Spark-MIT Term 3 Meeting

It's great being back, these people are inspiring. The conversations are thought provoking and being here is always a pleasure! 

First of all we were asked to think about the Holy Grail - If everything in our inquiry went exactly to plan what would it look like? For my inquiry it would be all students achieving National Standard in Numeracy. Students sharing learning on their blogs and being able to comment and discuss what they have posted. 

Thinking about your inquiry and thinking flexibly - Is there an element that you could change or apply the SCAMPER model to?

My thinking was that maybe I could integrate Cyber Smart with Numeracy - get data from a range of ages - let the teachers take on the learn part while I support the create and share side of things? It is so important to teach interacting in a positive way online. This will help support both my inquiry and the Cyber Smart curriculum.

We then moved on to...

The Presentation…. 

6 minutes - Key note 

20 seconds per slide 20slides 

Re-craft to make it fit 

We talked about keynote and how to use it for this purpose! Dorothy then shared with us her own keynote. It was really helpful to see her modelling this for us. Sometimes seeing something happening is the best way to understand it! 

We discussed: 

What are you going to say in 6 minutes? Tell a story through one learner or one teacher?

Impact - what is it that you want to say? 

Tell through Data? Learner? Human Being. 

e.g. Karen Belt - this is James… this was his writing at the beginning of the year… etc. Fantastic model of what we should be looking at - we all decided that this would be at excellence level haha something to aim for!!! 

I am working through what I want to say and how I want to say it! Watch this space! ULearn is fast approaching! 

Fantastic Numeracy PD

Yesterday I had the absolute pleasure of sitting in on some of a Numeracy PD session run by Jo Knox. This was really exciting for two main reasons: 
#1. I love Numeracy 
#2 It fits my Spark-MIT inquiry! 
I arrived when the small groups were discussing measurement in non-standard units. They had a photocopy of a hand and were discussing how to measure it. 

The question was then asked - if this is the giant's hand, how tall is the giant? (What an awesome idea - I thought to myself!) This was such a rich and engaging task - we discussed a wide range of math: measurement, averaging, statistics, ratios, number, units. 
Then Jo read a section from the BFG - what a way to tie in literacy and math! It was about determining what they would need for the Queen's Dinner for the giant. "If the average human is 6ft and the giant is 24ft then the difference would be x4. Therefore if the average chair was 2ft it would have to be 8ft for the giant!" (#awesome #maththisfun #loveit) 
I later found that this was a unit from nzmath called Giant Mystery. 

We were then asked to look at page 13-14 of Effective Pedagogy in Mathematics and discuss whether we felt that this was a worthwhile task or what a worthwhile task would look like. Of course, the general consensus was that the task was open, engaging, involved thinking skills, included challenge and encouraged us to think mathematically. Therefore, the task was worthwhile! 

The thing I liked the most about the session was how enthusiastic and engaged all the staff were. The tasks Jo used engaged everyone, across all levels and made proportions and rations fun! 
Thank you so much for letting me be a part of your PD Point England and thank you Jo for inspiring teachers to make math enjoyable for all! 

Reflecting on where to next for me and my inquiry - I think I need to add a tab for rich and open math tasks on my sharebase - give one, get one.... Yes! 

A Problem Shared is a Problem Halved!

Over the past few months I have been looking and thinking about different ways to create a shared resource for Numeracy. I am sure that teachers all over NZ are creating very awesome online google resources for Numeracy! So let's make our jobs easier and SHARE!!! 

I started with a Stage 4 blog - being a visual learner myself it helps me to be able to see the resource... but this is harder to get others buy in and adding to! The whole purpose is to get a resource that can help spread the work load... 

I found some interesting links by looking at Rowena Clemence's 2016 Inquiry. Her inquiry was looking into sheets for students to have exemplar's of what is expected at each level. This is kind of similar, apart from it would be having a range of resources on the same subject. 

It really made sense after looking at Angela Moala's 2017 Inquiry and speaking with her, Mark Maddren and Dorothy Burt over emails that a sheet would be the best way to go. So I changed it up and made a copy of the already created Multi-text data base for explain everythings, and multimodal readings! Thank you in advance for helping with the set up of this document Angela! You can see these in the Share Databases Drawing (Give 1 Get 1) on this Leaders of Learning Website! 

I have embed it below! Let me know what you think! 

Positive Progress in Numeracy!!!

Seems like a long time since I last posted, boy a lot of things have happened! 

As most educators know the middle of the year is reporting time. A good chance to reflect on where the students are and how much progress they have made in the first two terms. 

First of all I would like to share the things that I believe made the difference for these learners: 
- Create and Share (students were encouraged to create and share their learning in numeracy on to their blogs). This led to higher engagement and therefore positive results. 
- Tracking - using sheets to track student progress meant that it was easy to see when a student needed extra support or when they could move on. This is also what I used to determine what stage they were working at. 

At the beginning of Term Three I took on the role of Uru Mānuka Programme Leader. This means that I am no longer in with these students teaching them Numeracy... I am hoping that the positive progress that they have made in the beginning of the year continues! These students are making nearly a year worth of progress in a couple of terms... Some students moving from Early Stage 4 to the middle to end of Stage 5 which is really exciting! 

The hypothesis that: "Students who use learn, create, share in Numeracy will see their work as purposeful, therefore will be more engaged and achievement will increase, is proving quite accurate! 
This of course links to Karen Belt's 2016 Inquiry into "Using an authentic audience to enhance the motivation and writing mileage for learners in my classroom." I was trying to make connections across subjects and I think I have found some great beginnings of this. 

