Maths reflection - T3W2

This week for maths, myself and my colleague and friend ran workshops between our two classes.

Students from my class, Room 7, and the other class, Room 8, could sign up to the workshops run by either of the teachers (not necessarily their own teacher).

Students signed up to workshops on this document and got to choose themselves which they wanted to attend. In my opinion, 99% of the students went to the one their teacher would have put them in anyway, as the workshop was what they needed to learn at their specific level.

To me, this showed that the students were able to reflect on what they knew, and what they needed to know in order to move up levels/move forwards. This is a huge achievement for our students.

The one child who wasn't where they should have been got moved anyway, and agreed immediately that they already knew how to do the work and should've signed up to the more difficult workshop in the first place.

My lessons were quite difficult, aimed at the higher end students (stage E6 and above). As we only did one hour sessions, I gave out homework to reinforce the ideas learnt throughout that lesson.

Mondays lesson was great.  I regret not videoing it.

I had about 5 of my own students who already learnt about decimals (but had chosen to come anyway, as they felt they had forgotten it) and the rest were from Room 8, and had never done decimals before. I started the lesson by saying 'I am going to go really fast, and if you're not listening you are going to miss it'. That was the only 'behavioury' thing I had to say in the whole hour. The kids were so engaged with using the decimats, showing decimal numbers (the same teaching concept as here), they began to use the language correctly and all was well. We even began adding decimals!

At the beginning of Tuesdays lesson, we marked Mondays homework which was a worksheet where students had to add two decimal numbers together. We marked this together, with students coming to write their answers up on the board to show the rest of the class. I found this way of marking more helpful, as I can watch their process and ask questions while they are working, instead of just giving them a red cross and them and I both not knowing where they went wrong. That was fine, and we moved onto subtracting decimals. We used materials again, as this really helps build the understanding of exchanging tenths and hundredths. I sent them away with a subtraction worksheet for homework, but also let the students from both classes use the materials to help them solve the worksheet. I find that teaching, and doing, subtraction in decimals is a lot harder than adding them.

Wednesday I taught my group how to convert between decimals, percentages and fractions. Again, this is a huge topic that I tried to cover in very little time. I acknowledge that each of these lessons will need revisiting regularly to ensure the kids understand it properly. A one off lesson is not enough. One thing I think was good about Wednesdays lesson was giving the kids 'tricks' and making them circle, highlight and draw arrows around these tricks.

By trick, I more mean the 'rule', but it seems more enticing to tell kids there is an easy trick to it.

For example, when converting between fractions and percentages, you need to make it so the denominator is 100, then the numerator will be the percent number.

7/10 is the fraction.  7x10   =70

                                 10x10=100   so the percent number is 70%.

The other trick/rule here is that what you do to the bottom you must to do the top, hence multiplying by the same number.

On Thursday we had lessons planned, but these didn't happen for various reasons. Which means I swapped Tuesday and Thursday's lessons, and never taught rounding decimals.

Fridays lesson went GREAT.

We stayed in our own classes, and presented our learning in student clinics (watch the first one for an example of what student clinics are if you are unfamiliar with them).

I was SOOO impressed with each of my kids. You can tell by what they choose to show, which workshops they attended. I was delighted to see my kids who went to the other teachers workshops had learnt so much, and had grasped concepts they had struggled with under my teaching.

There was a group of low-achieving boys who could do a strategy they were previously unable to do, I was so proud. They have learnt so much in one week.

Reflection and next steps

I definitely think the kids liked being able to choose what they wanted to learn about, and I liked them being able to choose as well. I found they were more engaged because they wanted to be there, instead of being forced to be there. Although I covered a lot in a short time, and will absolutely need to revisit those concepts, it was awesome exposure for those who were new to it and good practice who had learnt it previously. I was so proud of my kids when they presented their clinics, as they could ask helpful questions, they were patient and kind, didn't mock each other, and kept asking to do more/harder problems to show how much they had really learnt.

We will be doing maths this way again next week, focusing more on multiplication strategies. We have decided to only do one learning intention each teacher each session, as when we had two learning intentions in the same session, we smooshed them together anyway.

The students confidence grows immensely when they feel ownership over their learning (choice).

I also think that for my lower-ability students, it was beneficial for them to be with peers who are closer to their level, rather than being in a class where they know they are lower than everyone else. Then when those kids in particular presented their clinics, the 'smart' kids were really impressed that they could do 'hard stuff' now. (Forgive my use of kid speak).

Using Ipads for reading - getting help from colleagues.

In my class I have a huge range of abilities - as all teachers say and do. 

