Teaching as Inquiry - Focus for 2017

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In 2017 Pt England school’s inquiry focus is Mathematics.  This is in response to the analysis of our own teacher gathered data as well as official data from the Woolf Fisher Research Centre.

My inquiry is going to consist of two different paths. The first of these is helping, supporting and mentoring others to lead their own inquiries as the head of ‘Teaching as Inquiry’ for 2017. This is a huge challenge to undertake, which I am really looking forward to.

The second path is the leading of my own inquiry. Maths for me is something that I really enjoy teaching, so I’m excited about having the opportunity to inquiry into the following idea: How do you effectively broaden the understanding of an extension student while still giving them enough challenge and speed in delivery to keep them engaged?

Whenever I have had to opportunity to teach extension maths children I have always found it hard to keep them excited and engaged. They are mostly looking for the next big challenge…”Teach me something I don’t know yet...Come on hurry up!” When I have done what they have asked, in the name of keeping them engaged, or because of time pressures, I have found that we have moved too fast. Yes they are able to complete most tasks using multiple strategies which are well advanced for their age and stage but they don’t truly have the full understanding or mathematical knowledge of someone at late stage 7, early 8 should have. So this is my challenge!

Keep checking back here as I hope to share some new findings, tips and loads of evidence of better gains in knowledge acquisition and understanding! :)

Term 3 Reflection: Using Text Sets

Term 3 has been all about the creation and use of text sets. Text sets... what are those I hear you ask? This is a group of readings - some compulsory, some not - that's sole purpose is to build student's knowledge around a topic or focus.

For example, see this text set that I setup for one of my reading groups.

I have found that this is incredibly worth while. I have never had as much fun teaching reading as I have this term. I have also seen a remarkable shift in my students understanding and focus of a topic - they have genuinely been excited about it! But more importantly it is making a difference to their two biggest needs: applying knowledge and inferring.

My Inquiry Focus for 2016

In 2016 Pt England's school-wide teacher inquiry focus is: Formative practice in reading and writing to improve students achievement.

This got me thinking. How does formative practice impact my teaching? Am I even using it well? Can I change how I assess my kids in an ongoing way that is impactful to my teaching and consequently my students progress/ development?

I realised by the end of last year I was starting to feel pretty stressed before my kids sat their end of year assessments. All I could think of was, "HAVE THEY IMPROVED??" This was a scary thought because of all the hard work I had put in to gain accelerated progress from my class. But that was only the start of it. What if I found out that a student hadn't understood a key concept or hadn't in-fact progressed? It was now too late to do anything about it. My window of change had gone! What about those kids who I hadn't moved on quick enough? Had it been too easy for them, meaning that an opportunity to extend them had been missed?

My 2016 enquiry focus had been birthed.

This year I am wanting to enquire into what exactly is creating accelerated progress in my kids. I want to find out what I am doing that is making a difference, and do that more often and throw away the ineffective, time wasting teaching/tasks/activities. I need to keep up to date with testing so that my teaching is always at the cutting edge, not relying on a gut feel.

I want to be more intentional in my tracking of progress throughout the year in the hope to fix a big problem. The problem I most want to solve is with my extension kids. I have realised that they are unable to think critically about a text. I have realised (through data analysis and extra testing) that they find it hard to evaluate a text. They also find it really hard to transfer knowledge from one context to another. This is what I want to fix!

My enquiry Focus for 2016:

Use formative assessment to track progress closely and determine what the next teaching and learning steps are in reading.