MIT2021 at a Glance

This year I was very fortunate to be a part of the Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers 2021 Group. I was one of seven other teachers from around New Zealand to take part in this project this year. 

We started our project using a Design Thinking Process to help us unpack our project and to determine what we wanted to focus on for the year. As the year progressed we came together once a term in Auckland to discus our projects and receive ideas and feedback from our fellow MIT colleagues. 

We were very fortunate in the Term 3 holidays to head to Rarotonga to present our projects with teachers over there. As the year came to an end we our presented our final project at an online Wananga to our Manaiakalani Cluster Principals. 

My project is called Matauranga Pangarau and had a focus on Maths Knowledge for Levels 2-4 of the curriculum. 

Click on the light bulb colours to see my journey with my project this year.  

MIT Wananga

Friday 29 October was meant to be the day for us to share our MIT projects in person with Manakalani Principals across New Zealand. However, due to current Covid restrictions across New Zealand, it was not possible for us to all meet together in one place to share our presentations. 

Instead the Wananga went online and we shared our presentations through pre-recorded videos. I have attached my final video in this post. This video outlines my journey throughout the project and how I got to my final product. 

Please follow the following link to my final presentation. 

Matauranga Pāngarau

In the following blog post I will share my completed tool - Matauranga Pāngarau. This is the google site I have created with my MIT colleague Sarah Tuiā. 

We have accumulated all of the google sheets we have created this year and have put them on our shared site. This site has Number Knowledge resources for Levels 1-4. 

The intent of this tool is for independent student use, but directed by the teacher. Please click on the photo below or the following link to check out our tool. 

Project Update - Term 3 Hui

Our third MIT Hui was set to take place today up in Auckland, however due to New Zealand being in Level 4 lockdown, our Hui took place online. 

Reflecting on our online Hui today, we were given the chance to share where we are at with our projects but also to listen to our other MIT colleagues. It's always good listening to where each other is at and seeing the progress they are making. It was also a good time to explain our project in a succinct and clear way to everyone - this will be good practice for our final presentations. 

Despite the disruptions to our normal school routine, I am continuing to work on my project. However, I am using this time to look at how my project can be used while we are distance learning and how I can use my time to make some good gains within my project - particularly in regards to building it. 

How am I using the project with my students via Distance Learning?

During distance learning I am making the sheets a core part of my maths lessons. Students are still able to complete them and upload them to their blogs, where I can monitor their progress. 

This week I am encouraging my students to make some videos that go alongside the sheets I have created or to challenge themselves and make their own sheets based off the Number Knowledge goal we are focusing on. 

How am I working on my project independently?

As we are in lockdown, I have some more time on my hands, in particular it has given me some 'slow think' time. This has allowed me to consider what I what the end project to look like in terms of our site. 

I am continuing to create Level 4 sheets and will shortly move onto Level 3. Sarah and I have also met up via google meet and have started to build our site. We have started to think about what we want it to look like, how it will be set out and formatted and what we will include. Ideally we want it to be user friendly for children - so we are thinking about the colours we will use, fonts, images etc. 

What are my next steps?

Our next steps are to continue building the site so that ideally by Term 4 we have a site that is up and running that all of our students can access and use. It will still be a work in progress - we will continue to add content, however, we are hoping to have Level 2-4 Number Knowledge goals completed. Sarah and I will continue to met via google meet weekly to ensure we are keeping ourselves and each other accountable for our project. 

Rarotonga Trip Post #4

My project is still a work in progress. I am still in the trial stage with my students - discovering what is working well and what needs to be changed. 

Ideally, my next steps would be to create the site collaboratively with Sarah specifically for all of the knowledge tasks and have the students working off this site. I need my project to be up and running in the classroom with the students. I need to see evidence of my students using it not just when I direct them to it, but also independently. 

As this is very much a work in progress, I would continue to add to this site throughout the year and in the future ensure coverage across multiple curriculum levels. Once this site is finished it would be great to continue working with it next year and have it as a fully functioning part of my maths programme. 

