Knowledge enables Success

Having settled into my new classroom and gained an understanding of my children I have noticed that there are two large areas of need that require focus.  These are their maths knowledge and their writing - a large number of students are working below and well below the standard.  I have been thinking carefully about how I can address both of these and which one of these is most pressing to address.  

I have completed a mini inquiry around developing maths knowledge during the time when we are doing statistics.  In order to develop my own professional knowledge around this I have read the following research amongst others: 

Using music to increase maths retention

Maths Teaching Knowledge

Making it count - strategies for improving mathematics

As a result of this mini inquiry my knowledge sessions are now varied for the students and include a range of interactive websites that offer explanations, teaching hot spots around certain knowledge areas, interactive games for students, games that students are able to share in with a partner, the development of sheets that allow students to see where their knowledge gaps are and to choose how these can be filled using a variety of different texts and materials and the opportunity for students to use songs and music to help them retain their knowledge.  This seems to have worked so far and is proving successful.  Within the last week of term I will retest these students using summative assessments and be able to use evidence to confirm my observations and formative assessments.

The inquiry that I have decided needs to be largest focus is around writing and develop within these students knowledge around where they are at and knowledge around what tools that they can use to help them progress and achieve their ultimate end goal of working at/above the standard by the end of the year so that they are ready for high school.  Within my class I have students working from between a 2a level and a 4b level with the majority of them sitting around a 3b level.  I have decided to focus this inquiry on these students that are classed as sitting well below as they need to make hugely accelerated progress in order to be where they need to be by the end of the year.

Key findings that I have noticed so far from the students who are working well below:

 - Students are not planning their work

 - Students are not confident editing their work

 - Students are not comfortable knowing when to use basic or complex punctuation

 - Students are still developing the ability to recognise grammatical errors

 - Students do not know what they do not know, and therefore are unsure how to improve.

The one that stands out to me the most is that these children do not know what they do not know - they are not aware of how they can improve and they are not aware of what their errors are.  In order to help students with this, they have been provided with requirements that have them working towards the national standard at each sub-level of the curriculum. They have now identified within their sub-levels the goals that they wish to work on and we have co-constructed success criteria for these goals.  The other findings will be discussed and explicitly taught over the next term across a range of contexts so that they can be understood and applied within a range of contexts - however through having developed goals, students are already far more motivated and are already noticing areas in which they can improve and are wanting to learn.

The challenges around student centered learning - and overcoming them

Inquiry, curriculum integration, thematic units - these words were tossed around interchangeably when I first took up my new role at this school nearly nine weeks ago - however throughout this term we have begun to make changes around what our school curriculum looks like and how it is played out in action.  This was due in part, to the leaving of both the previous principal and deputy principal within a short time period.  As a result of this, lots of questioning is happening regarding the terminology that is used and what it actually represents.  Through discussions and readings around inquiry and curriculum integration we have decided that as a school what we are currently doing is a thematic approach to learning, rather than true curriculum integration - and that true inquiry where it is led by the students is something quite rare within our classrooms and something that has not traditionally happened.  This has aligned with the minimal focus that has been placed around student voice and student led learning that is future orientated due to other huge factors that have influenced the staff at the school.  The students that I am working with came to me with quite a fixed mindset about what they could and could not achieve and it has taken eight weeks for them to begin to be at a stage where they are able to talk about their individual goals and their progressions towards these.

As year 7 and year 8 students, I think it is highly important that these students are introduced to, and confident working within, an inquiry style of learning both within the "core"/national standards subjects and all other subjects that make up the New Zealand Curriculum.

In order for me to provide my students with this opportunity I have done research over a wide variety of areas - regarding what inquiry is, best practice for student centered learning in areas such as maths, reading and writing and the benefits and challenges of true student centered learning.  A lot of this has overlapped with reading that I did last year around the POGIL styled programme that I was teaching and so this has been most helpful to make comparisons with.

I know that as these students do not have a student centered learning background it is important for me to give them appropriate tools so that they are able to understand and talk about their learning in order to be able to have more guidance over the direction of it.  An interesting reading that I stumbled across today The Benefits and Challenges of Student-Designed Learning talks about true inquiry learning (within a high school context) and letting students have complete control about the direction that they take with their learning and how they present their learning.  It emphasises that from a student point of view, whilst it was exciting to have control over their learning at first it became difficult when they did not have any guidelines.  It also discusses the importance of students having goals when directing their own learning and how this was helpful to them.

This has helped me to have confidence that I am on the right track with these students and developing them to be students who can work within an inquiry style of learning.  At the moment there is both clear guidelines about what skills and knowledge they need to be developing, they are presented with a range of ways to do this which is helping to allow them freedom over the style of learning that works best for them and they are consistently setting and achieving mini goals whilst working towards their bigger goal which is allowing them to achieve success along the way.