Coming to you from Spark HQ! Extremely grateful to be here. I am excited about the learning journey that I am taking and thankful to Spark and Manaiakalani for this opportunity.
Looking at my inquiry, first I must understand my challenge and what factors may contribute to "the problem" that I have identified. I am at the first stop and need to decide where to go...
The identified problem is achievement in Numeracy. 43 students in our hub are underachieving in this area with another 23 students needing to make steady progress to meet National Standards again by the end of the year.
Some factors that may contribute to the low achievement... or my hypothesis for low achievement are:
~ Students have low understanding of Number knowledge and basic facts
~ There are too many strategies for students to learn (they are confused)
~ Consistency - Across the school our teaching of numeracy is too diverse
~ We are not using the affordances of technology for math - scaffolding, visibility, engagement
~ There is no authentic audience for numeracy - teaching someone else, describing what you did
~ Purpose for math in the way that we teach is not clear ~ Teacher enthusiasm for numeracy- transferring to the students
~ Teacher understanding of strategies and therefore teaching
~ Time spent on each area of numeracy - not rounded or too broad?
~ Not utilising learn, create, share in numeracy
~ Student access to learning at home - managing self to learn - want to excel
Originally I was looking into ways to encourage and up skill parents in numeracy to help create an authentic audience and support for learners. But after thinking deeper, I think providing an authentic audience where students are empowered to teach others through their learning is the direction that I would like to take my journey.
In order to do this, some time will need to be dedicated to swapping and share understanding, so that learners can learn off their peers. I will also encourage students to make and share screencastify or DLO to support and teach others the strategy that they are learning. I will then create a site with links to student work to help support the students learn new strategies.
My inquiry is now looking in to "creating purpose for numeracy and providing an authentic audience." My aim is to do this through student collaboration and sharing, as well as, looking in to multi levelled numeracy groups.
My aim is that students will learn their stratgey, create a way to teach this to others or show their understanding and share this on their blog. I will select fantastic presentations and share these on a class site or blog for numeracy. Students will also have a learning buddy who is not working on the same stage to share and discuss the strategy with.
I believe that by providing students with a genuine purpose for learning new strategy and an authentic audience that student achievement will increase.
Lots to do, lots to think about.
Let's get learning, creating and sharing!
That's all for now!