2017 Numeracy Review

As part of my role within the school, it was my job to complete a Numeracy Review. The key area that I chose to look at was Number Knowledge and Basic Facts. 
My key evaluative question-

Is a lack of number knowledge and basic facts a contributing factor to students not achieving in Numeracy?  What strategies may support accelerating the progress within this area?

I think that this was a good chance to tie in with my Spark-MIT Inquiry. The identified problem is much the same:

Students across the school are not achieving well in Numeracy. Students in the Senior School are struggling to meet National Standard.

Students in the Senior Hub are lacking in their basic facts knowledge and are therefore struggling to continue learning past stage 4 (Stage 4 is the National Standard for after 3 years at school).  

The ikan assessment which is taken in Year 4-6 every term, shows that students struggle with quick recall of knowledge.

The Data

57% of students are sitting Below or Well Below National Standard.

Some questions that I was asking myself from this data are:

• Knowing what we know about authentic purpose and audience and motivation of students to achieve in Literacy, is there any way we can transfer this to Numeracy? (Kelsey’s Spark-MIT is looking into this further)
• Are students being given scaffolding in and out tasks in Numeracy?
• Are we measuring OTJ’s for Numeracy the same across the school?
• How are we teaching basic facts across the school?
• How are we tracking student progress across the school?

I felt that it was also important to get more information from the students and therefore completed a student survey.

Feedback from students survey (Rata + Tawa classes)

Students mostly feel okay or happy to do math.

Students mostly feel that they are quick with basic facts

71% of students that have used xtra math say that xtra math is a good way to learn basic facts

Majority of students would rather do basic facts online than with pencil and paper.

I also put out a similar survey to the parents and wider community...

Feedback from parent survey (14 parents)

Most parent feel happy with their knowledge of numeracy to support their child.

50% would like a parent evening and 50% would not.

90% of parents say their child uses mathletics or other online math programs at home.

All parents say that they have an extra 10mins for basic facts practise each night.

Parents would like fun ways to do times tables and basic facts, like there is for reading. Three of the parents would also like some math homework for their child.

It is great to see that the attitude towards math is mainly positive. I do believe that Numeracy Knowledge is a huge barrier to achievement. To move on from here it is a matter of finding some key ways to engage learners to continue learning basic facts at home. I have been reading a lot of Matt Goodwin's posts about his own Basic Facts Inquiry. It is reassuring to see that others are encountering similar problems when it comes to basic facts.

Stage 4 Numeracy Blog

I have been trying to think of a way to share the resources I have created in an easy to find system that can be used by a range of people. The first thing I did was try a website - but I struggled to make it work effectively and look nice! So... 

I have started working on a blog to share my resources for stage four. I thought a blog would be easier to navigate with the labels and the search function. 

I haven't made resources for all of the knowledge or strategy yet - but this is the intention. I am trying to think about Learn Create and Share with each resource - I have done this better on some than on others. 

The students are enjoying working through the activities and are engaged in making screencastifys! I am really enjoying the positive progress they are making through having a purpose and an audience for their work! 

Here is what I have so far! 

http://gpsstage4.blogspot.co.nz/

Enjoy! Feel free to share/copy 

- Kelsey 

Spark MIT - May

Sitting here at Spark headquarters reflecting on my day and feeling really lucky to be here with such an amazing group of educators. 

The day started with us sharing what's on top for us and our inquiries. Listening to where everyone has got to and sharing the struggles together is such an important way to start the day. We were also fortunate enough to have Anne Sinclair with us for the day supporting our ideas and challenging our thinking. 

We discussed the importance of recognising those before us and talked about 
acknowledging the work they have done in our blog posts and research. This is the best way to make ourselves credible and our inquiries worth reading. We also talked about how no idea is fully original, it stems from something or somewhere that we have seen or experienced. 

We then had a great session talking with the Spark Buddies that could make it today. Mine is from Christchurch and I am looking forward to meeting with her in the next few weeks. It was great to see such a range of people wanting to give back to their communities and interested in the affordances of technology for learning. 

Dorothy then shared with us two life changing extensions for google chrome. Google Save - which is like pinterest for bookmarking and Google Keep - which is an amazing note taking tool! I will most definitely be sharing these with my colleagues! 



We were then challenged to think about how our inquiry was innovative as it is the Spark - Manaiakalani INNOVATIVE teacher. I was really challenged by this at first and began thinking in too many steps and creating much more work for myself. 
I then realised that the innovation of my inquiry is the online practise and tasks that I am providing for my students to learn from. As long as I am making tasks that are providing creation and challenge I am changing the way that numeracy has been previously taught. And if I can collate these in a form that other teachers can add to and use then I will be saving a lot of work for others. 
I must acknowledge that the thinking of these tasks and providing students with online work that is multimodal stems from the work Manaiakalani has done previously in Literacy with multi-modal texts. I am also taking into account the extensive work that has been done by Naomi Rosedale in digital learning objects vs. digital learning artefacts. As well as Spector and colleagues notion of DLO as “the integration of multimodal digital content items with a learning objective”.

As always it has been so incredible to be on this journey. I have a lot of work to do in creating and innovating numeracy tasks so that they can be shared with the wider community of teaching and learning!

Watch this space!