Rarotonga Trip Post #3

Whilst in Rarotonga we presented our MIT projects to other teachers. We presented our projects at the Muri Beach Resort. 

The structure of our presentation was in the form of a Pechkucha format. The format of this presentation is 20 slides for 20 seconds of commentary for each slide. It is a story telling format where the individual unpacks and gives a presentation on their work. 

It was a great opportunity to practice presenting our projects to an audience and to receive feedback from other teachers on our projects. 

I found it really reassuring to talk to other teachers that had listened to my project and connect with it. Listening to their feedback around how they would like to use it in their classrooms in Rarotonga was awesome to hear and made me feel great for what I am creating. 

For me personally, I found this presentation really valuable to the progress of my project. It helped to highlight to myself where I was with my project, and it made me accountable for where I was at. Putting my presentation together gave me the opportunity to look deeper into the research and it helped to outline my next steps for the project. Unpacking these next steps have helped me to see clearly what I need to do next for success and where I need to go. 

Rarotonga Trip Post #2

During my time in Rarotonga, I was fortunate to gain some professional development in regards to a cultural responsiveness perspective. 

It was really interesting to see the Rarotongan schools, to see how they are teaching their students in regards to the curriculum, but also in regards to the resources they use and have access to. I found this particularly interesting as it gave me a better perspective of where the students have come from when they come over to New Zealand from Rarotonga. 

We were very lucky to gain some cultural knowledge when looking around the different schools. 

Below are some photos of what we got to experience. 

Traditional Rarotongan Umu

                                                    

Rarotonga Trip Post #1

In the recent Term 2 School Holidays I was very fortunate to travel to Rarotonga with the MIT group. 

We stayed together in Rarotonga at the Edgewater Resort for four days and spent our time visiting schools and working on and presenting our MIT projects to teachers in Rarotonga. 

A highlight from the trip for me was visiting all the different schools. We were very fortunate to visit six schools, majority primary and one secondary. 

I found it interesting looking at the different ways they delivered their curriculum. Looking into the resources they use, meeting the children and looking into the similarities and differences between how we teach in New Zealand and how they teach in Rarotonga. But also the differences between all the amazing schools in Rarotonga. 

Although we use the same curriculum, it was interesting to see how it is used in a completely different setting and with varying degrees of resources. It made me feel very fortunate in regards to the access we have to wifi and the affordances this provides us with in New Zealand.  It made me reflect on the education we provide our students with and how we run our learning programmes. I would find it very different and challenging running the programme I currently run in New Zealand in Rarotonga. The teachers over there do an amazing job with the resources they have. 

Spending some time at these schools also taught me about some elements of Rarotongan culture. 

I felt very fortunate to have this opportunity to learn more about the culture in an authentic context. 

In addition to visiting these schools, we also spent some of our time working on our projects, listening to others projects and presenting them to teachers in Rarotonga. 

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It was great to listen in to where everyone is at with their projects and think about how their projects could be used in my own school and to see the progress that others are making.  

I'm looking forward to seeing where their projects go this year. 

Effective Practice - What am I doing in class?

My Tool in Action

Over the last few weeks I have implemented my maths tool into the classroom. One of the purposes of the tool is that it allows students to work independently on their maths - the learning is essentially flipped. 

In order to implement this tool - firstly students timetabled it into their week, in this specific block of time, the only worked on their Maths Knowledge. 

I then introduced the students to the tool on the site and how they would use it in their independent Maths Knowledge Sessions. 

Link to the page on my Hub Site

Students were given choice in the task they could work on for the week. The Maths Knowledge Goals directly align with our schools digital progressions and HERO goals. Our Year 7/8 students have access to their HERO goals, so could pick a task based off what they need to work on. 

For example, this student has achieved the goal "read any fraction", but is still working on "read decimals to 3 decimal places". Therefore, this is one of the Maths Knowledge Goals they could work on for the week. This information is all accessible to the students. 

Once students had identified and selected a Maths Knowledge Goal they needed to work on, they then completed the questions in the back of their maths book. Once finished they took a photo of their maths work and a screenshot of the questions they worked on and uploaded this to their student blogs. 