For reading, I have one student, Bob, who is significantly lower than the rest of his peers. Due to the huge gap between him, and the next lowest student, I struggle to find time to give him adequate learning tasks and time. Everybody else is in a group, so if I am not there they can learn off each other. However with Bob, there is no one else at his level in this class. 

I have been giving him books to read at his level and trying to come up with activities that will appropriate (for the book content and his maturity level), but this is really hard when I have everyone else to think about as well.

Today I went to observe my friend and colleague Lucina, who teaches year 1 and 2. Although her students are lower than Bob is, I wanted to see how she taught them and especially how she integrated the Ipad into her teaching.

It was good to see her teaching, but I got more out of picking her brain about it. 

For example, I went through her Ipad and saw the different kinds of activities she does on Explain Everything for her kids (i.e. retelling the story, sequencing pictures in the right order, circle the punctuation) and then went away and made some for myself (at Bobs level). 

I went back and showed these to her and she was quite happy with them. She then explained some technical stuff about saving, locking pictures (Etc) that I didn't know and wouldn't have been able to figure out on my own.

But wait.. there's more!

Then she set me up with a teachers account on Sunshine Books and created Bob as a student on it, so he use that independently as well. 

I have never been on Sunshine books before but it is AMAZING. 

There are levelled books, with audio, and follow up activities BUILT IN.

Today has given me a lot more information and access to activities that I can make, and Bob can do, with some level of independence. It will be awesome to have something to give him all the time, instead of him sitting with me for 20 minutes (if we are lucky) and then kind of doing nothing for the rest of reading time. 

I am so excited! It's going to be great.

Thank you Lucina, you are a god send!

Cross-grouping in maths (reflection)

Monday 8th May

Today myself and my colleague (the other year 5/6 teacher) changed up our maths plan and decided to cross-group our students for this fractions unit.

We both have a HUGE range of ability in our classes (stages 3-7 in both classes) and this makes it incredibly difficult to adequately teach each students at all their various levels.

In my own class, I have students who can't subtract from 20 in their heads, and students who can multiply decimals. That gap is just too big to try to get them to do stuff together.

So today I took the stage 6-7 students, and my colleague took the stage 3-5 students and

IT

WAS

WONDERFUL.

Even within my group, I still had students who didn't get it, some who were ready for more and a big bunch in the middle who it was a good amount of challenge for. However, by the end of the lesson, most of them had gotten the concept.

It was so much easier to teach them when they were all ready and able to deal with more complex ideas, including comparing fractions (with different denominators) in their heads and telling me which one was bigger, or telling me how many quarters are in 7, or if 1/3 has 3 jellybeans in it, how many jellybeans are in 10? (Etc.)

I felt so encouraged that I could really shift the students and move them into stage 7 for this unit, as I could focus more time and effort on challenging ideas instead of trying to make one thing fit everyone (it just doesn't work sometimes).

Tuesday 9th May

Today we continued with our cross-grouping for maths. We didn't have as much time as did yesterday, so we got straight into it. Man, it makes such a difference being able to say something once and have everybody understand and do it. Teachers, you will feel me on this.

I gave the kids a piece of paper with a number line on it (0 on the left, 1 on the right) and I asked them to show me where 1/2 goes. All the groups put it in the middle of 0 and 1. Great! Hallelujah! Don't need to stop and re-teach what a half is. Beauty. Next, I asked them to put 2/3. This threw them a little, as 2/3 doesn't connect to 1/2, whereas 1/4 does because it's half of a half. However, they knew without prompting that thirds means three groups and so they roughly tried to divide the line into three parts. Not bad! Next, I asked them to put on 1/3 and 3/3, followed by sixths then quarters. Sixths was quite easy, once they understood that half of a third is a sixth (Thanks to my amazing drawing of a chocolate bar lol).

Quarters was much easier because they could half each half, thirds was a bit more abstract. A couple of the kids didn't quite understand why 4/4 was the same as 1 whole, so a bit of explaining was needed here.

I lastly asked them to put on 1/5, 2/5, 3/5, 4/5 and 5/5. I was AMAZED as one of the groups put 2.5 in the middle underneath 1/2. Although they hadn't placed the fifth fractions on the number line, by doing so they showed me that they were breaking up the fraction to try and compare them. Yay! I used this to teach all the other groups that if the middle is 2.5/5, then 1/5 and 2/5 must be on the left because they are smaller (closer to 0), and 3/5 and 4/5 must be on the right because they are bigger than 2.5/5 (closer to 1 whole). And of course 5/5 is the same as 1. (This same group even put 0/5 underneath the 0 without prompting - blimey!)

