BSLA Trial

 This term, I have been working through Taumata 10 of the new Year 4-6 Better Start Literacy Approach (BSLA) program. While it seemed like a lot before I started, I really feel that over the past 5-6 weeks, my students have learnt so much.

It was a bit of a learning curve for them to go from more direct small group literacy teaching to more of a whole class approach. However, they are now able to sit through the whole lesson (most of the time) without needing too much of a disruptive brain break (run/activity). Now, once I notice that we are getting a little squirmy, we just stand up stretch to the sky, touch our toes and then we're back to business for the last few minutes of the lesson. 

I took the BSLA suppled QAR poster and modified it into my own version for the students to interactig with when completing their independent learning tasks. 

I have really taking some time to determine how to turn some of their suggested pen/paper learning into more interactive digital tasks. 

Click to see student's blog. 

Welcome to 2025!

 So hard to believe that the 2025 school year is upon us! I graduated from university in 2000, which makes this my 25th year as a teacher! I have been teaching in New Zealand for 14 years, after teaching in the USA for the first 11. 

I am very much looking forward to this year once again working with Year 4 students as they begin their Chromebook journey. We will also be using PRIME Maths for the frist time this year and I am excited to see what this will actually look like for my Year 4 students. The process to determine which book level they will each use is underway with a placement test and then we will use those results to determine their learning level. 

This term, I will also be spending 4-5 weeks trialing the new Year 4-6 BSLA (Better Start Literacy Approach) with my literacy students. We will be spending a week or so looking into some "previoius knowledge" they would generally have after completing the first 3 years of BSLA and then we will move into 4 weeks of actual lessons. 

The hope is that later this year, I will be part of the group of Year 4-6 teachers being trained to teach the full BSLA program and continue the BSLA learning that our students are receiving in the junior school.

Term 3 Update

 This term, has been action packed with so much amazing learning! We began looking at the properties of 2D and 3D shapes and I was so impressed with the level of understanding that my students were beginning to demonstrate. We continued having lots of whole class mat time review at the beginning of our maths sessions and it was evident that confidence amongst the majority of the class was soaring!

As we moved into symmetry, rotations, tesselations and translations, it was great to see the students across all learning levels embrace using and understanding the new vocabulary. We had lots of fun looking at and then creating our own shape patterns. This was fun because it allowed students with lower "number knowledge" to be successful in a different way. 

We kept meeting in small groups to continue to develop our understanding of place value, using place value blocks as needed. We did a lot of review of adding 2 and 3 digit numbers and near the end of the term, we began introducing subtraction and even some place value multiplication to those who were ready. I love having those "light blub" moments in my classroom when something finally clicks with an individual student, and we have had many of those moments during this term. 

It is lovely to see students confidently working in mixed ability groups and helping each other by discussing the process to find the outcome. Students really enjoyed moving into algebra as the term came to an end, and since we started out with shape/colour patterns our lower level learners were once again able to be successful by achieving that initial launch into the topic. 

I am looking forward to next term, and our end of the year assessments to see exactly how much information the students have retained and the growth in these areas. 

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