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.

DMiC Maths-Term 3 End of term reflections

I have a new group of priority learners that I have been working with this term. I have noticed that they are getting better at sharing their ideas when working with their partners. Classroom norms and culture is well established. They ask questions when they don't understand and ask for help. They know that we are here to learn and it's not about getting it right or wrong but having a go and giving it a try.

A few of them can count up to 50 but have many gaps in their number knowledge. They can count on but struggle with counting back and saying the number that comes before. Within the DMiC lessons they can with their partner's support solve simple word problems but when the numbers increase or the word problem changes from addition to subtraction they find it challenging and get restless. 

Next steps for these children: 

Do a quick assessment of what they know in terms of their number knowledge.

Create activities- could be iPad or hands-on follow-up tasks activities where they can practice number knowledge when not with the teacher at a DMiC group lesson.

Lots of practice maybe with a buddy counting on and counting back. Give them a mixture of problems (addition and subtraction) for numbers up to 20 and then increase the numbers slowly.

DMiC lessons

Over the last two weeks I decided to video my children working in their groups just to see the progress they have made since my first DMiC lesson.
I think what I am doing is working but will take a long time before we get everyone on board.

DMiC Lesson with Don

This week I had my second session with Don supporting me.I had about 6 children in my group.
The problem launched: I have 8 stickers on my sticker chart. My teacher gives me 5 more. How many stickers do I have altogether?
Firstly I read the problem to the group and then we read it together. We then discussed what the story is asking us to do? At this point one of the children gave the answer and said 13. Don suggested I make the problem challenging so instead of 8 stickers I changed it to 28 stickers.

The children went with their partners to discuss what strategy they would use to solve the problem. Don and I walked around listening to their conversations and they explained to us what strategy they were going to use to solve the problem. A few children could confidently explain that they were going to put the biggest number in their head and count on. The others sort of understood but had difficulty verbalising their thinking or were not very confident to talk. I handed each group a paper and 1 pencil. All three groups solved the problem by counting on from the biggest number. I was not surprised as we have been working on ways to solve a problem(one to one counting using materials, drawing, counting on or counting back). I was really happy that finally got it, but then Don asked some children who seemed quite confident to solve it another way. He prompted for them to use a number line and with Don supporting them they gave it a go.

We came together as a group to share and the pair talked about how they solved the problem using a number line. We did not have much time to do the connect part of the lesson.

The valuable feedback that I got given was to work on:

Responding prompts that I can use.
Revoicing what others have said
Encourage children to ask questions.
Whether they agree or disagree.

Here are some prompts that Don has shared for me to use in my teaching.

Term 2 DMiC Week 1

We are back from the holidays and I feel that the children settled and are ready to learn. They can follow
classroom routines and most of them can work independently and support the others long enough
for me to do a DMiC lesson. I can split my class into 2 groups and successfully complete a DMiC
lesson on some days. I feel that the children are beginning to follow the norms that have been set up in
my group teaching.

Towards the end of Term 1 a few colleagues that shared the same inquiry focus and decided to
work together to create a rubric for the children to measure their learning.
It was great working together, watching the ideas flow as we shared ideas and some concerns.
We hope that this rubric will be beneficial to the learners and we will be able to see some changes,
improvement or progress compared to our first DMiC lesson.

Our focus is on speaking, talking, listening and responding. We have decided to use a colours
(traffic lights: red, orange, green and the medals: silver and gold) as a visual for our juniors to
track their progress.

 We had a classroom discussion and talked about the rubric and our goals. It is displayed on the classroom wall and we refer too it all the time.

DMiC lesson with my mentor

Last week my DMiC mentor Don, came to my classroom for an hour to support me with my group of learners. It was a really good session and Don was patient, very helpful.

 Problem that I launched: 

 There were 18 children in a bus. At the bus stop 4 children hopped on. How many children in the bus now? I had a group of 6 children and they were paired with a partner. Each pair was given a blank paper. 

Don suggested I give them counters and a pencil to show/write down their thinking. I read the word problem and talked about it making it a real life story (picture this in your head, imagine). Don asked to me ask the children ”Do we know what we are trying to find out?” One child said “How many children in the bus.” Other children in the group had to repeat ” We are finding out how many children in the bus altogether?” Children had to work with their partners and then share back to the group. Findings: It was interesting to observe and notice behaviours of the children in that group (social interaction with each other). Some worked together as a team, made certain that they took turns. Another pair worked on the problem by themselves whilst the other two children just played with the counters. It was really difficult to sit back and watch without talking as much. Don said to praise children who are taking turns, talking to each other, telling one another what they doing, telling someone that they cannot hear him/her or to repeat what they said. We also worked on unpacking the vocabulary in the word problem. One child made 18 children using counters and took away 4 counters. We talked about what hoped on meant. They made 18 children and 4 children but then did not understand what altogether meant.

