When a 4 becomes a 5 we celebrate...

For the last year and a half I have watched one of my students who arrives every morning with a huge smile of his face completely fall to pieces and dissolve into floods of tears when faced with any form of assessment. He finds most aspects of learning a challenge but during learning time never lets this take the smile off his face, unless as I previously mentioned the task facing him involves any form of test. I have tried so hard to help him relax and just try his best, but this is something he hasn't, until today, been able to do. The fact that we did his GLoSS test and he smiled the entire way through is the sole purpose for the celebration in this blog post. 

Image by Pexels from Pixabay 

Historically this Year 8 student (B3) hasn't progressed past Stage 4 in the GLoSS assessment, but today with a huge smile on his face, I listened to him confidently explain the strategies he was using to help him find the answers to the questions I was asking him (he even asked me if it was ok to use skimming and scanning skills to recheck the information!). This time skip counting was replaced with times table knowledge, counting on from the largest number was replaced with place value partitioning and equal sharing was replaced with repeated addition, allowing him to finally progress to the long awaited Stage 5! 

We have a well developed routine that follows the same format each maths lesson. My learners are grouped by ability so that they are learning at a level that challenges them, but also allows them to feel successful. The teaching DLOs all have the same layout, with only the content being different. Each group has two guided sessions with me followed by two follow up sessions, one where they work with number properties and one where word problems are introduced to allow the strategy to be used in context. In both learning situations talk is encouraged. Alongside this, each person completes three independent challenges made up of 15 minutes of E-Ako, 15 minutes of levelled basic facts challenges and 10 minutes of times table challenges at a time they choose. This purposeful 'brain break' affords my learners the opportunity to self manage and find success as these online challenges are revision based and not instructional. 

So what has changed for learner B3? His self efficacy has increased because he feels confident in a subject that he feels he is successful in. I know this because I asked him. "I like maths Miss, because it's fun and I'm good at it now because I know how to use my strategies." He is finding success because he is able to complete the follow up work set for him independently. He is finding success because he is asking questions when he needs clarification instead of waiting for me to notice he is stuck, and he is finding success because he is using the vocabulary that allows him to engage in the conversation and share the thinking behind the strategies he has used.. 

Huge congratulations B3 I am so proud of you!