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.