For example:

 

While this is not my intended final outcome of my project, this provides a good starting point for trailing my project in the classroom. 

Effective Teaching as a result of my tool:

• Students are learning skills that relate directly to their identified individual learning goals. 
• These tasks are able to be completed independently - they are able to work on their knowledge and bring this to their strategy workshops. 
• If gaps have been identified in their learning, students can be directed to this tool - very specific to their needs and is ubiquitous.
• Students are taking agency over their learning and have choice in the task. 

I'm looking forward to making further changes to my tool and see how I can adapt it further based off the feedback I receive from the students. I am also looking forward to the next step in the project - where I create the specific site for my digital tool. 

KPMG Term 2 Hui Reflection

We had our second MIT Hui this week at KPMG in Auckland.Our session started with the following reflection questions;

• What's working?
• What's not?
• What's next?

What's working?

I'm really enjoying collaborating with Sarah on our combined project. It's great to have someone to bounce ideas off and to gain her perspective for a different age group and group of students. We seem to be on the same page with what we want to create for our final project. Due to the collaboration this project provides, it's great to have this opportunity to create a tool that will work alongside not just my target learners but also other level learners. 

We have both had a play with google sheets - this is how we will present our digital tool to our learners. I feel that I have a much clearer understanding of where I am heading in comparison to our last Hui. 

Link to google sheets

Example of a google sheet

What's not?

As fantastic as it is collaborating with another colleague, this also means we need to ensure that we meet up regularly - something we have not done enough of to date. We need to make sure we schedule in times and dates where we will catch up and go over our project to ensure we align our thinking and keep each other accountable. 

I need to ensure my project aligns with what is happening in regards to maths at my school. Currently we are looking into our school wide maths programme, I need to ensure this fits in with what we are trying to achieve. I am confident it will, as through looking at the data, this is an area of maths that needs intervention. 

Time is a further barrier to my project. I need to prioritise my project more this coming term and start trialing it out with my target students. 

What's next?

Sarah and I need to set some goals together for the rest of the term. We need to decide what we will focus on (i.e. what specific knowledge goals), where we will get our information from and how we will structure our digital tool. We also need to make plans for when we will meet up together. 

We have given our project a name - Matauranga Pangarau (meaning Maths Knowledge in Te reo Māori).

We have also looked into our our original individual challenge statements - reflecting on these we have decided to tweak these to ensure they are the same for both of us and reflect each others learners. 

My original statement was "A significant number of our 2021 Year 7/8 cohort are below curriculum level expectation in Mathematics, due to gaps in their maths knowledge". This has changed to " Along with the rest of New Zealand learners, a large number of our Year 5-8 students are below curriculum level expectation, due to gaps in their maths knowledge". 

We incorporated the phrase “along with the rest of New Zealand” to highlight that this is an issue across the rest of New Zealand and not just in our schools. 

Feedback

After sharing this information with the group, we gained some feedback on the ways that we could use our project in the classroom. 

• The project could be used as a whole class do-now/hotspot - i.e. on the projector at the start of the lesson for 5 minutes "How many questions can you do?"
• Independent maths time, maths workshops, home learning, it could be given to students from the teacher after identified needs.  

My next steps now are to create some more maths knowledge sheets and trial them out in the classroom. I'm looking forward to seeing how the students respond to them and discovering the different ways they can be used. 

Mathematics Research and Reflections

Maths Q + A 

Recently I watched a Q & A session on tvnzondemand (link to episode), specifically relating to mathematics teaching in New Zealand. The Q & A session delved into our current mathematics data including; 

• Where New Zealand is sitting in comparison to the world
• The decline in our maths results over the last 20 years 

The Q & A also looked in to our methods of teaching and how they have changed. 

On the Q & A there was a group of panellists, ranging from researchers in mathematics, a teacher and principal, DMIC founder Bobbie Hunter and NZEI President Liam Rutherford. 

