First Goal:

Professional standard my first goal relates to

Design learning based on curriculum and pedagogical knowledge, assessment information and an understanding of each learner’s strengths, interests, needs, identities, languages and cultures.

Goals

Engage children is rich maths tasks by setting maths tasks that are relatable to the ākonga. I will do this by getting to know the ākonga:

A. Ask the students about their cultural background and practices.

B. Plan rich maths tasks using the cultures that the children relate to (or are interested in) as the subject matter for rich tasks.

C. Asking students their interests (favourite past-time) and tally these (whole class exercise).

D. Plan rich maths tasks using the children’s interests as the subject matter.

Evidence of Goals

A. Originally my goal was to ask students about their interests, however the week that I was teaching was international language week so I responded by altering my goals to make the work both relevant to the ākonga and relevant to the theme of the week of learning.

My first lesson:

Question: How many languages are spoken/ used at your home? Answers to be collated in a tally chart.

I had the class arrange themselves into groups of 5. MUST be groups of 5. (If there are any children “leftover” then have them in one group on the end).

How many children in the class? One person from each group puts their hand up - As a class skip count by 5 (each group hands down as they are counted).

I then had children stand up if they spoke more than one language at home (so we could get our language categories). We ended up with 5 languages being the most. I asked the students to line up with the number of languages they spoke at home and I had 2 learners fill in each part of the tally chart (for example 1 student counted to number of students in the line while the other made a mark on the chart for each student counted).

The whole class was engaged in this as they had to move to be in the correct space (in groups of five, then responding to how many languages they spoke at home and then getting into a line so we could easily count the students). All of the students could relate to the questions as they all speak at least one language at home.

B. Plan rich maths tasks using the cultures that the children relate to (or are interested in) as the subject matter for rich tasks.

My next lesson following the tally chart activity:

I had read a rich maths task involving aliens that I thought could be adjusted to be relevant to languages of the ākonga, to keep the learning relevant to the students and within the theme of the week.

The task for the children was to "make a new language". We had 9 languages (chosen from the languages the students spoke at home). In groups of 4 the students needed to multiply 3 numbers together, if they had a number that wasn't already used (i.e. was greater than 9) then they had successfully created a new language. The group then came up with a greeting from their new language by combining letters from the 3 languages they had originally used.

I modelled this to the class:

Reflection:

I was impressed with how well the students worked together (we have been building the team work skills of the class over my earlier weeks in practicum). I enjoyed seeing the groups work on their maths together, but they also enthusiastically made up new greetings and we keen to report back to the whole class when we had finished working in groups. I would definitely repeat this with another group of learners as it was something they could relate to initially (languages spoken at home), the maths was something they could effectively do as a group in a variety of ways, allowing for all learners, and they had fun creating their new language greeting (which helped to give purpose to the maths activity).

C. Asking students their interests (favourite past-time) and tally these (whole class exercise).

We did this as a whole class exercise. The ākonga called out their favourite after school activities. The students then voted on their favourite out of school activity (by having their heads down and putting their hands up for the one that was the most important to them).

Over the next two lessons the ākonga worked in groups to make a bar graph to represent the information from the tally chart and answers to questions relating to the information we had gathered.

Reflection:

My favourite part of this was seeing children that are less inclined to engage in maths being more focussed. Having an activity that allows time for the information to be absorbed (making a bar graph) as well as information that is meaningful to the students seemed to make a positive difference in student engagement. One child in particular who is not inclined to be engaged in his learning at school was diligent with his graph and able to then work with his other group members to answer to questions that related to the data.

Child's work that I refer to above:

Second goal:

Professional standard my second goal relates to:

Use inquiry, collaborative problem-solving and professional learning to improve professional capability to impact on the learning and achievement of all learners.

Goal

Teach and respond to maths learners in a knowledgeable and adaptive way to progress their maths learning at an appropriate depth and pace.

