Findings about my Student Challenge

 At a recent inquiry meeting, Clarelle mentioned that her testing revealed that her students gaps were like a sieve; each child had different gaps in different areas with little overlap.  I can definitely say the same about my class; the gaps have common themes but differ with each child.

A common theme I have found; the difference between my year sevens and eights is huge. My year eights consistently outperform my year sevens and have fewer gaps, except for in extenuating circumstances (e.g. two girls whose attendance was below 50 percent for years of their schooling).As such, I am going to do almost a year level split in my class in terms of my grouping.

Another common theme is that my year sevens tend to have strengths in number, but their strand and ratio knowledge is massively lacking. 

After dedicating almost ten weeks to filling in all number and ratio gaps, I now have to attend to the gaps that the children have in strand. Like I mentioned before, while I can generally say the students have gaps in 'measurement', each child has different gaps. I have some who don't know how to use a ruler, but understand area and perimeter and vice versa, for example.

 These 'gaps' run deep. There are students working 'at' their age in number, who couldn't say whether you should measure a person in mm, cm or m. 

This makes teaching really challenging!!

Another common theme from my interview with the students, was that almost all of my lower performing students have very low confidence or self efficacy in maths. "I'm bad at maths", "I'm better at reading", "I hate maths... because I suck at it". These students show less interest in maths in general and are quieter in group work than the students who said that they enjoy maths, unsurprisingly.

I don't want to waste time.

One thing that I found from teaching my Number unit addressing massive fractions/decimals/percentages gaps is that it was easy to feel like I was wasting some students time. Trying to cover everyone's gaps (in each of my five groups, spanning level 1-5 of the curriculum), was time consuming and meant that some students were going over things they had already mastered. Yes, all students showed improvement and most gaps were filled adequately, but at a real cost of time.

What can I do?

I think I need to consider very flexible grouping and get students to choose (with some support) the learning intention that they need to work on. I wonder if this would also increase student agency and self-efficacy; empowering them to improve their own learning.

I also think I need to differentiate my actual methods of teaching and teaching task for my students working at levels 1 and 2 (year 2 - 4) of the curriculum.  The teaching in junior classes looks very different to senior/college level classes and I need to reflect this more in my practice.