It was quite shocking to see how far New Zealand has slipped in their mathematics over the last 20 years, especially compared to other countries. It made me think about what we have been doing over the last 20 years - what is not working and what are other countries doing to bring their mathematics achievement up. 

An alarming statistic that stood out to me as a Year 7/8 teacher was that only 45% of our students are at or above the current curriculum level . In addition to this, according to TIMSS (trends in mathematics and statistics), New Zealand is tracking lower than Australia, England and Singapore to name a few. This got me thinking, what can we do that other countries have in place to lift our mathematics achievement? 

The panellists all has differing views on the ways we should teach mathematics, however, they were all agreed on one thing - this is a big issue in education in New Zealand. 

Both the traditional approach to teaching mathematics was considered and was the preferred way of teaching by some of the panellists - where students were 'drilled' into learning their mathematics by rote learning. Practice and repetition was highly valued (this reminded me of Malcolm Gladwells 10,000 rule). 

In opposition to this was a more open approach to mathematics, this discussion was particularly led by Bobbie Hunter where students learn through open ended mathematics problems that relate more to real life problems. Students are encouraged to talk about their mathematical thinking, struggle with problems and test out different methods - this suggests a more creative inquiry based approach to teaching mathematics. 

Watching this Q & A gave me the opportunity to reflect on mathematics in my current school and what we can do to raise our mathematics achievement. I have recently joined the school 'maths team' and I am looking forward to reflecting on our current programme and making changes based off research. 

One aspect we are looking at changing at our school is through using DMIC. I'm not sure if this is the direction we will go in, but listening to Bobbie Hunter's perception of how mathematics should be taught was interesting. What stood out to me in the Q & A was that we need to prepare our students for their futures. They need to be solving problems that will relate to their lives later on, they need to see the relevance of mathematics in their life and they need to be confidence approaching problems that they may not know how to solve - grit and perseverance are important skills to develop. 

However, on the flip side, I also see the importance of students knowing their basic facts, time tables, place value, decimals and fractions - they need this mathematics knowledge concrete in their head, so when they go to solve real life problems, they have a solid kete of knowledge to use. 

I see both sides to the panel and am keen to merge them together to create a project that will facilitate the teaching of mathematics knowledge to our students. 

Maths Reading Reflection

In addition to the Q & A, I have been reading Mathematical Mindsets by Jo Boaler. I have read the first three chapters; The Brain and Mathematical Learning, The Power of Mistakes and Struggle and The Creativity and Beauty in Mathematics. I have found this book to be very interesting, it highlights the importance of mindset within mathematics. We need to grow this growth mindset (Carol Dweck), it stipulates that everyone is capable of being a mathematician and we need to make this clear to our learners. The language we use, the problems we give them, the way we praise and the way we discus mathematics is very important. 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/134717758@N06/19751739181

The book states, mistakes and struggle are both essential to mathematics learning - these need to be explained and valued when learning math. This is how we learn. The science behind this research is further explained in the book, which brings a very compelling argument to the way we teach mathematics. 

Creativity within mathematics is also highlighted. The importance of not only looking at maths in terms of numbers, but also through patterns. Mathematics is all around us, for example in nature - this is discussed further in the book. 

What I liked about this book was that it challenged the way mathematics is taught currently at school. It stated that we are not teaching students enough of the mathematics they need for their futures - we need to look at it differently. 

Furthermore, I also liked how it talked about the creative elements to mathematics - so often mathematics is thought of as either right/wrong. I thought this way for a long time as well, however there are many different elements to mathematics and we need to start looking at it in a different light. I liked that this book stated its fine to be wrong or even to not know the answer - talking and discussion with others is how we learn. 

Most of all, my favourite part of the book was mindset. I strongly believe a growth mindset is essential to success. We need to teach students about belief, grit, perseverance, determination and the importance of these elements - all students need to know they can succeed. 

In regards to my MIT project, I need to consider my next steps and think about what direction I want to take it. I know that mathematics knowledge is incredibly important to develop within our students - the context in which I teach this needs to be investigated. 

