Term 2 Inquiry Update

After our initial "launch" lesson, we have been working very hard in mixed ability groups to complete our learning tasks. I have noticed that my students are developing a stronger sense of confidence when they are able to discuss their learning with their peers. Students who were already working at Year 3 are now able to accurately discuss their thinking process and many working at Year 1 and Year 2 are becoming more confident asking for further clarification and help as needed. 

The next class session (or near the end of the class session), we regroup as a whole class and work our way through the task together modeling how to solve the problems. This has been exceptional especially for students realising how to use our multiple posters to skip count aloud when problem solving with fractions or converting from cm to mm. Many students are now able to use the posters to problem solve independently and others are now able to make the connection between skip counting and solving problems using multiplicaiton. 

It's been good to see that there has been a positive shift in student learning levels during the first half of the year (as seen on the graphs below). There were only 7 students out of the class that did not shift in learning levels. 

As the year progresses, I will be working to continue to provide opportunities for my students to continue disucssing their thinking and building their own confidence in maths. I am very keen to work with the group of students at Year 3 to solidify their understanding of problem solving with numbers to 1000 while building a deeper understanding of place value to help in their problem solivng. 

Making Music with Suno AI

 As part of the Maniakalani Cluster Create PD, I attended a workshop led by Fiona Grant (Manaiakalani Facilitator) about using the AI program Suno. We had fun exploring what key words to add into the program to have a song created by the AI. I then, took my song and embedded it into Adobe Express Animator to have an avatar sing my created song. Here is my final project. 

The video below is from Suno and shows the lyrics to the song. 

Summarising the Challenge

 Summarise the challenge of student learning you plan to focus on in this inquiry.

Focus Question: How can I effectively build self-efficacy in my maths students to enable them to clearly share how they got their answer?

The past few years, I have put my teaching inquiry focus into reading and through my inquiry (combined last year with the Manaiakalani RPI programme) I have really found some things that work best when promoting students to feel that they are "allowed to be aloud" when sharing their thinking with others.

I'm hoping to be able to bridge that same principle into my maths class especially when working with my students who are just below year level. This year, I have a lovely group of six students working at Year 3 during term 1 and the beginning of term 2. 

The graph below shows their Mathematics PAT score from Term 1 of this year. The red line, shows the average score for a Year 4 student on this standardised test. 

As you can see, four of the six students scored at or above the average, while two scored just below the average year 4 student. However, I have noticed that when we are working in a small group, they are very happy to write down their answers but they are not as confident explaining their thinking or sharing their answer orally. 

This year, my maths class currently consists of 24 Year 4 students who are all working below year level as of the beginning of the 2024 school year. It is my intention to bring these 6 students up into a Year 4 maths group by the end of term 2. This will allow them to continue to grow in their understanding and end the year working "AT" year level before moving into Year 5 in 2025. 

PES PD: Maths With Fiona Fox

Today, the teachers at Pt England were once again able to spend some time working with Fiona Fox (Manaiakalani Maths Facilitator). We had a lovely time looking at the importance of subtising, promoting fluency and sequencing/developing mathematical strategies. Fiona brought along a wide variety of maths games that we explored in our year level teams. It was a great opportunity to look at resources that are available to us to implement into our weekly classroom plans. 

Subitising

-Using Number talks (show for 3-5 seconds)

Fluency

-Being able to provide mathematical answers instantaneously without having to think about it.

Sequencing and Developing Strategies

-Foundational Facts

-5 Frames

-Doubling

-SKip Counting

-10 Frames

-Arrays for mult/div

-Mulitpication Loopy