Prime Maths: A Different Classroom Environment

 We are moving along into our Prime Maths journey, and as we move along we have encountered many learning bumps along the way. However, as a class, I strongly feel like we have made the easy turn to understanding. The students now understand what is expected of them and they are working diligently to complete their learning in a timely manner. They had developed a deeper understanding for MathsPro (the online "assess" component) and now know that they must try their best, and seek help as needed, to obtain the highest score possible. They are independently asking to have their mathspro tasks reset so that they may resit a session after reviewing what they have done wrong the first time through. 

Students are taking it upon themselves to actively use the manipulatives we modeled and worked with at the beginning of each session when completing their work as needed. 

Check out this photo of students working independently all using different modes of learning. Such an amazing thing to see!

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. 

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. 

RPI: Create Tasks

 During week 8 of RPI, we focused on integrating create tasks into our learning tasks. Here are a few examples Create tasks that my students have been working on over the past week. 

JJ completed this task that I created as part of my RPI coursework. Check out the whole task on his blog. 

Ema drew a monkey using crayons and we hung it on our wall after reading "Monkey Tricks."

Check out her whole task on her blog.

After reading "Walking in the Spring," Zion created a drawing of a spring day using photopea and then inserted a photo of himself into his drawing.  Check out his blog post here. 

2022 Inquiry Update

This term, our staff came back together to rethink our Inquiry topics for 2022 now that we are in yet again another "new normal" school year. During the discussion, I shared how my focus has been working with my Year 4 students, who are attending school regularly, to understand the importance of completing their learning tasks. With all of the interruptions to their school year the past few years, these students have never had the opportunity to work in a classroom environment for multiple terms without interruption and as a result the importance of completing ALL learning tasks has rarely been at the forefront of thier learning journey. 

I found it interesting that back in March, I indicated that a "Masks Off" classroom goal would be having responsible participants. This is exactlly what I am trying to create in my classroom at this time. 

At this time, I have chosen a group of five students from my homeclass that I teach across all subject areas. I will be working closely with these students to set up learning and completion goals for the remainder of the term. I have also started indicated FIOP (Finish It Off Properly) Blogging Goals across my three classes (Literacy, Maths, Homeclass). For this, I make a list on the front whiteboard of the students who have yet to complete a task and once they have completed it, they rub off their name. This helps those who are still learning to manage themselves focus on what to accomplish when they have spare time in class or before school.

Term 3 Focus Group Achievements

I am so proud of the hard work and dedication that my literacy students have been putting forth this term.  I spent a few days near the end of the term once again using the Blue PM+ kit and Probe2 to conduct Running Record tests on my students and their continued progress amazes me.  Now that I have been organising my reading program using the Wider and Deeper Model for nearly two years now, I could not imagine teaching students who are reading at or above grade level any other way.

Here are the results of my Inquiry focus group at the end of Term 3:

Term 2 Focus Group Achievements

At the end of Term 2, I spent some time reflecting on the achievement levels of my inquiry focus group and I am very pleased with the continued progress that these students are making.  These results are based on Running Records done using the Blue PM testing kit.  However, it is important to note that I did not test the students already reading at L29 at this time for various reasons.

Maths Term 2: What's working?

After further reflecting on my end of Term 1 goals with Rewindable Learning and Create Tasks and then all the PD we received from Jo Knox in regards to accurate OTJ, I placed more of an emphasis this term on practical things that we know work to boost maths confidence and tried to provide different group settings for my students to fully understand the concept of addition.

At the beginning of this year, the majority of my maths class were working at or below Stage 4, and many of those at Stage 4 had gaps in their understanding, which hindered their personal confidence. So, I decided that I was going to begin each day with X-tra Maths set only on the basic Addition facts setting.  For the most part (once the initial fun of a new program on their Chromebook wore off), the class was not overly excited about having to go through their addition facts each day.  However, I spent some time with each micro group early this term reviewing ways to add numbers together without using out fingers or holding the bigger number in our head.  We used counters and 10-frames, number lines, doubles and tidy tens...over and over and over.