As a warm down I offered tokens to students who could answer my questions, which were

- what is the same as half? (3/6, 2/4, 0.5 - then some kids out of nowhere started saying 4/8, 5/10, 6/12 even though we didn't talk about those, they just noticed and understood the pattern).

- what is the same as 1? (2/2, 3/3, 4/4, 5/5 and so on)

and what is the same as 3/4? what is bigger than 2/3? what is smaller than 1/4? how many quarters are in 1?

I loved having the students work in groups today as they were teaching each other without me prompting everything. I can see that they are pushing each other and helping each other understand the content/concept.

(I liked this groups piece of paper especially, because of all the drawings on it. They had been trying to compare the fractions all by themselves.

Tomorrow we are going to use our comparisons to find equivalent fractions, which will lead into adding and subtracting fractions.

Wednesday 10th May

Today I taught the students how to add and subtract fractions. We did a tiny bit of a flipped classroom, where they watched a Youtube clipped that explained the concept, then came back to me to practice and skill. 

Some got it straight away, some needed some practice, some needed 1:1 explanation, but in the end they all got it and were getting annoyed at each other if somebody called out the answer before they could figure it out (they wanted to do it themselves!).

For the ones who were cognitively ready, I challenged them to simplify their answers. For example, one answer was 40/40. They knew from yesterday that 4/4 and 2/2 were the same as 1, so when I asked them if 40/40 would be 1 as well, they all went 'ohhhhhhh!'. Another of the answers was 49/40, and some of them understood without me fully explaining it, that simplified would be 1 whole, and 9/40 leftover. Booyah!

Then they even asked me for homework so they could practice... what is life.

Thursday 11th May

Today we completed a worksheet that had both addition and subtraction, for same denominator questions and unlike denominator questions. As we had jumped to unlike denominators yesterday, the kids were a bit confused by having it given to them with the denominators already the same.. Then came the 'ohhh this is way easier'.

The kids worked very independently and discussed it in their own little groups. I was quite impressed how much they understood it and were able to help each other.

For some of the kids, they understood the strategy/skill but didn't have the basic facts knowledge (knowing their times tables) to be able to do it quickly. So we packed up a little early, and practised our basic facts.

Overall reflection
I think I love cross grouping.
In one way, it was awesome to see my kids from last year (the ones who aren't in my class again this year), and in another, it was so AMAZING to have a smaller range of ability in the class so you could really target learning and push them harder.

Critical buddies (2)

Today we are sharing another video of our teaching and getting critical feedback from our peers.

In this video I used my place value counters and tried to get the students to move from using materials (what they have done before) to doing the thinking in their head or on paper.

Some were not ready for this step which is fine.

Here is my feedback from my peers.

What we liked...

• Mixture of target and non-target learners. Creating a supportive environment for the group.
• Repetitive questioning till children explain their working in full. Encourages children to get used to sharing their methods of working out
• Great use of language ‘exchange’
• “Is that what you are saying?” - awesome trying to encourage re-wording and talk moves.
• Using talk moves “Who agrees? Why do you agree?”
• Getting the ‘shy’ students to share their learning is awesome. 
• I love your use of the whiteboard and small cards - you have really taken on board using materials to support and scaffold your students learning. 
• Good to see you revising what you did in week 1 and 2
• Encouraging students to explain their thinking
• Good to see you using splitting of numbers

Things to take away..

• Providing more questions for the learners who haven’t yet reached the same level of thinking as the others. While the other learners work out the other sums, T can focus closer on these learners.

Suggestions..

• Could have the students try to explain it to one another.

My reflection
I think this lesson was not the best work the students could have done. We did a lot of place value add/sub in the first three weeks of school, and have not visited it much since then. They have forgotten ALOT..
I also noticed the same thing while doing GLOSS testing last week, where all but one student had forgotten how to find 1/4 of a number, or even discuss what fractions were. This happened with ratios as well. I know that if they had a one off lesson on these topics they would remember it, but I couldn't teach them that during a test.

Next term I want to do 'maintenance Monday', where every Monday we practice skills or knowledge we already know, hence to maintain the knowledge. Then Tuesday-Friday will be the new math for the week. This will help students not to forget things they already know. 

Screencastify! (Leading digital learning)

After Anne's visit a few weeks ago, and my reflection that I wasn't using as many digital tools as I used to, I really wanted to start introducing more digital tools to my students. After all I am an MDTA in a 1:1 environment, I should be using digital tools..