My next piece of research will be through looking into the Prismatic​ Journal (Practice and Research in Statistics and Mathematics Education) to see their recommendations. 

MIT2021 - Project Data Collection

Now that I have identified my challenge, I have started to collect some data from my Year 7/8 students to help guide my project. This data will help to identify the gaps and and the specific challenges my students have within maths. I collected the following data;

• PAT Data
• GloSS Data
• Maths Knowledge Assessment (SFOA Progressions specific)
• Student and teacher voice
• I looked into our SFOA mathematics digital progressions\

PAT Data

                                      

This data shows our Year 7/8 PAT data - students that were above or below the national average.  

                                              

Within this PAT Data, I looked specifically into the goals that aligned with maths knowledge. I identified what elements of maths knowledge our students struggled with. 

Student and Teacher Voice

From this data I had the following wonderings and reflections; 

Wonderings

• Teachers lack of understanding of the goals - not sure or wanting to 'tick' it off based off their understanding of the goal. 
• Huge discrepancies between level 3 and 4 digital progressions. 
• Variances in different knowledge data - some goals stronger than others. 
• Basic facts data - concerning, especially in relation to maths strategy. 
• A lot of our students don't like learning about  proportions and ratios - the data shows a lack of understanding around basic fraction understanding - could this contribute?

Reflections

• Maths team - I have recently joined the school maths team. We are looking into how maths is taught across the school and what needs to change/what we need to look into and research. Some of the elements of our school wide maths that we are diving into includes; the consistency of maths teaching across hubs, the digital learning progressions and possible tools we can integrate into our maths i.e. DIMIC. 
• I think my plans are realistic - I would like to do something for the year 5/6 team and year 7/8, but I'm not sure if this is realistic enough for this year. could just trial within year 7/8?

KPMG Term 1 Hui Reflection

Our MIT group met together for our second design thinking session on Monday 29 March. Our Hui was held at KPMG in Auckland. We spent the day revisiting our projects as a group since out last Hui using the following WWW questions.

• Whats working?
• Whats not - barriers/road bumps
• What opportunities do you sense?

We then referred back to our 'crazy 8s' from our last Hui and started to experiment, prototype and test our current ideas. 

Reflection

We started by reflecting on the design thinking process (refer to this link for more information on the design thinking process - User Testing: A Guide To Step 5 Of The Design Thinking Process) from last session and used the following questions to guide our reflections;

What's working?

• Great support from team members. 
• I now have a better understanding of our mathematics data. 
• Student voice - was very interesting and informative. 
• Started looking at different approaches to this challenge - how can we change what we have been doing and getting students more engaged.

What's not?

• Need to clarify in my mind what I want to create. Look into why other things haven't helped in the past.

What's next?

• Look into different tools that have already been created that I would like to base my idea off i.e. Tipu
• What do I need to learn to create this tool? 
• Feedback from our school maths team?

Current Challenge Statement

• My initial challenge statement
• "A significant number of our 2021 Year 7/8 cohort are below curriculum level expectation in Mathematics, due to gaps in their maths knowledge". 
• Initially at the start of today's session, my challenge statement had not changed. However, reflecting on today's session it will need to be modified. I will explain this in more detail later in this post. 

Gelling Process

In this 'gelling process' this helped me to challenge my current thinking and make changes based off my current data and feedback from MIT colleagues. It helped to 'flesh' out my challenge and look at the real issues within it - what do I need to overcome or learn about to make this project a success?

I found it particularly interesting listening to Sarah's project - it is very similar to my current challenge, however she is working with year 5/6's. After chatting to her and gaining some insight/perspective from Matt and Dorothy, we have decided to collaborate for our projects for the year. I think that by working together we will be able to achieve more (across a broader range of curriculum levels) and will be able to draw on each other to create something really valuable for our learners. 

Drawing it up

Once making the decision to work with Sarah, we started working on our project and talking through out ideas. We talked with Matt around some ideas we can use for our project. He showed us an interesting way we can use google sheets to create a question where the numbers change each time the page is refreshed. 

