, after talking to colleagues from each team. Trying to cater to a range of levels in maths can be tricky and it is quite often the highest groups who miss out. These students tend to work well independently, while our lower students need our support (but might be tricky to cater for) and our middle groups tend to be at the level of the curriculum we know best. 

I am going to investigate this further.