I really wanted to expand the DLO options for my students, and as I knew that other Manaiakalani schools use Screencastify, I wanted to use it as well. I asked our Manaiakalani facilitator to unblock this Chrome extension and it took a few weeks to get it all sorted, but its here!

I introduced it first to my own class. 

Click here to read my blog post about it on my class blog.

It was fairly easy to introduce, the students understood it very quickly and were able to use it confidently pretty much straight away. Awesome! 

They were so excited to have something they had never had before - using Google Docs/Drawings etc can get a bit tedious if that is all you are doing..

(Click link above to watch my students first attempts at screencastify)

Today I went to my neighbouring class (Room 8 ) and showed them how to download it, set it up and use it as well. It went great! 

Read their class blog post here.

(Photo credit: Ottilie Morrison).

I repeated the lesson again a third time for room 6, my other neighbouring class who are year 4 students. They got it straight away as well. It is such an easy to use tool!

What I really loved was seeing this comment from yet another teacher in my school...

(Comment was posted onto my class blog post)

Miss Kyla teaches year 7&8s at my school and I was so flattered that she was even looking at my class blog, let alone using it for her own teaching. She told me later on that she had showed her class my blog post, they had watched the students screencastifys and then they had copied what my students had done.

Originally I wanted to use screencastify so the students had more options to use when they created DLOs and so I had another way to collect evidence of their learning. 

However it turned into a big thing that now everyone is using (and all the kids are so excited to use it!!). 

I am proud that I was able to plant this seed and hopefully in the future I can help lead digital learning in the same way (or better!). 

Spiral of Inquiry (Term 1, Week 7)

Last week and this week our class has been looking at Statistics. 

Because of this, we can't use as much materials as we have when we were learning about place value and decimals. It's more practically inclined.

Last week as a break from their maths, I gave the students a basic facts test that is broken down by stages. I gave my lower students the stage 4 test (addition + subtraction to 10) and they all did great, so I gave them stage 5 (the national standard for year 5 students at the beginning of the year). Here they began to fall apart. 

I quickly realised that two of the boys didn't have the skill, knowledge and/or confidence to count backwards from a given number (up to 20), or subtract from 20. They were fine with 10, but 20 they couldn't do.

Today I pulled these two boys out for some materials maths. I got out the trusty popsicle sticks and we practised subtracting from 10. They understood this already and were confident in doing their takeaways, so I challenged them to not use their hands (i.e. imaging). I would ask them subtraction questions and they would answer without touching the popsicle sticks (I could see them counting in their heads though..). 

They quickly memorised their groupings to 10 (5+5, 3+7, 8+2, 1+9, 4+6 and vice versa) and were able to answer quickly. 

Next we moved onto doing the same thing, but up to 20. This was a bit harder for them and took a lot more practice before they felt confident. 

I asked them to lay their 20 popsicle sticks out in 2 rows of 10. This helped them to understand that 20-12 isn't so scary, you first -10 then -2, leaving you with 8. Both boys slowly caught onto this and were able to show how they were thinking using the popsicle sticks. Again we practised our groupings to 20 (12+8, 13+7, 15+5, etc). They struggled a little here so we got the sticks back out and practised a few more times. 

Here he is showing 20-6, by taking 6 sticks from one group of 10 and he is left with 4 ones in one row and 10 in the other row.

Here Lopi covers 3 sticks, showing 20-17. He got the point where he didn't need to physically take away the sticks, but could imagine them removed and give me the answer anyway.

As a cool down, I asked them 'what comes before' or 'what comes after' whatever number I thought of. They were amazing with numbers to 20, as it was fresh in their mind, and good until 100, then one boy fell apart and wouldn't answer anything above 100. This lack of confidence showed me he was quite insecure about his number knowledge in large numbers which is something I can address another time.

Then we practising skip counting, which is another thing I know they are not confident in doing. 

We used the popsicle sticks to count in groups of 2 and we also wrote it down.

They both left feeling good about themselves (important! maths self-efficacy is always so low..)  and knowing they COULD do it. I want to work them again so they don't forget the subtraction strategy they were practising today. They also need to practice skip counting, and improve their number knowledge of large numbers (100-1000).

Surprising moments

This week there have been a few surprising moments which have just made my heart soar.

On Monday I introduced the idea of subtracting decimals as a whole class, as everybody had seemed to get adding decimals. It wasn't great - there was too many kids and it just was too much. So on Tuesday, I began my maths lesson by saying 'whoever didn't get subtracting yesterday come with me and we can work on it', and without hesitation a bunch of about 10 kids came to the mat with me. 