The image above shows Sarah and I's thinking for our project. It shows the areas we want to go and our identified next steps. There is still a lot to work through and decide on, however, our idea at the moment is to create a maths site for students to access and work independently on maths strategy and knowledge work. 

Prototyping

I really enjoyed drawing up a plan for our site. We have tried to keep it relatively simple and user friendly (i.e. maximum of 3 clicks) for the students. There are a range of elements we want to incorporate into our project and site, however,  we need to assess what is achievable in the time we have. Incorporating in video tutorials, a google form where people can submit their own questions, making the questions as multi-modal as possible and deciding what type of assessment to use are all aspects of our project we will need to consider. 

Progress update

After our session today we wrote down some next steps, they are as follows;

• Learn how to code the google sheets with the changing maths questions
• Sort out what specific goals/progressions we want to incorporate
• Rethink our challenge question
• Decide on a name

Next next steps;

Consider the following;

• Video tutorials
• How to make the questions multi-modal i.e. use of mote?
• Create some questions and think about formatting
• Consider how assessment will be incorporated

Sarah and I plan to meet to unpack some of these next steps together and see where our project goes.

Design Thinking: Ideation

Our final Design Thinking challenge for the weekend was to create a 'Crazy 8's poster'. 

The purpose of this task was to come up with 8 ideas individually to solve our challenge. My ideas are as follows;

• Track trends
• Set up a maths knowledge programme for the senior school
• Create a game to gamify maths knowledge '
• Create a maths knowledge site
• Create a maths app
• Set up a maths team
• Student led workshops
• Mindset programme

Once we had come up with 8 ideas, we went around everyones 'Crazy 8's' and put a gold circle sticker on any of the ideas we liked. Once we had done this, we put one final 'special' sticker on the idea we liked the best. 

It was really interesting and it surprised me with what ideas people liked. They differed to my own preference - but has made me think about how I can incorporate both sets of thinking for my final challenge design. 

Design Thinking: Who

Our next Design Thinking session was called 'Who'. We had to create a 'Who' poster where we identified the people that could help us with our projects. My poster is attached below.  

The different colours within the poster represent the process of our thinking. Written in black - this is where I started. I identified the people close to me that could help me with my project, these people ranged from my colleagues at school and the individual skills they could help me with, to my learners and further to my fellow MIT colleagues. These people are all very close to me and will be a big part of my project. 

As my thinking developed as did the possibilities. Written in yellow are the people one step further. These are the people that are not within my immediate life - but people that I could possibly get in touch with to further help my project. One thing to note here, was that a few of these people have been crossed off - we had to take away at least one person, to limit our people down and think critically about who could provide the best help. 

The final writing in blue represents our big picture thinking. Out of anyone in the world - Who would I want to help with me project? I chose a range of people - ranging from educators i find inspiring, to maths guru's, to google employees to Albert Einstein.... The people I chose in this category inspire me a lot within my teaching and I would love to get their perspective on my identified challenge.  

Design Thinking: Interpretation

Our next exercise was to dive deeper into everyones challenges and ask the following question 'How might we turn this problem into an Opportunity' . On post it notes, everyone went around each others challenges and asked a 'How might we....' question to try and stimulate some thinking around how we can get the most out of this challenge. 

Some of the 'How might we' questions that really resonated with me were as follows;

• HMW look at patterns and collective gaps leading up to Yr 7/8 to better target the problem later on.
• HMW address this as a wide or whole school approach - could intervention be made earlier (before Yr 7/8) or could consistent strategies be used across years?

Design Thinking: Discovery

Our second session of our Design Thinking was called 'Discovery'. In this session we went through a role play activity at the fictional 'Kuaotunu area school'. 

The context for this session was a teacher/parent information session, where the Principal was reporting to the parents some of the issues at the school. We were all given a role to play for the session, these roles ranged from a parent who was a lawyer to the local plumber. The Principal reported the school's issues (our identified challenges) and within our roles we had to question these challenges and talk through why they were a potential problem. 

