How I will use the data

TAI 2020 WFRC #6: How I will use the data...

Explain how some of the data you have used to build a profile of the students’ learning will be used as baseline data at the end of the year.

In my data gathering process, the pieces of data which gave me greatest insight to student learning and behaviours around mathematics was the analysis of blog posts. Although it didn't give me precise levels in terms of data, it did leave a gap as to where all their learning for the term/year goes. The lack of blog posts followed up by the student survey as to why there were so few blogs about their maths learning revealed these things:

• Students did not feel the same expectation (flow, cycle of learning - Learn, Create, Share) that they felt in literacy. Therefore this resulted in maths work left sitting in their drive.
• Similar to this, students felt maths did not follow a certain routine everyday. Some days you had hands on learning with materials, some you worked independently on slides and some you were with the teacher a lot of the time doing group work on modelling paper. 

So how do I plan on using the data I've collected?

1. Analysing students PAT test scores will help target certain questions/areas in maths majority of students are getting wrong. 11 students from my target got less than 10 of the 41 questions in the PAT test. This can attended to looking at the common areas to focus teaching.

2. Student voice surveys keep me informed about the changes taking place and also how students feel about the learning and changes taking place. This is given anonymously so students feel more confident sharing their true feelings about maths.

3. Blog post analysis. This data has definitely been an eye opener for me as a teacher and will structure my maths program to allow time at the end to talk about and share their learning for the day/week. 

At the end of the year, it will be great to see if there is shift in the number of questions students are getting correct, therefore their scale scores and stanines will also increase. For our student voice surveys, what I'll be looking for is that students are becoming more aware of just what they are learning about in maths and also have an opinion/preference for the style of learning which will enable them to learn better. My hope is that this will come out in the student voice surveys carried out throughout the year. Blog posts should see a climb in the number of maths blog posts going up. From here, we can then focus on the quality of blog posts and the task description explaining their learning for the week.

Why is it catalytic?

Explain why you judge this to be the most important and catalytic issue of learning for this group of learners this year (In chemistry, a catalytic substance is one which increases the rate of reaction, but it also offers an alternate path for the reaction to follow).

My previous post shared anecdotal notes and levels from past years for my target students. I feel this gives insight into how 'stuck' these students have been throughout their years up to Years 7 & 8. This chart is a quick summary of where they are now in Term 1 of 2019.

Reading mileage and vocabulary acquisition through the scaffolding of different strategies such as the TESOL strategies. This is what I judge to be the most catalytic issue of learning for this group of students. There are 3 Y8 students and 5 Y7 students.

I believe that unlocking this catalytic issue would open learners capabilities towards accessing the wider curriculum. It would also set them up towards coping with learning in high school.

Anne's A - Team!

Thursday evening we had our 2nd CoL meeting for the term. Our focus was on: Focussing Inquiry and Teaching Inquiry.

Anne Sinclair facilitated our discussion group and here are the points we had to share about.

Learn (Focusing Inquiry)

Share a brief reflection in response to your Focusing Inquiry

• What information, strategies, tools did you use to determine what your students have already learned and what they need to learn next? (3min)

As you share reference your blog and highlight how you have organised your evidence so that it is visible and accessible to your colleagues.

Create (Teaching Inquiry)

• Based on this evidence what are you planning to do differently as a teacher? What might you need help with? (3min)

It was awesome listening to others share about their inquiries because although we had a different focus (eg: accelerating levels in maths), we could still identify with others and their inquiry into reading difficulties for students because we had the same things happening in our own classes. 

Our "A-Team" came from what we shared for part B - what are we planning to do differently as a teacher. We had words such as Actor, Analyse, and Amalgamate.

My word was Auditory - I needed to listen more to students needs. Listen to them when they say why they don't want to do something and prompt students to share what would make them work better in maths. 

My next steps now would be to watch Dr Graeme Aitkins presentation to school leaders and see how I can implement some of this with the students in my class.  

Success Criteria & Self-assessment

As a continuation of 'where to next' in my inquiry, I have been focusing the past 2 weeks on the Learn-Scan part of our inquiry framework as this is where I had gaps. 

This 'scan' area looked at how engaged students are with their learning. Can they articulate what they are learning about? Can they monitor their learning? Do they know what their next learning steps are?

To help me with this was the Assessment for Learning power point on TKI

Above is one the slides I found most useful and made me reflect on my classroom environment and how well I communicate with students how they are doing in their learning. Some of the things I felt I did well were:

• Creating a learning environment in my classroom
• Using assessment information to feed back into teaching
• Provide timely focused feedback

Some of the things I needed more work on were:

• Co-constructing clear learning goals with students
• Involve students in self and peer assessment
• Clarify learning outcomes with students.

Upon reflection, it prompted one of the readings from Michael Absolums' book 'Clarity in the Classroom' (2006).

