Collecting Data and Evidence

Begin to collect evidence and data and come to the next session ready to share your preliminary findings about the nature and extent of the student challenge i.e. using your baseline students data and evidence.

On Tuesday 23 March the government announced that the Education sector would be going into Alert 3 Lockdown. At the time I had planned to do GloSS, Basic Facts testing as well as conduct a survey, all to be completed by the end of Week 8 of Term 1. This did not happen.

The PAT testing was completed well before the Lockdown and I am still waiting for the results to be imported from NZCER marking to our SMS.

Therefore, I have at this moment no evidence nor data to share.

I tried to conduct a survey during a Hangout Meet this week but only one child turned up and then he quickly left. At another meet there were only 2 students. Moreover, I am unable to reach half of the students who have no access to a device during the Lockdown.

I have decided that it is not a feasible task to undertake and I hope to complete the survey when all the students return to school, as well as testing them.

Tools, Measures and Approaches

Describe the tools/measures/approaches you plan to use to get a more detailed and accurate profile of students’ learning in relation to that challenge. Justify why you chose these approaches and tools.

To get a more detailed and accurate profile of the students' learning I need to think about the different assessment tools available to me and the methods I need to use to acquire information about student learning. These methods include both formative and summative.

Available summative assessment tools at my school include:

• PAT maths
• GloSS
• Basic Facts
• pre and post assessment

PAT, GloSS and Basic Facts are school -side test that are conducted twice yearly at our school and has been part of the summative school assessment for a very long time.

PAT Mathematics "helps teachers determine their students' levels of achievement in the knowledge, skills and understanding of mathematics in the New Zealand curriculum. It is directly alined with the New Zealand Curriculum and targets the big ideas students need to understand in order to make progress." (Source: NZCER PAT Mathematics)

While GloSS, "provides a series of questions to identify the strategy stage a student is operating at on each of the three startegy domains of the Number Framework." (Source: NZmaths Assessment tools)

Lastly, basic facts is a necessary test to carry out. If we look at the basic facts concept map, we see that basic facts is the core to the various conceptual understanding and knowledge in mathematics.

(Source: Assessment Resource Banks)

Pre and post test: I like doing pre-test because I can find out how much knowledge the students have before the start of their maths topic learning while post-test has a dual purpose. For the student, it is to see if they have increased their knowledge and understanding of their learning and for me, to see fi my teaching approaches and programme are appropriate and challenging.

As for the formative assessments they include:

• survey
• observation
• feedback
• conferencing
• workbook
• OTJ

Its' important to know how students feel about maths and a simple survey of their thoughts and attitude can reveal a lot about the issues and problems students face with maths.

As teachers we regularly observe and evaluate our students in many different settings. We look at behaviours and actions, and we listen to the conversations that take place in and out of the classroom. When we are in the classroom our eyes are constantly roving making sure every one is learning and on task and everything is fine.

I like using feedback because it helps students to focus on a particular knowledge,, skill or strategy that needs to improve and corrected.

I also like conferencing because it give me time-out with each student. It allows me to get to know the learner, understand the finer details of the learner's knowledge and skills and to cater to the learner's needs.

Going through a learner's workbook is also important as it allows me to see where the missteps are in a learner's strategy, method or calculation and to pinpoint learning areas that need to be worked on.

Lastly, bu combining the aforementioned summative and formative assessments, I can more accurately make an OTJ about my learners during report writing time.

Focus for the Manaiakalani Collaborative Inquiry

Task: Collaborate with your school’s leadership team and colleagues to identify areas where your inquiry will make a powerful contribution to wider school and cluster goals.

During a discussion with the leadership team we decided that due to the poor outcome of our students' achievement in Maths, my inquiry should focus on the year 5-8 senior team where the results showed a gap in the students' learning and hopefully my teaching as inquiry method will make a difference to our students' learning.

This focus aligns with Manaiakalani's Collaborative Inquiry number 6, 'lift the achievement in maths for all students years 1-13'.

My team and I want to find out what caused the gap in our data at the end of 2019.

There will be a lot of issues I will look into such as our school structure, school resources and equipment, teacher understanding of content and curriculum, the existence of a differentiated teaching programme in our school, professional training, delivery of the full maths curriculum, engagement by students and teachers, teacher reflection and evaluation of appropriate teaching practice, student voice and so forth.

Once we have decided what factors contributed to our poor student academic outcomes, we need to put in place an intervention plan that resolves these issues.

For an investigation to be successful I need the support of the teachers. I put this idea forward to our colleagues in the staff meeting and they were happy to support me in this Inquiry.

An Inquiry Stocktake

Use the ‘inquiry stocktake’ doc to reflect on and write about what you aim to learn about inquiry this year.