One thing I did differently this term, was that I broke my micro groups up even smaller 1-2 times a week and met with fluid groups of 3 from across the class based primarily on their previous levels of understanding still focusing only on addition.  We began with adding 2-digit numbers using our whiteboards at the bean teaching table.  As we added, we reviewed place value and continually discussed the number of 10s in a number as we broke numbers up to add them together using 10s and 1s.  As students were able to add 2 digits, I mixed groups up again and moved some onto over the 10, followed by adding 3-digit numbers using HTO's and then some over the 10 as well.

It is important to note, that X-tra Maths was still happening, but something was changing.  The complaining stopped, and they were simply walking in from Morning Tea, sitting down and getting on with it.  Some were even going through the program twice, without being asked, in an effort to increase their score.

I also wanted to be sure to place an empahsis on Strand more directly than in the past, so I began having a whole class lesson each Monday to set up the topic, which generally consisted of an online game or interactive site for the class to use prior to completing their learning tasks.  This was great because it provided something different and fun for the class to work on while they waited to meet with their learning group during the week.  It was also interesting to see that since our strand this term was primarily Geometry based, my students took to it very easily and have been having a lot of fun working through the given tasks.

Students also continued using MathsWhizz this term, which allowed guided instruction with immediate feedback for both the students and for me.  I often use the Topic Focus setting once a week in an attempt to further student understanding on specific topics of need or to reinforce topics that we are directly working on in class.

Is it working?  Definitely! Slowly at times, but we are getting there.  After testing for my Term 2 reports, I realised that I only have 4 students still working below Stage 4.  One student who was in that Stage 1-3 group at the beginning of the year answered his basic addition GLOSS question with quick ease and his reason was simply, "I just knew it because of xtra maths!"  That same boy was new to our school at the beginning of the year, and out of curiousity I asked him if he was nervous when I tested him in February.  He looked at me kind of weird, and I explained further that I was wondering if he made silly mistakes back then because he has improved so much.  He slowly smiled before confidently saying, "Naw...I've just learnt heaps this year!"

Evolving My Site Presentations as the Year Progresses

Now that we are half way through the school year, I was spending some time looking at the learning pathway that I have provided for my students during this school year.  I was personally challenged (once again) after creating the Multi-Text Database to be even more focused and purposeful with the range of texts I was selecting for my students to read.  I realised that I was not always providing challenging or scaffolded texts for my groups on a weekly basis.

In an effort to do this more effectively, I spent some time thinking about how I had my weekly assignments posted for my learners.  While I was providing them with multiple texts each week, most were complementary and I was not sharing them in a way that allowed easy differentiation for me when I looked at them.

Nearly halfway through Term 2, I decided to be more diligent with how I displayed texts to my students.  This was also made easier by thinking about and then filling out our cluster wide Multi-Text Database each week after I completed my lesson plan.

By using 4 coloured boxes to display the reading texts instead of only two, I am now able to clearly see what I am lacking in my planning.  The students work on reading the assignments from left to right and while their follow up tasks might be directly in response to the main text, often the follow up task created by using aspects of information found across all the texts. 

Taking a Look at My Literacy Learners in Term 2

Taking a look into my literacy students have revealed so many interesting things about my students that I would never have known otherwise.

First of all, I was surprised to see how many of my students enjoy reading "Chapter" books (novels) more than other forms of literature as demonstrated in the response graph below.  After completing this survey, I have also decided to locate some comics/graphic novels for my students to read at different points during the year.

When the students were asked if they enjoyed reading the selected texts for their literacy class, I was happily surprised to learn that the majority of the class enjoys reading the texts I have selected for them.

One of the things that I have come to realise that I do not openly do enough is provide my students with opportunities to select their own texts (with the exception of our silent reading novels).   However, I understand that there are times that they may be Googling a topic to find out more information while reading or completing a learning task.  Therefore, I am going to looking at  implementing a way for students to log any additional articles/websites they may look at on their own while completing a learning task.

Term 1 Maths Inquiry Update

This term I have been focusing on rewindable learning with my maths groups using Explain Everything to model my teaching while recording our group discussion and interactions.  Students can be seen utilising the Rewindable Learning folder throughout the week in our class to revisit their time with our class.  We have also been working on various ways to demonstrate our learning to share on our blogs as create tasks.

