One Key Strategy: Reading and Maths

As part of our CoL discussions this year, we have been hearing about the data being collected and interpreted by Russell Burt, the principal of Pt England School and the Convenor or Manaiakalani, about obtaining a "threefer."  Russell is inquiring into how we can obtain accelerated achievement across all three core learning areas: Reading, Writing and Maths.

We were previously asked to consider what we do in our classrooms and across our cluster to make that accelerated shift happen in writing. After considering that information, we have been asked as CoL teachers to consider a key strategy from our own teaching that enables our students to achieve.

During our daily morning team meeting, we had a few extra minutes so we spent some time reflecting about what we do as a team of Year 7/8 teachers that we feel are our key strategies.

This is what we came up with:

Reading:

• Difficult/challenging text when in guided reading session with teacher (deep diving the "Jannie Way")
• Testing more often. At least once a term, especially our priority learners and those we feel have made progress. Not waiting til the end of year so that we are consistently teaching at the right instructional level. 

Maths:

• Having a consistent strand focus-teaching number knowledge through strand
• Explicit school wide/cluster wide overview (2 year maths strand rotation) 
• Pitch focus problems/instruction at year level then differentiate by pushing kids up or bringing them out.