A. In the third week I will be looking to assess engagement levels of ākonga in whole class maths and, if appropriate, in maths groups. I will be looking for support in noticing how many ākonga I am engaging in their maths lessons and to what level of engagement this occurs. i.e. how many students are highly engaged in their maths learning, how many students have a very low level of engagement, and how many are reasonably engaged.

B. In the fourth week I will be continuing to develop my ability with Talk moves to encourage engagement and participation in all maths learning. I will seek reflection from my AT on how to improve my talk moves and lesson delivery.

C. In the third and fourth weeks I will also self reflect on the subject matter I am using and my delivery for maths and how well the ākonga relate to the subject.

D. On my fifth week I will ask for my AT to observe the ākonga in their engagement levels during maths lessons and I will self reflect on any changes that I can make.

E. On my sixth week I will ask for my AT to observe the ākonga in their engagement levels during maths lessons and I will self reflect on any changes that I can make. - Connect phase in maths, gaining attention from akonga when they are quiet but not focussed on me (clap rhythms). Clap to Rima.

Evidence of Goals

A. In the third week I will be looking to assess engagement levels of ākonga in whole class maths and, if appropriate, in maths groups. I will be looking for support in noticing how many ākonga I am engaging in their maths lessons and to what level of engagement this occurs. i.e. how many students are highly engaged in their maths learning, how many students have a very low level of engagement, and how many are reasonably engaged.

In the third week of my practicum I ran a subitizing whole class maths lesson. I set the maths at a level that was achievable for all the students as the class has a large variance in abilities and I wanted all students to be able to access the work. I set work that had a variety of ways of finding solutions with the specific goal in mind of having students see that there were many ways of solving maths problems, all of which were valid. I took time to explain that it was ok to get a different answer from others, and that it was ok to get the same answer in a different way. I took the time to explain what I expected of them (no talking between answers, let others have time to write down their answers etc). I also actively engaged the ākonga in this activity calling on students to share their answers and how to came to their answers.

I received positive feedback from my AT about my classroom management and the positive encouragement that I used with the students.

I also received feedback from my AT that I had noticed that I had set the students a word problem that I hadn't launched properly. This resulted in students coming up to me to clarify the problem and once I realised that the class were not sure of what to do I gathered the class back together and we problem solved as a whole class. I am glad that the students gave me the feedback that they weren't understanding what was required of them so I could remedy to situation in time and still have the maths lesson maths lessons be a positive experience for the students. I believe this helped me in the future with engagement levels.

I did have a couple of the ākonga come up to me during one of the maths problem solving activities asking what they should do now, and I reminded them that they weren't finished until all of the group had the answers and could explain their strategies. It was heartening to see the highest maths ability students had already adopted this was of working from the instructions that I had given.

Feedback from AT

This week I had a visit from Louise Fitzgerald who gave me positive feedback about the engagement of the children and also suggestions that I ask the students to feed back what the norms are.

B. In the fourth week I will be continuing to develop my ability with Talk moves to encourage engagement and participation in all maths learning. I will seek reflection from my AT on how to improve my talk moves and lesson delivery.

There is definite improvement with the student engagement levels, I am sure this is from being clear about my expectations last week. I did receive feedback from a couple of students who were struggling to have all of the group understand the work. One group in particular had two low maths ability students. One of the students was trying to understand and his fellow group members were happy to work with him and were taking the time and patiently helping him to understand the maths problem. Another of the group was definitely not engaging despite to best efforts of the students to help them. This raised an issue that I hadn't anticipated. This student is often obstructive in class and is difficult to engage with even an extremely competent and dedicated teacher, so it was a huge challenge for someone who was only working out the maths for the first time themselves. Group work does require the goodwill of all its members.

My AT was keen to resolve a few issues we had of working in a group (the abilities of each member as well as their ability to work together rather than using the time to mess about with friends and the time it takes to find a group). My AT resolved this by allocating each student a learning buddy, making sure that the buddies were able work well together rather than distract each other. The groups were then consistent each time there was group work in the class. This was written up and on posters on the wall.

C. In the third and fourth weeks I will also self reflect on the subject matter I am using and my delivery for maths and how well the ākonga relate to the subject.

