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.