PES PD: Equitable Outcomes in Maths

Did our shift in maths pedagogy create equitable outcomes?  What can we do to make it a more PES equitable experience?

Our students need tangible materials to help with their understanding of a problem (when needed). However, they also need to be TAUGHT how to use those materials.  We, as a school, need a little more structure and sequence with our teaching paths that will incorporate the concepts and teaching styles of DMIC. We will be unpacking this as a staff this week.

While we still we be structuring culturally relevant problems, our groups will be extremely fluid. Socially, academically, and structurally allowing for ability stretching are great ways to structure learning groups for different opportunities.

This was such a valuable PD session as a staff as we reflected on what worked well and what was successful for our students during our two years of DMIC roll out and mentoring. Although we gained a tremendous insight into culturally relevant problem solving and how that could look with our students while providing formative data, we also had to step back and realise the gaps that we were now missing in the content knowledge that could be measured formatively.

I am excited to explore this more this year as I begin my 2020 Inquiry into teaching.

PES PD: Welcome to 2020!

What do we need most in 2020?  What a question to start the year off with as we discuss the direction of the new school year. As a staff we spend the first two days of the school year in Professional Development meetings and this is a great way to start the year on the same page. 

An exciting part of today, is that this year we will be focusing on the Pt England/Manaiakalani Way of implementing the amazing parts of the information that we acquired over the past few years. We will be focusing on Maths PD during the first semester and Reading during the second. 

Our school theme for this year is "Never Lose Hope".which comes from one of our school values. We will be focusing on hope as: Dreams, Vision, Imagination, Goal Setting, A Vision for Tomorrow, A Sense of Future Possibility 

As always our first part of the day was a great reminder of why we do what we do. Excited to see what the rest of the day looks like as we unpack our curriculum a little more and plan for a great Term 1!

A Look to the End of 2020

As a team, the year 7/8 teachers spent some time before we started our whole school PD days thinking about what we would like our students to leave our classrooms like at the end of 2020. As part of this activity, we spent a few minutes reflecting on the 2019 school year before pairing up to create our own "Gingerbread Man" labeled diagram. Here are the pictures we came up with.

After completing, our student task we spent a few minutes talking about what this would require from us as teachers to get students to the point that they have achieved these things.