There was absolutely no sense of embarrassment or shame about not understanding the learning yesterday, and I was honestly surprised. I expected to have to go and get specific students who I knew didn't get it and make them come and practice, but they just came themselves (and it was the same kids I would have picked anyway!). The first part of our mini-lesson was talking about which parts we did get (i.e. mostly subtracting tenths from tenths) and what we didn't get (i.e. when there isn't enough hundredths and we had to exchange).

I was so proud of my students as they shared their weaknesses so openly. They also demonstrated strong metacognitive skill as they thought about their own learning and what they did/didn't understand.

We went through the lesson and by the end they had understood what they didn't yesterday, and then moved onto even harder stuff. They were stoaked, and so was I. 

It made me think, how did I create such an awesome classroom culture in 5 weeks? Like, how? What did I do that worked so I can keep doing it? 

Another surprising moment was when not one, but multiple students, while working on an independent follow up after being with me using materials, asked to keep using the materials (in those words as well - yay for them using teacher-speak). 

As a teacher, I know that using materials is a building block towards being able to do the maths in your head. I always try to use 'teacher-speak' with my students, such as 'using materials' and 'imaging'. When these students came and asked me to use materials because they couldn't image yet, I was so happy. They knew they could do it by themselves (i.e. rather than asking me to do it) and knew what they needed in order to achieve it. I said absolutely! 

And there they sat, with a bag of decimats, using them when they reached a question they couldn't yet do in their head.

If they still didn't get it, they would call me over, and I would lay out the decimats without actually explaining it, and just the visual cue was enough for them to click and say 'ooohhh'. 

These two moments that happened this week made so happy and proud. 

Somehow, I'm not sure how, I have created a class that is self-aware, honest, not afraid of making mistakes and admitting they don't know, independent, who have a growth mindset and would rather get a tool to help them achieve their goal by themselves, rather than asking the teacher directly to explain it. They want to learn, and want to do it themselves. They are active participants in their own learning. 

I love my class.

Whanau Conferences (Term 1, 2017)

This afternoon we had whanau conferences. This event is designed for parents and teachers to meet, and share the next learning steps for students. 

As this is the first year I am in my own class, it was my first time doing this event by myself... It went great! I had almost 80% of my students turn up with some kind of family member (parent, sibling, aunt, nana, etc). 

Over the past week or so, we have been preparing student goal sheets to share with the parents. 

For example, Viliami and Grace. 

My class also prepared bookmarks (e.g. Syraiah-Lee,  Amon) which included QR codes linked to their learning blogs. I showed the whanau member how to access their childs blog using these codes, and they seemed to be excited about an easier way to view their blog. 

I made a concious effort to keep the goals simple and achievement. Yes, there is some 'teachery talk' on the goal sheets, but after reading each sheet through with the student, I would summarise their goals in everyday words so whanau members could understand.

Most of my students had learning their times tables as a goal for maths, and using more specific vocabulary in writing, among other goals. The whanau members understood how the spelling homework I have set supports this writing goal, and could see evidence in the classroom of how we are working towards it together as well.

It was also lovely to receive a gift of flowers and home-grown tomatoes from one of my students parents. 

This event was a great way to make connections with parents of my new students, and build on the existing relationships I have with my year 5's (who I had last year as year 4's). 

Softball Tournament (Term 1, 2017)

 Today was the Tamaki cluster softball tournament, and my first sports tournament ever. I never played sports as a child, and this hasn't changed as I went into adulthood.

However, I wanted to make a conscious effort to go out of my comfort zone (read my goals for 2017 here). So I volunteered to coach the year 5 and 6 softball teams.

This has meant that for three weeks, I have had a softball training almost every lunchtime. This has been hard on me personally as I haven't been eating lunch properly and taking that break, making me more tired for the afternoon block of learning and also messes with my eating schedule.

I am glad I did sign up for it, as I have learnt a lot about the game of softball and of course have gotten to know my kids better as well.

My focus for the year 5 team was for them to learn how to play. I purposely made them rotate often through the various 'roles' in the team, even during the competition. I wanted them to build confidence in themselves and their physical ability, and the focus was about getting better, not being the best. This rotation was a focus for the year 6's as well, rather than them having 'set' roles in the team. This definitely did happen - every single child got better, wether at batting or catching
or pitching.

The next sport is cricket (starting next week!) and I am looking forward to learning more about the sport (ala, I know nothing..) and continuing to build strong relationships with my students through this extra activity.

Spiral of Inquiry update (week 3)

This week I began introducing decimals to my class using the resource decimats. 

Before we began, we recapped the most important point from last weeks place value - the magic number of 10. I tried to get across that in maths, especially in place value, everything always comes back to the magic number 10. Most of the kids did get this point and it was evident later who did and didn't.