 My focus over the next few weeks is: 

 Conversation. 

 I need to create opportunities in my class where children can have these conversations. Children need to start talking to each other about their learning, thinking, problem solving. I also need to work on selecting problems that are of interest to the children for example: instead of using bus stop I could say for example: How many children at church, or in the pool, on the field. I need to find out what about my pupils likes and interests which will then lead to engagement. I also need to ensure that they understand the word problem, the language, unpack and scaffold mathematical terms and language and words for example: altogether, hopped in, left over, share evenly/equally.
 Don suggested:
 -We do our planning as a team and work collaboratively.
-When working on an activity on the iPad-work in pairs- increase confidence to talk and have --conversations with each other. Record children’s learning making it re-windable. Share on Apple T.V. and blog.

 My next steps:
 -Encourage children to have conversations, they can work in pairs, groups to complete tasks, read your PM reader to a friend, retell them the story in your own words.
-Continue to work on scaffolding mathematical language.
-Continue to talk to my colleagues, get some ideas of what they doing with their children and do some research.

Counting in 2's

This week my focus for my learners was to learn to count in 2’s.

The children worked with their partners to make a number by counting in 2’s. They used materials to complete this task.

What I noticed:

- They worked well with their partner because I deliberately paired them together using my OTJ’s (overall teacher judgement) specifically taking into account children’s:

v character and personality

v social behaviour

v strengths

v weaknesses

There was: 

-Higher level of engagement.

-Turn taking and taking to each other.

-Talking and supporting their partner (He couldn’t write the number 2 so I showed/helped him.)

-staying focused for a longer period than previous lessons.

-watching what others in the group were doing when they were stuck.

-use of mathematical equipment.

My next goal for this group is to work with a buddy and do a similar task with less support from the teacher and eventually this will lead up to completing an iPad activity supporting the learning. (Counting in 2’s). Children can record their voice within Explain Everything and count in 2’s.

Launching a problem- Second attempt

Following on from our session with Dr. Hunt and some of her suggestions I decided to have another go at a Math’s lesson.

This time round I selected 6 children and deliberately and constructively grouped children into pairs of two. I asked them to sit in specific places around my teaching table and explained how our math’s lesson would like for example taking turns, talking and helping each other and then having to explain to the group their thinking and how they worked it out.

I used the same problem Dr. Hunt used in our session.

Sheet 1- How many dots can you see?

How many dots can you see?

Each pair was given the same sheet.

Pair A&B counted the dots one by one and got 7.

Pair C&D are two very quiet and soft spoke girls. One of the girls actually surprised me with her knowledge of numbers and counted by pointing to two dots saying 2,4 and her partner said 6 and they both stopped at 6 not knowing how to add the other dot when child B who was listening to them quickly said 7. Pair E&F counted the dots one by one and got 7.

When I asked them to do it a different way:
Pair E&F counted 2 4 and then said 7.

The others counted one by one.

I then handed the group another sheet.  

Sheet 2- How many dots can you see?

They all counted the dots one by one.

I asked them if they could use another way of counting.

They could say 2,4,6 but then stopped. I then said 8, 9 and the children joined in 10,11,12,13.

I asked them to look at the 4 dot pattern and one boy used his fingers and said 4 and 4 makes 8 but we could not go further.

What I noticed was:

-       I paired the children correctly.

-       They were better focused at the table.

-       The problem launched was appropriate.

-       Having a copy per pair worked well.

-       Children can find patterns of 2,4.

-       They can notice dice patterns 5

-       They talked and helped each other see the pattern.

-       Two problems were enough, they were starting to get restless and loose focus.

Problems:

-       They can count in 2’s up to 4 or 6.

-       They revert back to one to one counting because this is how they can get it correct.

-       They interested in the final answer and don’t want to get it wrong.

-       Lack of number knowledge-counting in 2’s up to 20, counting on from the largest number.

Reflections: 
I was quite happy and surprised at what I noticed from this session. For me, the grouping of children is what made this work. I think the talk we had about what I expected from them at the beginning of the session was important. It set the scene for learning, talking, supporting and engaging with each other. I need work on my timing of session so that children don’t get restless. As a teacher doing Math’s this way, I feel that I lack the knowledge and skills of how I need to approach or support children when they are stuck and don’t know what to do next.Talking to my colleagues seems to be very helpful and encouraging.