My next step for term 2 is to add problem solving questions into the weekly learning and ultimately move to creating a screencast to explain their thinking and reasoning about the problem.

Blogging for Reading Mileage

My small group of students have started to finish their first blog posts about their chapter books.

Oalii was very excited to write about what she read in Chapter 1.  She made me laugh when she eagerly asked if she was allowed to write, "To be continued..." at the end of her post.

As taken from Oalii's Blog...

It was a school day Emma was not at school. She was at spy school at that school she was learning to be a spy. Today was Emma last test once she is done with this test she'll be a real spy. The test was if she'll is a real spy she'd have to take her last test. So she went to put her jumping gear and climbed in the helicopter. They sat in their seats and when they went hay up to the sky she got butterfly in her poko. but she jumped anyways when she jumped she didn't have anymore butterfly she throght it was very fun and also when she jumped she was a real spy.


                                                                 TO BE Continued


So far, the students are still pumped to be reading 'special' books and the those who have begun to write their first blog post are nearly finished.  The biggest obstacle we are having right now is time.  Chromebooks are still very new to my group of learners and everything learning task takes longer than expected as they learn to navigate their machines, Google Apps and typing on a keyboard.  I am confident that the reading is happening.  However, the children are still struggling to complete their blog posts in a timely manner.

Making Reading Mileage Fun

This past week, I was gifted a reading library of age appropriate novels for my students.  Instead of simply adding them to my classroom library shelves, I decided to try something a little different with my students reading above National Standard.  

After labeling the books with shiny gold stickers, I brought the designated students up to my teaching table and spread the books out in front of them.  I explained that these were brand new books just for them to read as long as they agreed to write a blog post at the end of each chapter.  Immediately, their eyes lit up.

Everyday after lunch, the 60 students in my ILS come in and read silently a book of choice for 10-15 minutes.  The students in my 'red bin' reading group (simply named after the bin that the books are stored in) came racing in ready to read.

Surprisingly, this morning three girls came in (all at different times) before school and asked to complete their Chapter 1 blog post.  I was shocked that during their before school free time these students were choosing to blog instead of play with their friends.

Now, I just have to make sure the excitement remains!  I'm hoping to find some more books to add to my special collection.  Also, I am curious to see if reading and commenting on the blogs of the others in the group will spark dialogic conversations among the students and increase interest for reading other books in the collection as the year goes on.

Spark Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher

Today was our first day meeting as the Spark Manaiakalani Innovative Teacher (MIT) cohort.  We had a wonderful day meeting together at the Spark building in Auckland, NZ sharing what we have defined as a problem that we are going to inquire into.  We also spent some time identifying possible hypotheses as to why this is a problem area for our students.

Problem Defined:
How can we extend prior knowledge and critical thinking in an effort to promote dialogic conversations in year 4 students who are reading at/above grade level?

Possible Hypotheses:

Students have not been given the freedom (in earlier years) to explore further on their own into aspects of their text/topic that spark interest.

• Students are not equipped with how to further explore a topic of interest from their text.
• Students need to be taught how to manage their time appropriately in order to complete learning tasks.
• Teachers are not definite on when to shift the focus of learning from decoding to reading for content and formulating deeper understanding from exposure to multimodal texts.
• Teachers are afraid of the time commitment needed in order the plan for extended reading lessons that go deeper for understanding.  
• Teachers are unsure where to look for age appropriate reading material.

Planned Innovation:

What would be the best way to compile a cross-cluster database to house texts linked by topic according the reading level?

Evidence of Need:

According to the Wolf Fisher Research Centre, our students learn by talking about what they are learning (dialogic conversations).  These conversations are mostly effective when students have a deeper understanding of a topic from being exposed to multimodal texts.  

Data Gathered:

• Student PAT and STAR results-Nov 2016 
• Student PAT and STAR results-Feb 2017
• Running Records-Nov 2016 
• 2016 Teacher OTJ-Reading
• Reading previous student Blog posts 
• In class micro group discussions