I explained that in the same way, the magic number 10 still exists in decimals. What you exchange it for is just different.

I used these resources a couple times last year (click here), however this week I did it with my whole class instead of a select group, before moving onto groups.

Decimats are a resource which show visually how decimals are smaller than one whole, and visually show that ten tenths fit into one whole, 100 hundredths fit into one whole, and how hundredths are smaller than tenths. 

I did find the decimats was useful for the students to quickly understand tenths and hundredths, however progress slowed when I began asking them to add or subtract decimal numbers and they had to exchange hundredths for tenths, or tenths for one whole. 

I have also tried to get the kids to explain their mathematical thinking using maths words - like exchange - instead of 'I swapped this for this'. I remind them almost every 30 seconds to call each piece of paper they are talking about by its mathematical name - tenths, hundredths.

Reflection for next weeks learning - 

All my students, both those in the target group and those who aren't, need more practice exchanging in decimals. They are getting better at explaining what they have done and why, and using maths language like exchange, but even this still needs some work. 

They still need to use the materials to deepen this understanding, I don't feel they are ready for imaging (doing it in their head) just yet.

Wide & Deep - Critical Literacy

This week, the second week of school for the year, I began with full reading and maths programmes and groups. I wanted to hit the ground running, getting the kids into the habit of doing hard work and having to think hard everyday. 

It is a Manaiakalani recommendation that teachers include more critical literacy in their programmes. (Read University of Auckland research about Manaiakalani where these are further explained - here) as they found that is what contributed to the huge learning shift in classrooms they studied.

This recommendation includes;

Promoting engagement in reading, comprehension and higher order thinking.  

Promoting instruction for depth of understanding and independence. 

Providing in-task support for thinking about reading. 

Increasing the challenge and expectations in assigned texts and tasks. 

Making connections. 

These are the things I aimed to include in my programme this week, and on an on-going basic as well.

In class this week, we were studying one aspect of Hauora for our inquiry topic. I chose to focus on emotional well-being. 

We brainstormed different feelings we knew...

We made clines to show how some emotions are related to each other, but might be less or more severe than others. We used our prior knowledge (the brainstorm we made, above) and then added to them with help from here. 

(This became a huge vocabulary building task, which was awesome!)

We chose emotions (in groups) and acted our scenarios of what that looked like/caused it/felt like etc.

Each reading group had 1 story at their appropriate curriculum level to read and work on, an online article to support the ideas in the follow up work, and then they read a second story above their level. So each student read at least 3 stories, with the theme of emotions, at different levels of complexity, within one week.

Here are two students completed follow up for their first story - remember they are only 9 and 10 years old! I was blown away with their thinking about emotions. Year 5 student.  Year 6 student.

On Friday morning, after everything we had done about emotions this week. We had a discussion. I asked all the students to bring one of their stories with them. 

We went through each story, and one of the students volunteered to explain (to those who hadn't read it) what the story was about, who the characters were, what happened that made them emotional and what emotions they felt. It was way easier to get them talking in this way than I expected it to be - I thank myself for forcing them to speak in front of each other last week so they got over the fear! The students added onto what each other was saying quite a lot, which was amazing because it showed they had a good understanding of their 3 stories and could add more detail, or ask questions of each other, and that they felt comfortable enough as group members to respond to each other so casually and in a supportive way.

We compared the stories, the characters, the emotions they felt. We connected with what work we had done earlier in the week (which was already displayed in the class!). 

Then I asked them this question ..

Do you control your emotions, or do they control you? 

They pretty much all instantly said that they were in control of their emotions. I challenged them (after explaining that I wasn't disagreeing with them, I wanted them to defend their opinion or think from another point of view), by saying,

 what about when you get angry, and you lash out and punch someone or something, are you still in control of your emotions then? 

They sat for a bit.. I could tell they hadn't thought of it that way. Then one student (who gets angry often, ironically) said that when that happens, your emotions are in control of you. The rest of the class slowly started nodding and realising what I meant. 

We came to the agreement that sometimes we are in control of our emotions, and sometimes, they are in control of us. One student pointed out that when you get angry and do something, that's when your emotions are in control, and then afterwards you feel guilty, that's when you are in control again and you feel bad for what you did, but you also feel bad for loosing control. I was quite impressed with that!

I asked them who they thought was in control, when you wake up from a scary dream sweating and shaking and feeling nervous and paranoid. They all agreed that your emotions were in control of your body, even though you were sleeping. Being scared in the dream causes those physical reactions (we had also talked about physical reactions earlier in the week).

