Maths PD with Marie Hirst

Last week we had some fabulous professional development with Marie Hirst who showed us how we could make connections between numeracy and our Term 4 topic of Enterprise. Our session began with Marie showing a slide that asked us to discuss which option we would choose. This question was taken from the site wouldyourathermath.com. Each question encourages you to pick a path and justify your reasons why. I can't wait to introduce this challenge as I can see so many possibilities for my learners to use their number knowledge and strategies in both collaborative and independent situations.

Following on from this challenge we explored a selection of games that use money as a context for number. What I really liked about the follow up discussion was the sharing time when we shared the strategies we had used, and discussed some possible adaptations that could be made to meet the learning needs of a wider range of ability levels.

We spent the last part of the session carrying out the practical task of finding the real cost of owning a pet through exploring costs, spending and budgets. This was a collaborative task that required us to discuss, research, negotiate and strategise. This is definitely another idea I am looking forward to challenging my class. Click here to find more challenges like this on TKI.

Current Events with a difference...

During our Manaiakalani shared staff meeting a few weeks ago I listened to a number of teachers sharing the ways they cover current events in their classrooms. This sparked my curiosity as my current approach has been to encourage my learners to explore the provocation by unpacking the content, looking at the information from both perspectives before forming an opinion based on fact. What I am aware of though, is when you complete this type of task you walk away and often never refer to it again. 

Teacher inquiry challenges you to look closely at your own practice. If what you are doing is 'missing the mark' or has become 'stale' then you need to get creative and find ways to adapt what you are doing to help your learners make stronger connections to the learning. I still wanted my learners to be able to talk about what was happening in the world, both nationally and internationally so I merged a few ideas I saw others doing and came up with a new approach.

I needed to make sure everyone understood the difference between national and international news so we began by unpacking these words. We then revisited author's purpose to consolidate that understanding before looking at the different reasons why a news editor would decide to run or print a story. These included timeliness, magnitude, oddity and emotive to name a few. (Idea sourced from here) This was a fantastic opportunity to gift and explore new vocabulary.

 

I then asked my learners to find a partner and set them the challenge of finding an example of each of these types of stories using national news that they read, watched or listened to. Once they had found an example they would need to talk about their reasons they felt it was best suited to the chosen category, then plot where it took place on a google map. The only written component of this task was to include the title of the news item or article and the exact location it took place in the map pin. 

This was a huge success and was something that could be achieved by all my learners, regardless of ability level. We stopped periodically throughout the lesson to share our news items and justify why these were chosen. I found that throughout these lessons I was continually modelling and reinforcing the use of the vocabulary in context.  

All completed tasks were posted on our blogs. Here is one example of the learning from Mele and Marieta. To see the interactive map you will need to follow the link to Mele and Marieta's blogs.

We repeated the challenge the following week with international current events. What impressed me was the retention of vocabulary and level of understanding behind the reasons news items are run and printed. Here is Alex, Jack, Joseph, Julian and Aung Naing's international current events map. These boys joined forces and had rich and deep conversations as they tried to persuade each other to come to a shared reasoning for their selections. To see the interactive map you will need to follow the link to Alex's blog.

Throughout this learning opportunity all my learners were on task and actively engaged. They were all eager to share their examples, with responses evolving to include a short summary of the content. I'm so glad that I took the time to adapt and change the way we explore current events in LS2!

T3 PBS Teacher Inquiry Check-in...

Today I met with all our staff to talk about their teacher inquiries. I asked everyone to share with me where they were at now, what changes had been made to their teaching practice and how I could support their inquiry moving forward into term 4. These were rich conversations and provided a great forum for sharing successes and bouncing ideas. 

The list below reflects the common themes and recurring ideas when teachers discussed the changes made in their teaching practice to help us accelerate shifts in our learners from Year 0 to Year 8: 

• Teachers modelling/gifting language they want students to use in context across curriculum areas
• Increase in time spent to unpack vocabulary
• Timetable changed to cater for late students
• Phonics programmes implemented in all classes
• Changes/adaptations made to the way data is recorded to give a clearer picture of micro shifts
• Drawing connections with visual scaffolds
• Use of mentor texts as exemplars
• Incorporating elements of critical literacy to help strengthen connections
• Shifted locus of control to give students a more agentic experience in the classroom
• Increase in instructional time
• Revisiting learning when connections are not strong through rewindable opportunities and further instruction
• Making connections to prior learning
• Differentiation is needs based and can be supported with upskilling of TAs
• Adapting teaching DLOs to meet the needs of learners
• Planning for talk time
• Making use of collegial expertise

This was a very valuable opportunity as it showed that as a staff, we are all on the same page. No one apportioned 'blame' to students where innovations tried had not been successful. Our conversations instead, focused on changes or adaptations made when these speed bumps appeared. 

Critical Friend Observations...

When carrying out an inquiry into your own teaching practice it is really helpful to have a critical friend who can see your practice from a different perspective. Their feedback and feed forward helps you to adapt your practice to continue to meet the learning needs of the students in your classroom. As I mentioned in a previous post, for me this person is Donna Ryan. I know what I think I do/say when I am teaching, but having Donna observe me taking a phonics session, and record exactly what she saw me do, was a valuable learning opportunity.

