2020 Key Changes in Teaching

 

Summarise evidence about key changes in teaching and other factors that influence student learning. (WFRC ?15)

In order to summarise the evidence about key changes in my teaching and other factors that influenced student learning, I began reflecting on a blog post that I wrote in August entitled, "What Evidence?" In this post, I spent some time reflecting on the types of evidence that I hoped to collect when thinking about the types of. things that I could do as the teacher to influence the way that my students were learning.

1.  One of the key things that I changed in my pedagogy last year, was keeping very detailed DATs for reading. This year, I thought about how I was writing up my DATs and reflections in maths and what I could do to make them more effective for my time in the classroom. I tried my best to be purposeful in my planning for both whole class (especially from home during the lockdown and while at school during times of COVID restrictions) and small group interactions. I found it very helpful to keep detailed notes of students involvement, understanding, and next steps when reflecting on a lesson, especially with all the disconnect in student attendance this year.

2. Making a conscience effort to provide topic specific mathematical vocabulary for my students to think about and begin recognising at the beginning of a unit of learning provided many opportunities for students to hear the correct terminology and begin using it in their own mathematical conversations.  

3. I have also recorded some of my maths lessons this year and as a result I was able to hear the student interactions using proper vocabulary and correcting their peers with they used their maths slang. For example, many students say "Timesing" instead of "multiplying."  

4. A key change that I made in my teaching this year was definitely around best practise for effectively running an online Google Meet maths program to teach new concepts and vocabulary.  During our time in lockdown, my maths delivery changed as our time in lockdown progressed. I started out providing my students with very similar tasks to what we were doing before the lockdown. However, I slowly began to make changes to best suit the needs of my students. Some of these changes were discussed in these blog posts: Rethinking Lockdown Maths and "Equivalent Fractions".

What Evidence?

*Describe how you will collect information about the implementation of your changed practices/intervention. (WFRQ? #12)

*Identify informal/formal ways you are monitoring the effects of your changed practices/intervention on learner outcomes. Explain the reflections/tweaks you are making along the way. (WFRQ? #13)

*Describe how you will keep a record of each of the above in a manageable way. (WFRQ? #14). 

It is important to remember that during the Inquiry process that you are ultimately looking at the things that YOU the TEACHER can do to make YOUR teaching practice more effective. 

The focus of my 2020 Inquiry is "How can providing opportunities for mathematical vocabulary acquisition strengthen a student’s self-efficacy in maths?" 

Although my intended route has been altered some due to the Covid-19 Lockdowns, and changes made in our school timetable as a result, I have been able to implement the following interventions in my teaching. Due to the nature of the questions asked by the WFRC, I decided it was best to link my responses in one blog post.

 

1. Very specific purpose to our whole class problem solving and small group micro teaching sessions. In my lesson plans (DATs), I try to specifically think about what I want to do with/focus on with each maths group prior to our problem solving sessions. In doing this, I am able to clearly know (and remain on task) with the mathematical concepts and vocabulary that I am trying to work on with that group of students. In addition to my actual DAT plan, I also keep rather in depth reflection notes often indicating where certain students have successes and failures, in addition to thinking about my next steps as a teacher. 

                         

2. I started out the year, providing students with "A Closer Look" learning tasks. Before beginning a new section of a unit, I decided to try front loading the students with the vocabulary that they should know

(at Level 4) in order to be successful working on that specific topic. This is an idea that I based on the work we had done as a team last year with Dr. Jannie van Hees around Genomics and our Literacy program. Once students have had a closer look at this vocabulary, I plan my problem solving questions using these specific vocabulary words in a way that will get students using them as they discuss their problem solving strategy and solution. 

3. I have been capturing student voice, and my own teacher voice, through video recording our lessons and monitoring the amount of times students use, are prompted to use and I, as the teacher, use proper mathematical vocabulary. An example of this can be found on my blog post entitled, "Formative Assessment and Baseline Data"

4. The last thing I plan to do differently is implement the use of some strategies that I read about earlier this term: the Four Square and Feature Analysis approaches (as discussed here).  Unfortunately, I don't feel confident implementing these new strategies while we are Distance Teaching. My hope it to be able to implement the use of these strategies once my class is back in the classroom as a regular Level 2 class.  Students will be able to keep a personal record of these tasks on their class blogs. 

In order to keep a record of everything, I will be using student blog posts, reflection and DAT spaces on my weekly lesson plans, and learning tasks monitored and filed appropriately in my Google Drive. Student voice will be collected through student blog posts and in class videos that I record during specified lessons. Once I find something worth sharing, I will be publishing regular updates on my blog, which  provides a quick and reliable place to share change in my teaching and student shift data. I also keep regularly updated spreadsheets that monitor student shift (PAT, eAsstle, etc) and my own anecdotal notes on student progress. 

My Theory of Action

 Restate your inquiry question and your theory of action/chain of events (WFRC#11)

My inquiry question for 2020 is:

“How can providing opportunities for mathematical vocabulary acquisition strengthen a student’s self-efficacy in maths?”

My Theory of Action:

As a year 7/8 teacher, I feel that there is often a struggle with our students who do not have the necessary mathematical vocabulary to back the skills that they are acquiring. As a result, students are often at a loss for what to say to describe their mathematical thinking and reluctant to openly share with their peers. We have also noticed that students do considerably better from year to year on easttle tests than they do when taking the PAT Maths test. I wonder if this is due to the open subject matter of the PAT so students know more directly what type of problems they are solving. 

The changes I am making to my teaching to improve their outcomes are still being implemented at this time, especially due to our change in teaching during the Covid-19 lockdown. However, prior to the lockdown, I was using a "Looking Closer" format embedded into my learning tasks that provided students with an opportunity to interact with new grade level appropriate mathematical vocabulary. In the past, students have been primarily taught at the level of curriculum that they were working at. This caused a larger gap to develop with student mathematical vocabulary because students were not using grade level appropriate terminology for mathematical concepts. For example, students often still come into Year 7/8 saying things like "I got the answer 13 from plussing 10 and 3" instead of "I got the answer 13 from adding 10 and 3." 

As we prepare to enter into a more "normal" phase of teaching and learning, I am interested in implementing some of the ideas and concepts discussed on the professional reading that I have recently done in the past few weeks. These include, the Four Square and Feature Analysis approaches (as discussed here).

The reasons why I think these changes in my teaching will be effective to my learners are that they will provide a more solidified understanding of the terms used to describe various mathematical processes and concepts. Students will be provided with a visual reminder of what those words and phrases mean. Students will also be given multiple opportunities to put their new vocabulary to use describing their problem solving process. 

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). 

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.