This led us on a tangent about emotions and dreams. I was in awe at how easily the students shared very personal stories, about dreams and/or experiences they had had and how it made them feel, including the death and funeral of family members, the still birth of cousins etc. Heavy stuff! 

What surprised me was it was mostly my new students, rather than the ones I taught last year and have again, that shared the most. I felt proud I had established such rapport with them so quickly so that they were comfortable to share these stories. I wanted to respect their vulnerability and reciprocate it, to let them know it was okay to share and we could trust each other, so I shared a personal story as well. My story was about how when my sister was in labour with my nephew, I woke up at a particular time after a dream that something went wrong with the birth and that my sister had to have an emergency C-section. The next morning when my sister rang to tell us the baby was born, it turned out she had her C-section at the exact minute I woke up. Freaky huh? This encouraged the kids to keep sharing and feel safe, and also led to another tangent of explaining what a C-section was (lol). 

The discussion was so powerful and I'm so delighted I decided to do it. 

The conversation was so rich, not only about the books we had read, the content of these stories (funerals, what a drought was, metaphorical drought when you ignore your emotions, how milk gets delivered, how petrol is stored at petrol stations, why weka birds walk funny, how kids can feel left out in adult conversations, where rain comes from, why you get big bags under your eyes when you are tired, etc etc etc.) but about emotions and our personal experiences. We connected our inquiry, reading and writing so seamlessly. 

I definitely want to keep trying to do these things - 

Promoting engagement in reading, comprehension and higher order thinking.  

Promoting instruction for depth of understanding and independence. 

Providing in-task support for thinking about reading. 

Increasing the challenge and expectations in assigned texts and tasks. 

Making connections.

However one thing I want to change is to make my follow up activities smaller, and have one for each story, rather than one big one for only one story. Also including more 'create' in the tasks now that the students know the Chromebook expectations. A third thing I want to do differently next week is getting the kids from group A to read aloud to group B, group B to read aloud to group C etc, rather than only to their own group. Some of my kids are very slow and hesitant readers and I think the mileage (and feedback from their peers) will help them improve.

Onwards and upwards!

Term 1 Spiral of Inquiry 2017

Today I completed  my spiral of inquiry for Term 1.

"Teaching as inquiry, a process that encourages you to change your practice in order to enhance success for students" ... "is likely to be highly useful for teachers as they respond to the need to develop digital fluency across diverse learner groups and capabilities. " (source).

Spiral of inquiries are designed to push students, in a short period of time to the next level of learning, hence causing accelerating learning rather than learning at the rate of their peers. This is a way for them to 'catch up' to their peers in a short time, rather than being constantly behind.

My spiral focuses on my lower-achieving maths students, who sit just below the national standard for maths. In my spiral document, I discuss what these students can currently do, what they should be able to do to be 'at' the national standard, what I think has contributed to them being behind, and what I am going to do in an attempt to accelerate their learning.

My main question is 

How can the use of materials help to build deep understandings of mathematical concepts?

This week, although it being only the 2nd week of the year, I went full steam ahead with my maths and reading programmes. I chose to focus on place value, as this is a building block most students are missing which causes them problems later on in maths.

Every child in my spiral of inquiry this term, I also taught last year when they were year 4's. Because of this, I already had a good understanding of what they know and can do, and I didn't need to spend weeks getting to know this. (Hence the starting a full learning load in week 2!)
I knew that these students get stumped when they are dealing with numbers in the 100's, and had never dealt with anything in the 1000's before. This showed me that they had some gaps missing in their place value knowledge.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, I used popsicle sticks with my whole class so I could judge their place value concepts. I would say 'show me 23', and the response I was hoping for, was 2 lots of 10 popsicle sticks, tied together with rubber bands, and 3 popsicle sticks by themselves. However, I got everything but that. Even my year 6 students didn't do this. They counted out 23 and showed me them scrunched up in one hand, or made the shape of the letter 23 with the popsicle sticks as their pen (if that makes sense?). Some remembered that they were supposed to tie something together, so they tied the 2 lots of 10, together, in one big pile, and left the 3 ones by themselves. I modelled what I wanted them to show me, and explained why. Some of them just couldn't understand why I said only bundles of 10 were allowed to have a rubber band around them. There was definitely a gap in the students knowledge of exchanging numbers (i.e. ten one's is the same as one ten). We started to process through this bundles and rubber bands business, when I tripped them up again. Instead of 'show me X number', I asked them to 'show me X number, then add/minus X number'. These questions were designed to force students to exchange - opening up 1 lot of 10 to take out some ones, adding ones then exchanging them for a 10, etc.