This is what I did/said to help my learners make the connections they needed to make sense of the learning:

• Recap learning from last session
• Check in to see if understanding is in place
• Co-construct the learning intention (LI) and goals for the lesson
• Asked the students "What do you need to do today to achieve this?"
• Gave students control of the learning by giving them the opportunity to choose the follow up activity
• Asked "Why are we doing this?" to recap on the purpose of the learning
• Reinforced the focus/goal as a reminder
• Modelled the learning
• Guided/scaffolded students towards next step
• Checked in to make sure understanding was in place
• Identified where they had met the LI
• Reaffirmed "I like the way you have used the commas correctly, we learnt that yesterday and this shows me you were listening carefully"
• Asked "Can you remind me what we were focussing on today?"

From this I can see that I share control of the learning with my students, continually check that connections are being made, scaffold through questioning and teacher modelling, and reaffirm to ensure self efficacy and confidence continues to grow.

Spring Into Maths Reflection...

After our first few weeks of moving Spring Into Maths from a withdrawal group to an in-class programme, my target group are all excited for Maths lessons. By taking time to step back and observe I have noticed these usually quiet students who shy away from sharing their ideas, are now confidently interacting with each other, and appear keen to share their thinking. Actively engaged is not a phrase I would have used many times when talking about this group, but if I was asked to describe their learning today it would have been exactly what I would have said!

Possible reasons for this change in confidence could be linked to: 

• opportunities to strengthen visual connections to the learning through use of materials
• the 'fun' element of maths games
• the small group size
• aligned ability levels has evened the playing field - no one is viewed as the 'expert' so everyone is willing to share their thinking
• following the SPRING format allows for opportunities to revisit learning using different numbers 
• the learning is pitched at the right level
• teacher/teacher aid shared language of instruction
• teacher/teacher aid enthusiasm
• increased self efficacy

After the lesson today I asked two of my target students to work collaboratively to write a description of their learning for this blog post. Their description of today's learning written by students G2 and G5 is below. 

'Spring into Maths is a group that develops and practises basic facts and gives students in the group an opportunity to understand the maths that is hidden in the questions for example - What is ⅛ of 24=?- This question is very similar to multiplication but instead we use the opposite strategy which is division. Today, the Spring into Maths group played a few games that involved addition, place value, and multiplication. We wrote down numbers on the white board and used the place value strategy to help find out the answer. Our warm up  energizer was using the biggest to smallest strategy to sort the number cards out. Next we played maths game to practise our times tables which was called Digi Facts. After that we used the place value house to clarify our understanding of numbers using thousands, hundreds, tens, and ones. Here is an example using the number 689 -600 is the hundreds, 80 is the tens, 9 is the ones. We got all ours right!

We like Spring into Maths because it helps us improve on the areas we need to work on in fun ways. All of us are confident to share our answers because everyone is respectful even if you get the answer wrong.'

Students G2 and G5

An additional element we have added to this programme is a problem solving challenge to help these students strengthen our connections to the maths language we encounter when reading and trying to make sense of written maths questions.  

Phonics with Year 7/8...

With my inquiry in mind I have been actively looking for opportunities within our class programme that I can use to reinforce reading strategies. The blog post below outlines one way I am doing this. We call it 'phonics' and it runs alongside our formal guided reading sessions as part of our reading rotation.

Earlier this year our senior syndicate attended a phonics professional development workshop. Phonics is most commonly used in early literacy programmes. While my data showed the need was there, I felt it was important to make some adaptations so the programme would be more suitable for my year 7/8 learners. To do this I merged ideas from the phonics PD, the 'Chunk, Check, Cheer' spelling programme and my own knowledge. Linda, our LS2 Teacher Aid and I worked together to put together a programme that she felt comfortable running and would meet the learning needs of the students we work with. Once this was in place we invited Donna Ryan to observe what we do and give us her feedback. The pretest Donna shared helped us to identify the specific blends/chunks that need to be targeted.

Each session begins with the phonics element. I have repurposed activities that help unpack a blend/chunk. This involves:

• A timed challenge to list all the known rhyming words that have the focus blend/chunk in them on individual whiteboards. These lists are then shared and help to create the master list, or as we call it the 'chunk' family. To add an additional challenge element the students use dictionaries to help them add to the master list by finding words with 7+ letters. Something that has been really well received from the outset as the competitive aspect of finding the longest word has hooked everyone in.

• We then select an activity that involves circling all the 'chunk' family words in a paragraph, putting words from the 'chunk' family in alphabetical order and completing cloze sentences/paragraphs to add in the fun element.

• The next part involves establishing the meaning of any unknown words, something that helps strengthen understanding. Each student chooses a word then writes it in sentences (one simple, one compound and one complex), which allows for sentence structure and punctuation reinforcement. 

• After these sentences are shared, the students are given a challenge to write as many of the 'chunk' family words in a paragraph. We use Chromebooks for this task. The finished paragraphs are then proofread and edited in pairs. This writing becomes a blog post as well as providing an opportunity for further reinforcement.

• The final part of our phonics session involves a reading component and means all pens are put down. We use the Key Into Inference text to help strengthen connections to this strategy. The students read the text together, listen to the teacher read it, read in pairs or read silently before having a group learning conversation to unpack the questions.

Everything is recorded and stored in folders which are then used as modelling books. Although the session is run by Linda, we plan it together. This allows me to focus on the same blend/chunk she has focussed on when I am doing my guided sessions. Since this intervention began we have noticed a huge increase in self efficacy, engagement, active participation and comprehension levels. My learners are excited to participate in a literacy challenge they can do because it is hard to be the person who is 'learning to read' when the rest of the class is 'reading to learn'.

This began as an intervention for my target group but has grown and now reaches a much wider audience. We have two groups who work with Linda, and one who after suggesting it to me, that works independently.