Beyond a Blackboard

As I wrote in my last blog post, I intend to conduct a broad student survey with my class which will be shared across the school to look for overall trends. However, Driscoll (2011) asserts that interviews are useful when gathering in depth data from a small sample. In order to effectively address the needs of my target learners, it makes sense to interview them to gain more insight into their experiences and attitudes towards mathematics. Here are the questions I have formulated so far. The interview will be informal to support the ease of my students and I will ask follow up questions to gain further insights and to clarify my understanding. 1. What is your favourite thing about maths?  Potential follow up - Do you enjoy it? 2. What is your least favourite thing about maths? 3. Can you think of a maths lesson you have enjoyed in the past? What happened? 4. How would you rate your ability out of 5 in maths? Why do you think that? 5. Can you think of an area of maths that you would...

 To inform my inquiry I need to gather data from my students regarding their level of achievement in maths, but also their prior experiences and disposition towards the subject. Gathering Academic Data: I will use the PAT Maths test results, Gloss test data and e-asTTle maths test data. Greene (2007) purports that it is vital to triangulate test data in order to ensure validity of the results. It could be that one of my students was ill or having an 'off day' when they took the PAT test for example. Or they could have had a great time selecting random answers which can pay off in a multi-choice test like PAT. I know that by using three different testing methods, I will have a more accurate picture of my students current achievement and have more opportunity to identify results that might be inaccurate.  I am interested to see if there are any patterns in the data. For example, so far from my gloss testing, I have found a large group of students who have a weakness in ratio ...

This morning the CoL across school teachers had the privilege of being invited to the School Leaders PLD.  This is an opportunity for school leaders (SMT), Manaiakalani Facilitators and Staff to meet to discuss topics pertinent to our Manaiakalani community, teachers and learners. We kicked off with a korero from Russell Burt, Convenor, who discussed the main goal and focus for us at the moment; getting a '3fer'. A 3fer meaning getting accelerated progress in Reading, Writing and Maths. Our data shows that we do well across the cluster in writing, and that we have teachers  in our schools who are able to get a 3fer, but we need to get this consistent across all classes and maintain it for three years. He also discussed the need to collect data, as the Ministry of Education is falling short at investigating the things that teachers are doing and the impact this has on student learning. We heard from Dorothy who recently lead this keynote for Hapara,  Fiona lead conversati...

 Today a lot of my release has been spent glossing my class, so I can build a far more accurate picture of student achievement. This has prompted a few wonderings regarding formative assessment.  Since covid, my school moved away from having teachers gloss the entire class, instead we were advised to gloss the students who we felt were on the 'cusp' of a level, or who we find it harder to make an OTJ for. This made sense to me, as I collect pre/post test data via asttle/ other forms of summative assessment. Last year for example, I had around 8 test results to look at from the second half of the year to inform my OTJ. These included some Gloss testing, lots of asttle results and some ARBs type mini test results.  However, I know I am an outlier in terms of this frequent testing. I wonder if we should be doing more mini formative assessment/ different types of assessment throughout the year to better inform our practice. This is something I will bring to my inquiry group, ...

 This week Hannah , Clarelle and I have been discussing our collaborative maths inquiry. I am so excited to work with these ladies as I feel we will make a bigger impact working together, looking at a school wide problem. Our overall problem is that our students are performing poorly in mathematics. We need to narrow this down and identify specific issues in this area.  Some of the ponderings we have had so far are: - Do certain areas of maths have larger gaps? -Are the students able to apply their knowledge?  -Why aren't student's choosing the most efficient ways of solving problems? - Do the children have self efficacy? Do they know where they are at/ their next steps? - Are they willing to learn from each other?  To help us to find areas of focus, Hannah has been working on a series of surveys. She has made one for the senior management team, one for teachers and one for the students.  Here is an example, the teacher survey: Teacher survey: Meanwhile, Clarel...

 In my last blog post, I was considering which subject to focus on for my CoL inquiry and came to the conclusion that I should look at Maths. I have since teamed up with Clarelle Carruthers and Hannah Burton to form a collaborative inquiry group. The first step to an inquiry is identifying a problem. I think this evidence is pretty compelling:  This data illustrates the fact that our school's maths data is far behind that of the other Manaiakalani schools. Something needs to change! We have decided to gather data from across the school to try and identify an area of need from a range of year levels. We are hoping this will support us to make a bigger impact on our learners. We will of course still examine our own practice and make changes as per a normal inquiry. The idea being that we all follow a similar approach so that other teachers can replicate it if it is successful.