Identifying valued learning outcomes (VLOs) to focus on:
My aim here is to learn about, with other colleagues in the Manaiakalani community, what the best learning outcomes for our students at Ruapotaka would be. I'd like to hear their viewpoints, ideas and feelings about how they identify their outcomes and why they have chosen a particular outcome.
Profiling students’ learning in those VLOs:
Here I want to know who our target students are and to track both their progress and achievement over time.
Generating hypotheses (especially teaching):
I have my own thoughts what the hypotheses might be and I would like to know if similar hypotheses have been generated and how successful were they in their conclusion.
Testing hypotheses (investigating school senior team teaching):
This is an area I am looking forward to and I hope that sharing and talking to my colleagues both within my school as well as my colleagues within the Manaiakalani community will help me understand what is going on with our students at Ruapotaka.
Using research literature and other sources to identify more effective approaches:
Data is easily accessible and offers guidelines towards our students academic achievement. My biggest concern is gaining access to readings especially those from the University (which is not so easily accessible unless I am a student) to gain a better understanding of the issues going on with our students at Ruapotaka.
Implementing new approaches:
We currently have staff who have not had Professional Development (example: maths PLD) and we need to create a consistent teaching approach that involves a variety of methods, programmes that are challenging and targeted, regular data analysis and to take a hard look at ourselves as teachers and professionals.
Monitoring (and tweaking) new approaches:
Through this inquiry I want to know if my hunch that student achievement improves when consistent teaching approaches get used across the school (such as differentiated teaching approaches, talk moves, regular monitoring of students, regular self-reflection, analysing data for where to next) have merit.
Evaluate shifts in own teaching: Using data, my colleagues teaching techniques, self-reflection, children's feedback etc.
I hope that the approaches I take benefit the students. I feel if I follow the inquiry model, do my readings, talk and share with my colleagues, hopefully I will have made a difference to our students.
Evaluate shifts in student learning:
This is the part I normally feel anxious. Have I done my job well? Did the students make a shift? How much impact did we make? Will the students new learnings stick?
Keep a clear and detailed record of all stages of inquiry:
Like any scientific research that involves a hypothesis, a detailed journal account of the stages, procedures and process that I have taken is recorded with accuracy and with evidence so that others can learn from my inquiry.

Connected Learners Share

A blogpost written by one of my students put a huge smile on my face. I was pleased to read that Henry who loves reading and writing came to a realisation that when he blogs he is not only sharing his thoughts and feelings with the rest of the world but he is helping others with their learning. 

As he points out , "I may be assisting little youngsters stretching their own vocabulary." when they read his blog and, "I help kids extend their reading skills by just writing this post." 

This is the Manaiakalani pedagogy of  Learn, Create and Share where we strive to engage our students with others locally, nationally and globally so that we all learn for, with and from each other. 

Here's Henry's post: 

Session 9: Last Seesion

Today was our last DFI session. I came into the course with some digital knowledge and skills. Today, I feel I have gained more in these areas and am more confident in using a variety of google apps.

I am pleased that I sat the exam, because now I have a good idea of what I need to do better next time.

• Work and think faster. 
• Don't dwell on things you don't know and move on - you can always go back to the question later.
• don't waste time googling information - just do the clicks and eventually you click the right one.

I have forgotten what it's like to sit an exam but today I got a first-hand taste of what my students are going through when they are sitting their e-asttle and PAT tests: stressed, awful, memory block. etc.

In future I am going to be a bit more sympathetic towards my students. 

Session 8: 3-D Pen

This afternoon, I had a fun day.
I spent time using a 3-d pen. It was a little bit difficult as I had to learn to control the flow of the filament coming out of the pen. Initially I was a bit wobbly, then realised that in order to be successful I had to learn to control my thumb (which was controlling the button flow), slow down and to do it in small amounts.
I created a bow and I am proud of it. Here it is.

 Then I became a bit more confident and decided to make something a little bit bigger. It was a butterfly, but it was not too successful because I took a bigger step than I should have. Had I made the butterfly smaller, or made something bigger than a bow, but smaller than a butterfly (example: a stylish ring), I may have had more success. Actually, it was a good learning experience that can be transferred to my students to take smaller steps than I might have initially.

Reflection
What did I learn that increased my understanding of Manaiakalani Kaupapa and pedagogy?
It's important to slow down and take small steps especially with learners who have difficulty with controlling their fine motor skills and co-ordinating their hand and eye movements.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow as a professional?
Using the electronic pen was a skill I had to develop first. It was not an immediate success. It took some time before I could control the pen as I had to train my brain to control my thumb which I found rather difficult to do. And I realise that there will be learners who will go through the same experience as me (slow) and of course there will be other learners who will take this exercise like a duck to water. So it's important to always cater your programme to all styles of learners.

What did I learn that could be used with my learners?
An important strategy to use with students who have problems with picking things up quickly is to take small steps and to do it slowly. Once this has been achieved, then move onto a bigger step to achieve a bigger goal. If that big step is too much to handle then take it slowly again.

What did I learn that could improve my confidence, capability or workflow in my personal life?
Life has its many challenges and maybe if I slowed down and take small steps things may not look so burdensome after all.