What I liked about how I ran this activity was that after a few of this new type of question, I then asked students to buddy up. The pair, together, would do the 'show me X number' part. Then, student A from each pair would come to me and I would whisper the 'add/minus X number' part, which they then had to go back and EXPLAIN to student B - not tell them. For example, if the question was 128+13, they were not allowed to say 'plus 13', they would say 'add 3 ones, then change 10 ones for 1 ten', explaining the process step by step. This showed me a deeper level of understanding then just 'show me X number', because I could judge student A's understanding of the process of exchanging, and student B's understanding of mathematical language, at the same time.
Of course we swapped, did a bunch of varying questions that all were showing the same thing although they kids didn't realise that lol.

It was a great way for me to judge the whole classes understanding of place value (and maths language) at the same time.

On Thursday and Friday, I introduced place value counters I made. I made these on Wednesday, because I knew there was no way I could use popsicle sticks to show place value into the 100's and 1000's, I literally just don't have enough - and can you imagine the mess??
The kids LOVED them straight away.

I did the same thing to begin with - 'show me X number'. Instantly I found misconceptions about their place value knowledge.

 The first misconception we addressed was this. Yes, they do have the right number of the right value. It does add up to 253. But look at the order they have put it in - they have put ones on the left and 100's on the right. To me, this meant they didn't know, or had forgotten the actual value of those numbers and where they sit when you write and read the number. Once we had addressed this misconception once or twice, going through a full explanation about why, I would only prompt with 'is that the order you would write this number in?', and they would click and fix their mistake.

The second misconception I found was kids doing this. Again, they have got the the right number of the right values, but they have not used a place holder zero. See how there is no space in between the 100 and the 1's? This showed me they didn't know why the zero was there, what purpose it served, and why having it made a difference to the number. None of them had ever heard the term 'place holder zero', and when I explained the yes, there are no tens, you are right, but we need to keep the space there otherwise the other numbers might fall into the wrong 'place value house', and that you had to put a zero there to keep the other numbers in the right place, they kind of got it.

 Before introducing the next 'big number', I did a few add/sub questions to see if they could exchange. What is happening in this photo sadly happened quite a bit.. Instead of realising 5+5=10, so I exchange the 10x1 and put in 1x10, they would leave the 10x1.  

  The same thing happened in other values - again, not exchanging for the next big number when there are 10 of the same value.

 For the students in my spiral of inquiry, they tripped up a little when we got to the 1000's. Their inexperience with larger numbers definitely showed. Using the place value counters played a huge role in helping them understand where thousands went, and understanding that it is a number the same as the 1's, 10's and 100's, just bigger. It's not scary. Every time I asked them to 'show me X number', I always wrote it out and showed them, so they could use the order of the written number to help them process what went where and how many of each. It was definitely helpful.

They got a bit more confident, then began doing this. Yes, they have the right number, it does add up to 10,213. But you don't actually put 10 into the thousands column, you put 0 there and 1 into the 10,000's column. Their inexperience with large numbers definitely caused this error, as I don't think they even knew or realised there was anything bigger than 1000's. 

I introduced the next 'big number', 10,000. There were a few gasps, literal gasps, that there were number bigger than 10,000. This was blowing their mind. I did this one for them, to show them that I exchanged 10x1,000 for 1x10,000. We had to stop and talk about exchanging again here, as the big numbers kind of scared them and they forgot that you ALWAYS exchange in 10's and 1's.

1x10 = 1x10

10x10=100

100x10=1,000

1,000x10=10,000

10,000x10=100,000

100,00x10=1,000,000

 The students getting more and more confident using the 10,000 numbers. We stayed around this point for a while, doing add/sub questions so they could practice their exchanges in large numbers. For example, with 32,052 I would say -10,831 so they had to exchange a 1,000 back to hundreds, at the same time taking away 1 lot of 1,000. This took some time to get right.

It was a great first week of maths - I learnt A LOT about my whole classes place value knowledge, and was able to introduce big numbers, and new concepts such as the place holder zero, and demonstrate old concepts, such as exchanging 10x1 (etc), thanks to the materials I was using.
For my spiral of inquiry group, I think they responded really well to using materials every single day, (rather than as a sometimes thing), a few even asking to do more because it was fun. Although I do not think they will remember everything from this week going into next week, using the materials will help them remember quicker, have a deeper understanding of it, and contribute towards a positive attitude and growth mindset in maths (oh yeah, I can do maths! I am smart!). I will keep using materials as part of my maths inquiry and documenting the outcomes on my blog.