Equivalent Fractions

Auckland is still at Level 2.5, which means the desks in my classroom are very spaced out with students remaining in their seats during the lessons.  We are currently not teaching in small groups, which means that I am teaching my maths class using a whole class approach. Keeping this in mind, I decided to try a more investigative approach to discovering equivalent fractions and I recorded this lesson for Manaiakalani Class On Air.

I decided it was important to start the lesson with a low "on ramp" and then progress through the mathematical stages building upon the knowledge that we had just gained (or reviewed for some). To read more about this lesson, check out my page on the Class on Air website here.  

This lesson was a fun way to have the students conduct an investigation to discover a mathematical concept. I feel that my students were able to grab onto the lesson from the beginning no matter their maths learning level and by the end of the lesson, all students were able to understand how to multiply the numerator and denominator by the same number to get an equivalent fraction.  I also realised that since each student had their own piece of paper, they were responsible for figuring out the new fraction. Since I was able to see them trying to figure it out, I was able to provide the correct amount of wait time for all students to be on the same page before moving on.

PES Reading Inquiry

This term, the teacher's at Pt England are continuing to focus on collaborating to achieve a common language for teaching reading. We are primarily focusing on our students reading from Blue to Gold on the NZ Colour Wheel (students reading reading from 6-8 years). 

At this time, we are focusing on "fixing" words that the students read incorrectly. We were asked to read with a focus group of students one on one and see how we could apply the fixing prompts to our reading session. 

I choose to read a page out of the text the students were reading for their learning task about Te Horetā and Captain Cook's encounter.  I found it very interesting that I had multiple students replace the word "cloak" with "clock".  It was interesting when I used the "finding" prompt:

You said "They sat closely together on the deck, watching the men exchange flax CLOCKS for nails and other goods." Does that make sense to you? 

The students instantly knew that it didn't make sense so I moved on by saying, "Well, when you look at that word, you're right the beginning of clocks does have a "CL" blend just like the word on the page. If we take the CL off of the word in the text, do you know what it says?"

Both students were unable to read the word "OAK".  I then decided to move into other words that had the "OA" sound in it as it is used in cloaks. "Do you know any other words that have 'OA" in them=?"

The students were able to say "Boat"  

"Ok, if we take the sound that we hear in Boat and put that same sound in for oak
what do we have?"

We then went back and reread the sentence from the text and the students were able to properly read the word cloaks. They actually went back to their seats feeling very accomplished just from that small interaction.

Hapara Certificate

Today, my certificate arrived from Hapara and the Champion Educators course that I completed during our second lockdown. This was such a great learning opportunity and I had so much fun finding out all the things that are available on Dashboard since the many upgrades it has had over the years. To read more about the course, check out my blog post here. 

Hapara Champion Educator

 Earlier this term, I decided to take part in the upcoming Hapara Champion Educator course in mid-August. Little did I know, at that time, that the six week course would begin the day after Auckland, New Zealand as placed back into Level 3 Covid-19 Lockdown. Once the course opened up, I began making my way through the first part of the course and decided very quickly that I wanted to use the time that I was given during lockdown to complete this course. I emailed my course facilitator and asked if I could please have the entire course workspace opened up for me to complete in my own time. 

Once the course was opened up, I began to make my way through the various levels and I was able to complete the majority of the lessons in a day or so. It was a great reminder of the amazing tools that we have at our fingertips everyday working with Hapara Teacher Dashboard. 

It was also wonderful to have the time while working from home, to investigate some of the elements that I haven't used as much while in school (many of which are updates that Hapara has added over the years).  It was amazing to know that while you were submitted the learning tasks, the facilitating team was working right alongside you providing you with feedback.

One of the things we had to do for the course was create a Hapara Workspace. I was excited to spend some time working with this space mostly because our cluster (where the Hapara Dashboard concept was birthed) has chosen to present our student work using Google Sites. Therefore, I decided that I wasn't going to create new content for my workspace task. I took some elements that my team of teachers created earlier this year as we studied Whare Tapa Whā before, during, and after the first NZ Lockdown. 

  If you would like to explore this further, please click here. 

A BIG THANKS goes to the teachers of Team 5 for the material I was able to easily use to create my workspace. It made me realise that in order to effectively plan out a workspace, it is very important to have your material all created and ready to go.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed exploring Hapara Dashboard more in depth and recommend the Champion Educators Course to anyone who is considering learning more about how to use this amazing classroom tool. I would also like to thank my course facilitator Scott Lewis for all of his support and amazing feedback during the course. I look forward to receiving my final comments and certificate in the next few weeks.

Level 3...Again

 About two weeks ago, the students and teachers in Auckland, New Zealand began distance learning once again as our city was put back on a Covid-19 Level 3 Lockdown. However, the feelings and anxieties felt around going back into lockdown this time around were vastly different when it came to how we were going to set up and administer Distance Learning for our students. We have done it before, and we, as individual, a teaching team and a school, learnt so much from our successes and failures the during the first lockdown.

One of the things that we were able to begin much faster this time around was having our students attend Google Meets with their high school technology teachers. The students did a fabulous job adapting to this especially since they missed their last rotation with their technology teachers, and started the new rotation learning online in their new courses. We love knowing that the high school technology teachers are working from a department page for our students to access across the grade levels. 

Student names have been covered up in compliance with our Manaiakalani Cybersmarts curriculum which teaches students that they should not share their last name publicly online. 

Blogger Badges

 I am so blessed to work in a Manaiakalani school, where we often hold cluster-wide Toolkits (Professional Development opportunities) that allow us to learn about various tools and resources that others have found beneficial when teaching with our Learn, Create, Share pedagogy. Since our cluster has started supporting "outreach" clusters over the years, we now have Online Toolkits available throughout the school year. 

Since we are all teaching from home right now (Auckland is at Level 3), our team leader suggested that we all sign up for a different Toolkit this week to share the learnings with our team. The Toolkit I signed up for is Creating Digital Badges for Blogger. I have wanted to do this for some time now, and this toolkit was the push I needed to start creating badges for my students.

I recently noticed that I have a student in my home class who has exceeded 200 blog posts this year alone (nearly 100 more than the majority of her peers). As a way to continue to push her further, and get other students to rise to the challenge for the remainder of the school year, I created a 250 Blog Posts badge.

The process was very simple once I got going, and I am happy to share what I have learnt if you are interested! Just comment below and I will happily get in contact with you.

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.