Bursts in Bubbles 2021

This year due to Covid restrictions our Bursts 'and' Bubbles became Bursts 'in' Bubbles, an online opportunity for the Manaiakalani COL teachers to share their 2021 inquiries into their own practice. You can watch the presentations here.

Inquiry Focus Question

Will a focus on oral language in maths accelerate student confidence and capability to use spoken and written maths vocabulary and language?

The ability to use Maths is a communication tool to describe relationships and connections becomes compromised when maths language and literacy skills are not in place.

I noticed that my maths assessment results did not align with what I was seeing in the classroom. Formative maths assessments require students to read and respond to written questions, or to derive an answer and explain their thinking. The disconnect gap continues to widen when our tamariki do not have the comprehension and language skills in place that allow them to talk about their maths using maths words.

I used the evidence and data from the PAT Maths, IKAN, GLoSS and Running Record assessments, student voice and baseline observations to build a rich picture of my students’ learning.

During the profiling phase I noticed my target students sat silently in maths time, listening carefully and nodding their heads in agreement to avoid looking lost in the learning. Not having the words meant they became visibly anxious when asked to share their ideas. Collecting student voice each term allowed me to see maths through their eyes and helped to inform the changes I was making to my own practise.

Profiling of my own teaching after capturing and analysing the words spoken my baseline lesson gave me a valuable insight to the words and scaffolds I use. I use a wide variety, and a good balance of deliberate acts of teaching. However, I also realised that by stepping in with scaffolds too early meant the students who were less confident with sharing, weren't given a true opportunity to take a risk and share their thinking. The lesson captured was an honest one. I did not do anything I don't normally do, because someone was observing me as I wanted real and purposeful feedback and evidence.

The changes I made in my teaching were to consciously allow longer periods of wait time and to find activities that allowed us to use the maths words in context. We introduced the Talk Moves framework, but did not connect to these question stems. When I asked my students why, they pointed out that we don’t actually speak this way. That was true so we adapted the original framework and made our own version called LS2 Moves.

The literature that helped me make informed changes are summarised on my blog. These readings reminded me that Talk is not an add-on... it is a critical component of the lesson... that allows students to explore ideas and use evidence to build and critique academic arguments. It promotes the transfer of knowledge, and skills with learning to talk and learning through talk being of equal importance.

The easiest thing for me to change was actively planning time for talk to take place, time for scaffolding the talk and time to let my students respond in their own time.

Overall I would rate the changes in student learning as a work in progress. When lockdown sent us back to teaching online, the talk literally stopped. I lost contact with half of my target group and the students I did see, did not have the confidence to share their thinking in an online environment.

The most important learning I made in regard to increasing student confidence and capabilities when using spoken and written maths vocabulary and language was that you need to be creative.

Some learnings that would be relevant to other teachers are that you need to think outside the box. You need to adapt and try, then try again. If something doesn’t work, look for the why then find a how.