2015 Inquiry

Mathematics PD with Bruce Moody

Mathematics PD

Report on Assessment Document Day at Otonga Aug 27^{th 2015}

Issues

1.       There is a need to rationalise the various documents being used throughout the school for assessment. Different levels are holding different documents as being primary. This gives a lack of cohesiveness and the potential for misunderstandings about student achievement as children progress through the school.

2.    Some of these documents were written prior to the National Standards. They have the Numeracy Project focus on Number, and even focus within that on Addition/Subtraction regardless of what is in the relevant Standard. Parts of NZC are simply not being taught, particularly to Level 3 students. As such, these documents need to be re-aligned to current assessment requirements. Some documents have mixtures of teaching practices and important learning outcomes. It is unclear who the intended audience is and what the primary purpose is.

3.    Documents shared with parents/caregivers have too much detail, lack a standard form across the school, and are only indirectly linked to the Standards.

4.    Evidence gathering of student work seems to be rather ad hoc, both in terms of what is collected and how it is collected.

5.    There is an issue regarding reporting to parents mid-way between Standards. An unwillingness to report students as ‘not reaching the standard’ at mid-year may lead to reporting that students are At Standard when some important aspects have not even been taught yet. On the other hand, some students may be perfectly on track, but unnecessary angst created if they are reported as not meeting the Standard, when the issue is one of not having covered all of the work yet.

Suggestions

1.     A seamless set of documents is produced. These documents will share the same philosophy, wording, and physical appearance. They will be based upon the National Standards (as a subset of the National Curriculum).These documents will be written for the purpose of identifying student progress. They will not replace other documents such as the Progressions provided by Bruce Moody or the other material available online regarding planning for learning.Keeping these separate will help clarify what it is that teachers get students to do – a wide of activities – with the learning outcomes that will result from this work. This process allows for a concise page with a small number of points to be written for each year level. This page can then be used by many parties to focus upon key learning progress, rather than these being lost amongst the detail of how that learning is likely to occur.

2.    In order to clearly identify student progress, differences between adjoining Standards can be identified. These items form the basis of each page. For example, while addition is taught to Year 4’s, the key differences in the Standard are that subtraction and multiplication are now required. So, teaching documents will describe the addition that Year 4’s will do, but the assessment page will highlight the need to gather evidence of subtraction and multiplication. While Number is the critical element of each Standard, it is not the only one. This is increasingly recognised in the Standards as students move into Levels 2 & 3. While every objective does not have to be met in order for a best-fit OTJ to be made, having other items listed will help teachers recognise that the entire curriculum needs teaching, and that pushing students on in Add/sub, without addressing Algebra and other strands, does not enhance the evidence needed to support the OTJ.

3.    Limiting the amount of material presented to parents allows for a concise description of a year’s work to be shared.  By not linking these differences to specific language subsets (e.g. naming of strategies), we produce statements in common language to share. (Initial drafts of these were started on Thursday).

4.     Many students are operating blogs that include their work in Maths; it seems that this could be a very useful facility to gather evidence. The work itself does not have to be labelled with descriptors. The teacher could direct students to place key items of their work onto their blogs and know that this can be accessed and discussed as needed to support an OTJ. With junior students, the use of annotated photographs was discussed, especially where students have recorded clearly visible work (e.g. writing on a ‘jelly-bean table’) or are engaged in a recognisable process (e.g. measuring a table with ice-block sticks). Short transcripts may be required for younger students. The key is that these will be on a few, selected events and so not a repetitive burden for teachers.

5.    My understanding is that the Standard applies at the end of the specified period; e.g. the End of Year 4 Standard. Thus, the mid-year report indicates progress in respect to the Standard currently applicable. This eliminates the current problems of either saying students have done work they haven’t or suggesting that they are under-performing when they are not.

6.    Bruce willing to help edit work produced to help meet these suggestions.

Bruce Moody

Camp Whakamaru 2015

Camp was great fun again. What an excellent venue Camp Whakamaru is - and what a great way to get our families and children enjoying, learning and working together in the outdoors. HUGE organisation but well worth it!!

Camp Whakamaru

The camp objectives are as follows:

To build confidence in decision making and individual initiative away from home and parents – developing self-management skills.

To provide outdoor physical experiences which cannot be provided at school eg raft building, kayaking, rope climbing, archery etc.

To develop health and safety strategies for outdoors.

To develop team building group work and skills in cooperating with a variety of people.

To develop problem solving strategies.