Reflection on Teaching and Next Steps

Write a reflection in which you summarise your main learning about your teaching and next steps. This will prepare you to design an intervention next time. (WFRC #10)


The main learning about my teaching that I have made during this round of evaluation (as discussed in my blog post here) is that I am teaching my students how to have an academically based student-led discussion. It took some changing in my own teaching practise over the past few years to implement this change across the curriculum level, but I now know that I provide adequate think and respond time for my students instead of jumping in right away with the correct answer. My students know that they are allowed to have their voice and opinions heard. When it comes to maths, even my struggling students are not afraid to voice their opinions on how to properly solve a problem or identify what they believe the next step in a problem solving process should be.

My next step is to implement new vocabulary recognition strategies such as the Four Square and Feature Analysis approaches (as discussed here). I hope to provide my students with more opportunities to recognise the language of mathematical success. It is my intention to keep a record of mathematical terms students have used during a lesson (by providing opportunities for students to share their thinking in a Screencastify more often). 

Decimats: Rewindable Learning

 Now that we are back in school under Covid restrictions, I am remaining very aware of the students that I have in my class that have yet to return to school. The majority of these students are still working from home, but without the classroom connection and direct teaching that was available when we were offering Google Meets. As a result, I decided to make another rewindable teaching video showing students how to use a Decimat since it was the first time that many of the students have experienced this learning tool. 

This rewindable video was a great resource for my students who were in the classroom and those at home. It was also used by students in other learning areas of our. teaching block to help them to further their understanding of decimats. 

Student Voice Survey

Present findings from this inquiry about your teaching. Ensure qualitative data includes rich descriptions of your teaching and quantitative data is clearly presented. (WFRC #9)

Now that we are finally back into a regular swing of learning at school, I was able to present my maths class with a survey for them to consider some key things about their learning in maths this year. I tried to keep the questions I asked them clear and simple. I also wanted to be sure that the answers collected would provide quantitative data that could easily be recollected at the end of the school year.

The questions that I asked in the survey were:

• I like maths. (Rate on a Scale from Not at All to Favourite Subject)
• What I find most difficult about maths is...
• I am confident solving problems involving:
• The one concept I need to improve in most is:
• My maths teacher encourages me to use proper mathematical vocabulary (Rate on a Scale from Not at All to Favourite Subject)
• We have been presented with and asked to use new mathematical vocabulary this year.
• I am comfortable asking my teacher for help when I need it.
• How often has Mrs. Moala asked you to reflect on how well you understood something in your learning?

Based on the survey results I was able to gain a deeper understanding about my teaching as seen by my 22 of my students.

In the graph below, students clearly believe that the most difficult part of solving mathematical problems are multiple steps (36.4%) and vocabulary was a close second (31.8%). I was happy to see that the students in my class identify the same areas of difficulty as I would for them.

I was greatly pleased to see the results of this graph, as I have been making a conscious effort to model using correct mathematical vocabulary this school year. Nearly 64% of the students surveys indicate that I encourage them to use proper mathematical vocabulary the majority of the time and another 18% indicate this happens most of the time.

This last graph shows the number of students who feel that they are asked to provide reflections on their own learning in various ways. While approximately 41% indicate that it has happened at times, I would love to see more students be more confident that they were asked to reflect on their learning and that they were able to see the benefit of it by the end of the year.

In order to ensure that I keep an active understanding of my student's progress after putting my interventions in place, I will be sure to conduct another survey at the end of the school year to see if my student's impression of maths and their understanding of mathematical vocabulary has changed as a result of the change in my teaching.