Amplifying Basic Facts: Manaiakalani Toolkit...

This afternoon I took part in the Amplifying Basic Facts toolkit lead by Donna Yates and I'm really glad I did because I came away with a lot of great ideas to implement in my maths program. 

The focus:

• How to teach multiplication /division basic facts.
• How to amplify and turbocharge the teaching of the basic facts.

Donna shared the message from Jo Boaler's  that more often than not we create 'maths anxiety' in our learners by expecting them to be able to recall the basic facts in 4 seconds without taking time to ensure we have helped them grow their understanding and number sense. To lessen the chance of this happening we need to introduce strategies using equipment to allow for visual connections to be made, provide opportunities for our learners to practice these strategies using contexts they can connect to, before we ask them to be able to recall from memory. 

Strategy

'Basic facts should not just be rote-learnt in isolation from understanding. There is little point knowing what 6 + 7 or 7 × 8 is, if the student has no concept of addition or of multiplication. Teaching needs the joint foci on developing understanding as well as memory.'

Practice

'Doing a wide variety of work that aims to build and enhance strategies, helps reinforce procedures, and understanding of mathematics.  Practising strategies also reinforces and continues the process of memorisation.'

Memorise

'This should only come after the students understand the operation, and have some strategies for performing it.'

Donna shared a wide variety of online programs and virtual manipulatives to help us provide the multimodal learning opportunities needed to help a wider audience make their connections. I really enjoyed the hands on opportunity to explore these.

                        

Image from Donna's presentation 

My Takeaways:

• Recall comes when good foundations are laid and understanding grows
• Make use of at NUMPA Book 6
• Continue to grow understanding of the literacy of maths
• Incorporate virtual manipulatives into my program
• Use images to 'find the maths'
• Basic facts should not be rote learned in isolation from understanding
• Continue to use the real worlds of our students with written maths questions to allow connections to be made in context and with understanding.
• Make a virtual maths manipulatives slide so these can be accessed any time by any one from a known place

Resource Links:

• Array Display - a site that shows what times tables look like when drawn as an array. It has the function to change the order of the factors and show what the array would look like as a division.
• Donna's Multiplication site - so many great links here
• Maths Eyes - finding the maths in images 

Student Design for Learning: Naomi Rosedale

Our T3 Manaiakalani 'create' staff meeting began with Naomi Rosedale sharing some of the findings of her PhD research. There were two of the key messages that resonated with me and became my takeaways. 

Firstly, I realised that I had not ever given thought to mismatched images and text. This very quickly became our next planned cybersmart lesson as I need my learners see what this looks like. After exploring this online and strengthening our connections to why our text and images needed to have a connection we decided this was an important message to share.

Fau and Liletina 

Chris and Sakshi

Secondly I was stunned by the graph that showed how often we fall back on the known of slide presentations. I had recently made a point of driving home the missed opportunities of voice recordings so thought while it was fresh in my mind I would revisit this in depth. I borrowed one of the online references in Naomi's presentation as it fit in perfectly with our science/reading focus. 

The challenge for my learners was to create a Screencastify that focused on the learning of why scientists must carry out fair tests when experimenting. I reminded my learners that the voice I wanted to capture was not about the process they went through on the online challenge but rather about the knowledge they acquired from completing the task. The slide below is from my teaching DLO.

Florence, Haylee and Sakina have given me permission to share their DLO.

Screencastify recording of the girls' thinking

Keeping my Inquiry going in Level 3...

Level 3 saw our weekly planned group meeting move from face to face to online. We have these meetings to reflect on the challenge from the previous week and set ourselves up for the current week's challenge. 

As I mentioned in previous posts, this term my focus students have created their own blog commenting challenges to help them develop the quality of their comments and strengthen their connections to our learning. Last week's challenge built on from the previous week's challenge of creating a comment thread of three comments, to creating a comment thread of five comments. By increasing the number of interactions my learners are now able to see this is an authentic way of having a learning conversation. 

The content below is an example of the our challenge. I have copied the comments directly form the blog to maintain anonymity but am sharing this will full permission from my learners.

                           

Comment Thread:

Kia ora G2

I liked reading your blog post today. All the information in the blurb and document makes your blog post very informative. I liked that the document consists of the information related to the topic and the blurb consists of the information on what you did in school. Did you find the concept of summarizing the text easy? If yes, than in what way and what are the advantages?