This was a great session as it helped to show and clarify to others what our challenge is and why it is a challenge. It was great to get the perspectives from the other teachers in the room - especially in their role playing character. I think it highlighted to me, that this is an issue among our students and there are so many possible reasons as to why this has occurred, but also so many possibilities to remedy it. The perspectives of my other MIT colleagues helped me to see that. 

I am looking forward to seeing where this challenge will go - especially with the help of my other MIT colleagues. 

Design Thinking: Empathy

In our Empathy Design Thinking session, we were buddied up with another MIT teacher. We had to perform a role play where one person took on the role as the teacher and the other as the student. 

We used our question/problem as the context for the role play. The idea of the role play was to demonstrate the challenges that our learners face when confronted with the problem we have identified. In my case my learner was struggling to solve a maths strategy due to their limited maths knowledge (times tables). 

This session helped to clarify my problem in the eyes of others as it identified the real challenges our learners face in the classroom. It showed my other MIT colleagues how this problem is an issue and the barrier it is to students academic progress. I think it highlighted to others why and how this is such a problem in the classroom. It was great to role play it out - it made the problem 'come to life'. 

                             

Below is a poster I have created, this shows the problem from the perspective of the learner. It identifies the following in the context of my challenge;

• What do my learners do when faced with the challenge?
• What do my learners think?
• What do my learners say?
• How do my learners feel?

MIT Hui

Last Thursday through to Saturday we headed to Kuaotunu in the Coromandel for our first MIT 2021 (Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers) Hui. 

This Hui was the first time all for us MIT2021 teachers to meet each other. There are seven teachers from a range schools across New Zealand. It was great to talk to all the other teachers and discuss their proposal ideas. 

The purpose of this Hui was around team building with our other MIT2021 colleagues and to start our design thinking process around our proposals.

Design thinking...

"is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer's toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for ... success.” 

Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO. 

Within our design thinking  there was a range of tasks we engaged in labeled; 'Discovery', 'Empathy', 'Interpretation' and 'Who'. I will elaborate and discuss these in more depth in subsequent blog posts. 

It was great to meet with the other teachers and find out more about their initial proposal ideas, I'm looking forward to working with everyone throughout the year and to see where each person's project takes them. 

MIT Moonshot Proposal - 5 Why's

Our first step in our MIT Design Thinking journey was to create our 'Moonshot Proposal'. For this task we had to; identify a challenge impacting achievement among our students, provide evidence relating to this challenge, ideate two possible proposals and consider how technology can be used to help address this challenge. 

I identified the following challenge within my current students; 

"A significant number of our 2021 Year 7/8 cohort are below curriculum level expectation in Mathematics, due to gaps in their maths knowledge". 

Once our Moonshot Proposal was complete, we were teamed up with another teacher from the programme. The purpose of teaming up with another teacher was to dive deeper into our initial proposals and ask 5 'why' questions. This helped me to dissect and unpack my problem at a deeper level, but it also helped to reveal the underlying causes of the problem.  

I have attached my '5 Why's' Poster below, this displays our conversation around my proposal. 

This was a relatively simple tool to use, it helped to identify the most obvious aspects of the problem and allows us to dig deeper into the problem. 

2021 Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers (MIT)

This year I have been fortunate enough to become part of the 2021 Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers Programme.  Throughout the year, I will be working alongside 6 others teachers from around New Zealand to "investigate ways to accelerate learning outcomes for our young people via the Manaiakalani pedagogy" (Learn, Create, Share). 

The Manaiakalani Education Trust will support our projects this year and will help us to challenge our teaching practice through inquiring in innovative ways. This project will be very collaborative and we will be drawing on each other throughout the year to help guide us through our projects.

The challenge I plan to investigate this year with my students is around maths knowledge - I would like to design a tool that will help them to develop their maths knowledge to further improve their overall mathematics ability.  

Throughout the year, we will be using design thinking principles to guide us - these will be further explained in subsequent blog posts.

I am looking forward to being part of this programme and meeting the teachers I will be working alongside. I will keep my blog updated with my projects progress throughout the year.