End of Year Reflections

This is what happened for my students:

Initially doing Math’s using the DMiC approach was really hard for my students. They struggled when working in groups, many of them lacked the confidence, whereas others were so confident that they would dominate the task and the sharing back to the group. Students experienced difficulty with comprehension and interpreting word problems. They had limited language and vocabulary skills to share and express their thinking. Children lacked self-management behaviours and skills. the quiet and reluctant children did not engage with learning content. These barriers led to frustration and disengagement.

Presently:

There has huge shift in behaviour and performance: Children have grown in confidence and can manage themselves, they can work in groups or pairs and complete given tasks. Students are taking turns, asking questions, repeating, re-voicing, explaining their thinking, ask for help from their peers when the need to. These behaviours are visible in other learn areas for eg writing and reading. We have a rich dialogic classroom where there is a high level of engagement.

The evidence that I have for this is:

JAM testing data, Explain Everything activities, My reflections, OTJ’s, Class site, Class blog, Individual blogs and My Professional Inquiry

The things I did was:

I had to change my mindset.as doing Maths this way was new learning for me, Therefore I had to trust myself, not to underestimate my learners abilities and potential as this inevitably limits their learning opportunities.

I worked on setting up social norms and culture of the classroom, modelled how to work with a partner.

I had to teach and show the children how to work collaboratively and share their knowledge.

Build children’s confidence and respect for each other, by encouraging and praising them all the time.

Using their strengths to hook them into learning and planning accordingly. Generate challenging problems and providing opportunities that build on student proficiencies, which enables them to connect to the big mathematical ideas and to anticipate their thinking.

 I am always reflecting on my practice, talking to colleagues, working collaboratively and sharing my inquiry at a staff and cluster wide level.  

Things that I will work on:

I will continue to work collaboratively with teachers to create a bank of DMiC Math’s resources.

Continue to build onto my Math’s wall – as this is excellent resource that is used to record, visualize and assist learning.

As Roberta said ”This is going to be really hard, you’re going to struggle with it, but it’s going to be really great when you’re finished.”

And that’s exactly how I feel, GREAT!


The table below shows JAM testing data for Modules 1 and 2 for both June and December. There is a significant shift and improvement in performance.

   
This graph is a visual representation of data in the table above.
Module 1 means - Addition and Subtraction. (blue coloured )
Module 2A means - Multiplication and Division.(red colour)
Module 2B means - Proportion.(Orange colour)
1 means Stage 1 - Counts One to One.
2 means Stage 2 - Apply counting all strategies using materials.
3 means Stage 3 - Apply counting all strategies by imaging.
4 means Stage 4 - Apply counting on, counting back, skip counting and simple grouping strategies.
5 means Stage 5 - Apply basic addition facts and knowledge of place value and symmetry to combine or partition whole numbers.

 Overall I am so proud of my students and their achievements. The students have significant shift  compared to the testing done in June. It's been a long and tough learning journey for the students and their families who continued to help and support their children get to this point in their learning.