                             ___________________________________________________________________

Kia Ora G5
Thank you for commenting on my blogpost today! I think with alot of information from videos and online sites the concept (science) was quite easy to summarise. Me and my group all collaborated to complete this task. Did you and your group find this concept easy to summarise?

                             ___________________________________________________________________

Thank you for replying to my comment! Me and my group also found watching the video and learning from various sites quite informative and knowledgeable. We thought that the summary table made our work easy as well. I think that using the poster notes as a way of moving the important points ahead was the best strategy as it was new and we could write notes in a more detailed version. What were the three facts (related to science) you found most interesting in the whole task?

                            ___________________________________________________________________

I also think using the poster notes were quite helpful. In my opinion, the 3 most interesting facts about science that I found were:
Science is divided into 3 branches, Physics, Biology, and Chemistry.
Basic science is knowing something and applied science is using what we know.
Science is the knowledge behind every question.

What were the 3 facts you found interesting? Or, what were the 3 most vital information you and your group found using the poster notes?

                             ___________________________________________________________________

I agree with all the interesting facts you have said! In my opinion the three most vital and interesting facts I found were:

1. Applied science is dependent on basic science as the experiment is done first and the conclusions and discussions are done later.
2. Science can be quite dangerous as well as beneficial. It all depend on the way it is used and seen.
3. Science is used in the most basic tasks in life such as making a lime juice. Mixing lemon and sugar results in juice is chemistry, the force through which it is mixed is physics and the benefits we get from drinking it is biology.

Do you know any other experiment which includes all the three branches? (Physics, Chemistry and Biology) If yes, then what is it?

 ___________________________________________________________________

Your 3 most vital facts look very interesting! I think an experiment using all 3 branches would be making a coffee using coffee beans which comes from biology (nature) then you apply force to grind the the coffee beans together which comes under physics. Then lastly combining the grinded coffee with hot water and milk making hot coffee.

Did you know some points about science before did this task?

 ___________________________________________________________________

Wow, I never thought that making coffee also includes all the three branches of science. Yes, I knew that science is divided into three branches which are Chemistry, Physics and Biology as I have studied the various topics under it in India. I also knew the steps included in an experiment which is the things needed or requirements, method or hypotheses, experimenting or verification and at the last the conclusion or answer. Did you know that each branch is related to a different occupation? Doctors study biology, Mathematicians study physics and scientists study chemistry! Which branch do you like the most and why?

 ___________________________________________________________________

I never knew that each branch is related to a different occupation! In my opinion the branch I enjoy learning about has to be Geology and Astronomy. Even though it is not apart of the 3 branches it is still included. I think Geology and Astronomy because I enjoy learning about celestial objects and the terrestrial planet. Which branch do you like/enjoy learning about the most?

 ___________________________________________________________________

I never knew you liked geology and astronomy. I also love to study about the life outside our planet! I really like all the four branches but I enjoy learning about biology as my desired career is to be a doctor. I think that except of learning about our own body we must also learn about other living and non-living organisms as well. Biology is also my favorite branch because it still has some unsolved mysteries like the fungus and other micro-organisms are still not defined as living or non-living. I really want to find a conclusion to many such unsolved mysteries in life. Can you tell three different topics each in the three branches of science?

 ___________________________________________________________________

Wow! Becoming a doctor sounds very interesting! Three different topics for the 3 branches would be:

Physics - gravity, light and force

Chemistry - acids, bases and heat

Biology - plants, animals and humans

Thank you for commenting on my blog! It was really nice talking to you and learning about each other's opinions. I hope you feel the same way and you like my other blog posts too.

I am continually amazed with the direction this intervention is taking. The quality and content of these threads is far beyond what I initially hoped for. Our challenge over the next few weeks is to create a collaborative DLO (online) that will show others what a comment thread looks like and how they can create one. The purpose behind this challenge according to my focus students, is to create a learning tool that we can use to help all of our class understand that we can use blog comments to help us strengthen our connections to our learning by asking questions and sharing our thinking. 

Motivating my Learners... A Distance Learning Challenge

Yesterday morning, five learning days since Auckland moved back into to Level 3, I opened up our 'Finished Work sheet' to find a lot of blank cells staring back at me. I am aware there are many external factors that challenge our tamariki with distance learning which is why our program runs the way it does. However for some reason this time around I found myself, unlike last time, in the unfamiliar territory of limited buy-in from my learners, despite having approximately 70% attendance at our Google Meets. 