"For students truly to be able to take responsibility for their learning, both teacher and students need to be very clear about what is being learnt, and how they should go about it. When learning and the paths towards it are clear, research shows that there are a number of important shifts for students. Their motivation improves, they stay on-task, their behaviour improves and they are able to take more responsibility for their learning." 

 

From this, I focused students in on Success Criteria's. HOW will you know you have achieved the learning intention? So as I worked with each group, we broke down the learning intention and worked out what this will look like. Our discussions around the success criteria as a group gave me insight into whether or not students actually understood what learning was expected from the learning intention. It was great being able to co-construct the success criteria with each group. We tried to make it very specific so it was easy to self-assess. Here is an example of our final outcome for one group.

Example: 

WALT (We Are Learning To): Interpret information from a pie and bar graph

Success Criteria: I will know I have achieved this when:

1. I can say what the x and y axis show
2. I can give 2 facts from each graph

CoL inquiry - Term 1 Highlights

The end of Term 1 is actually here!! As the term draws to an end, I have been trying to take stock of what changes I have made in my teaching and how I deliver mathematics to my students. Not only that, but also making week by week behavioural and learning observations in trying to find out what is making it so difficult for students to retain number knowledge as they move up through their years at school.

In my previous post, I shared a slide outlining the outcomes of my CoL (and school) inquiry. Some of the main points were:

• YES! - devoting class time to practising number knowledge makes a difference
• Students need a repetitive cycle of maths vocab, materials and use of scrap paper in their daily learning of maths.
• Students are stuck at the 'imaging' stage for fractions of numbers. They always revert back to drawing a fraction then sorting out the numbers into that fraction. (This is instead of using timetables knowledge to find the missing numbers)
• Familiar context of questions helped students understand questions better - therefore they can focus what is happening with the numbers more.
• A mixture of engaging activities (both hands on and online) are needed for my lower learners - even though they were not in my priority group.

So for the last two weeks of school, I have been trying to gauge what have students have picked up so far and where do I need to go to from here. One of the things was an IKAN test which was shared in my previous post and as I commented, although not everyone of my priority learners made a shift, you can easily tell by talking to them in their group that they have a better understanding of place value and fractions.

Now the big test was to see if students were able to transfer this knowledge by using it in strategies to solve questions in the Gloss test. Here is an example from one of my students and the gaps we are looking to address throughout the year.

This student is still going with his test, but already I can see where I need to address first - Proportions and Ratios - Fractions. Our work on fractions in class obviously hasn't made any shift for this student so I need to analyse why that is and pose more similar word problems for him to practice over the break. This is good for me to find this out now so I can plan for it next term.

Highlights for Term 1

• Maths PD by Jo Knox
• Priority learners engaged in their learning 
• Compiling evidence of students learning on video and on paper
• Making learning REWINDABLE for ALL my learners!
• Using digital affordances to support my teaching and helping to scaffold student learning
• Sharing our inquiries in staff meetings as well as CoL meetings so we are held accountable for what we say we are going to do. 
• Learning conversations about what's worked and new things to try from PES staff

Where to next?

• Collate learning evidence & data to analyse
• Plan according gaps and learning needs identified - Look back at PAT data
• How else can I help to 'increase the achievements of Year 7&8 learners in maths, as measured against the National Standards and agreed targets.'

Teaching as Inquiry 2017

“Recognising and spreading sophisticated pedagogical practice across our community so that students learn in better and more powerful ways...”

The Manaiakalani Community of Learning is working together on this task using the expertise existing in of our community of learning.

In 2017 for my inquiry I have selected the following CoL achievement challenge: 

#4. Increase the achievement of Years 1-10 learners, with a focus on Years 7-10,  in maths, as measured against National Standards and agreed targets. My focus question is:

How can I accelerate students learning in maths through the teaching of number knowledge within a Learn, Create, Share pedagogy? 

The teaching as inquiry framework I will be using in 2017 has been specifically co-constructed for Manaiakalani schools using our familiar Learn Create Share structure.
The elements in this framework share close similarities with other models New Zealand teachers use.

I will be labelling my posts as I update my inquiry throughout the year to make the content easy to access.

Labels:

LEvidence, LScan, LTrend, LHypothesise, LResearch, LReflect,

 CPlan, CTry, CInnovate, CImplement, CReflect,

SPublish, SCoteach, SModel, SGuide, SFback, SReflect

Label Key:

LEvidence	Learn - Gather Evidence	CPlan	Create - Make a plan	SPublish	Share - Publish
LScan	Learn - Scan	CTry	Create - Try new things	SCoteach	Share - Co-teach
LTrend	Learn - Identify Trends	CInnovate	Create - Innovate	SModel	Share - Model
LHypothesise	Learn - Hypothesise	CImplement	Create - Implement	SGuide	Share - Guide
LResearch	Learn - Research	CReflect	Create - Reflect	SFback	Share - Feedback
LReflect	Learn - Reflect			SReflect	Share - Reflect