I have found that subitizing is well liked by the class, with students wanting to explain their answers and contribute to the class.

I responded to feedback from my AT by adding in more student voice in week 4. I did this by having one student go up to the screen to explain how they got their answer and another student write the other students strategy on the whiteboard. This was a positive strategy for engagement as in order to write the maths strategy on the whiteboard the strategy has to be clearly explained. This has the effect of clearly explaining to the whole class.

I noticed in week 3 when I asked if anyone had a different strategy a child would share what they had done whether it was different or not. However by week 4 the children only shared new strategies. They were definitely listening to what each other were saying and comparing what the other students were sharing to the approach they used. This showed me that engagement is not just voicing an opinion or strategy but listening and critically thinking about how their idea or strategy is similar or different to what others have already done.

D. On my fifth week I will ask for my AT to observe the ākonga in their engagement levels during maths lessons and I will self reflect on any changes that I can make.

I received feedback from my AT during one of the maths lessons to stop the students in their work and look at everyone’s work so far in order to get ideas of how to present their bar graph. This was a great idea and children seemed spurred on by the short break and inspired by other students ways of completing their graphs.

I also received feedback over the week from my AT. This process was incredible helpful as it gave me a chance to put into practice the feedback the next day.

Overall this week I was pleased that I remembers to use the remote mics more consistently. I was also pleased that I noticed one of the children with hearing difficulties consistently leaving his remote mic at home. I brought this up with the AT who then addressed this with the child. I know this student doesn't like using his remote mic or being different from his friends, but he also doesn't like not being able to work at the same level as his friends, and the only way for this to change is for him to be more involved with his learning and hearing what is going on is a big step towards this.

It was great to get feedback that the students were keen to get into groups and discuss/ compare the answers they had given for their out of school interests. My hope was that making the information relatable would encourage student involvement and it seems like this was definitely what happened.

Being reminded to use think, pair, share as well as turning and talking with a buddy was very helpful. Its a great way to get students involved in their learning and it's easy to get caught up in the lesson rather than the delivery. Having this reminder was helpful, and I could clearly see better engagement with the ākonga when I remembered to use this approach.

Link to AT Feedback

E. On my sixth week I will ask for my AT to observe the ākonga in their engagement levels during maths lessons and I will self reflect on any changes that I can make.

Following from feedback from Louise Fitzgerald's visit through week 5 and 6 I made sure the students were writing maths strategies on the board in different colours. This then helped us to clearly see the different strategies and be able to identify the connections between the strategies. This is a work in progress for me, as I was mainly still leading the explanation on the connections rather than having the ākonga clearly identify them.

The other main focus for me was getting the classes attention when they weren't being very loud but still weren't focussed on me. As well as using "eyes on me" I learnt (from my AT) a clap/ counting chant that the children join in with. This is a pleasantly engaging activity and then allows us to flow from this to our work as I already have all the students attention and focus.

Overall reflection of my second goal:

As I look back over my notes I can see just how far we have come in the last few weeks of my practicum. I started by having to tell the ākonga to not talk between slides or when they had the answer. I also needed strategies to have them let me know they had finished (close your books when you have the answer).

As the students became more familiar with the tasks and my expectations of them the lesson focussed more on the maths and the strategies than on the class management.

I also noticed a shift in group work from students finishing and then coming up to me, to knowing that EVERYONE in the group needed to understand the strategies because ANYONE could be called on from the group to explain to the class.

I still reminded the ākonga of the social norms before I sent them off the groups, however rather than being explicit this was done by asking them "Who in your group needs to understand the work? " to which they responded "everyone" and "Who might be called on to explain the strategies your group used?" to which they responded "anyone".

Not only did the students know what was expected of them, they also did work in their groups effectively, with no-one asking me what to do when they had finished (when their group buddies hadn't).

I am proud of how well the students adapted to this way of working, and I am certain that it was because of how well this aligns with the values of inclusiveness and kindness that the teachers have instilled in, and expect from, the students in all of their school activities.