The work set is not 'busy' work. It is an adaptation of the learning I had already planned for the classroom. Which means we are using this time to build onto the foundations of knowledge already in place. My learner's feedback in Term 2 about our distance learning program post lockdown, was listened to and has been implemented, however the work output disparity between times is very noticeable. I realised my motivating strategies just weren't working so I decided to get creative and painted a picture with the numbers. 

Often a challenge we face is that if we can't see something, we don't really connect to it. Many times in situations where a big message is being shared orally, heads nod but the message isn't always internalised and acted upon. This is why I painted a clear picture using the data I had. At no point was this a negative message but rather an honest one shared as 'What I See..'. I knew by looking at Teacher Dashboard a lot more work had been completed but this hadn't been shared or filed correctly so it wasn't counted in this data. 

After sharing the slide above I simply said 'Have you made time to keep your learning going?'. I didn't want anyone to answer this, just to think about it. I then shared two further slides to remind my learners what distance learning is and what they need to do to become a successful distance learner. The point of this message wasn't to focus on the amount of DLOs created or blog posts published (as not all work is published), but rather on the fact the work needed to be done so that we can continue to move forward in our learning.

                                   

This morning I shared this picture and as a class we celebrated our ongoing success as a class who know how to 'keep their learning going'!  

 

When I swapped from presenting to being on camera I noticed lots of smiles in each grid on my screen. This strategy worked because I know my learners and I have an established rapport with these students both in the classroom and in our online environment. In return my learners know me, and know my expectations for their learning regardless of the physical place we are learning in. 

Learning how to leave a Comment Thread...

The image below shows the first comment thread to appear in our 2020 learning journey. This has been a goal of mine since hearing the SLJ feedback that our student's post to comment ratio was very unbalanced with comments being an area that was not focused on. I felt from the outset that this was not because they were lazy or disinterested, but rather because they were not sure of how to do this. After all if you don't know, you don't know.

In my now weekly focus group meet up, I used the whiteboard to show my learners what a comment thread looked like, unpacked the process and identified the purpose. Explicit teaching, think alouds to promote co-construction opportunities and modelling of the task was very much the order of the day. 

Creating a comment thread is this week's blogging challenge. As a group we decided that a 6 comment thread would be achievable so that became the benchmark. Each person was buddied up by me so that when thinking about ability and confidence levels we created a tuakana teina relationship. To meet the challenge each pair needed to write quality blog comments on each other's blogs in order to have a learning conversation that allowed them to revisit and strengthen their connections to the learning. The choice of blog post was left up to the individual.

I look forward to seeing how this evolves and am curious as to what support my learners will need from me in order to sustain this momentum.

Midway Point Data...

Last week I met with my Inquiry group to co-construct a picture of where we are at the midway point in the year. I chose to do this as I wanted my learners to be able to make a visual connection to their progress. It was a really worthwhile exercise as my group could see at a glance where they were as far as commenting and replying to comments on their blog posts. This picture shows that replies are still very much a work in progress when compared with the amount of posts published. I have not included the blogging from the Summer Learning Journey in these totals as my inquiry was not in place when this took place. 

After analysing the data together we came up with a way forward. I wrote about this and the introduction of Student X to our group in a previous post. We decided to go ahead with the competition idea suggested at our meeting at the end of Term 2. The first challenge had two parts. Part 1 was to write one comment on each member of our group's blog. That meant six comments in total. Part 2 was to reply to each comment you received. 5/7 students met the challenge, with the other two choosing to catch up immediately after we met. 

            

With my inquiry in mind I found a great example of a quality blog comment and reply from G3 and B1. I can see from this that the learning is the focus with evidence of the content language being used to strengthen connections to the lesson the original post was based on. However, is still not the norm for all this group. After reflecting on the weekly challenge we noticed that although we had replied to comments received there were no comment chains. This then became our motivation for this week's challenge of choosing a blogging buddy and creating a comment chain on one post each. To make the numbers fair one student has chosen a buddy from outside this group. 

A change I have made to my practice this term is to actively plan time in class to drive these challenges because every team needs a coach, opportunities to train and game time to use their skills.