Writing moderation

This term for one of our School assessments our School did e-asTTle writing assessments.
During our  Kia Manawanui team meeting we had a chance to moderate writing samples from each of our class-Below, At and Above for years 4s, 5s, 6 and 7s.

When we were moderating our writing samples we used the writing rubric to help us with finding out where the children were at in their writing. For example: looking at spelling and the rubric and the child's piece of writing and seeing if they are at R1,R2,R3,R4,R5 or R6.





We also used the Narrative writing examples to help us with moderating our writing samples. These writing samples gave us an ideas of where the children's writing should be at and what it should look like. Having another teacher moderate my classes writing samples helped because they write examples of what they saw in the writing as well as what was missing. So I really found this very helpful in my teaching.

I found it really helpful when we came together as a syndicate and moderated samples together so we could see what other children's work was like in the other class and compare our results.  It was very useful. Im looking forward to when our School collates together a set of exemplars of students writing from years 1-8 in the different ranges so we can use then in our moderation as well as use then as examples of good writing in our classroom teaching.

Writing is one of my passions, so being able to look at different strategies and reflect on how I can help the children accelerate in their writing is what I have passion for as I believe writing plays a significant role in life and being able to give the students the tools to be able to develop their writing is a really good life skills which will help them in the future.

Teacher overall teacher judgement

Today in Team meeting we discussed what Overall Teacher Judgement involves.

Overall teacher judgement comes from a range of sources such as children's blogs, antidotal notes, classroom observations, modelling books, tests, group learning. End of year 5-using national standards grid.

Overall Teacher Judgement means focusing on and using the learning evidence gathered to make an overall Teacher judgement on a students learning and progress.
This end of term we have had to put together our Overall teacher judgements. In our Kia Manawanui team we discussed our Overall teacher judgements and presented the evidence that we had gathered.
It was really useful because we could see the different levels in the children's learning as well as the different evidence gained. We used children's work that they had blogged as well as testing results, learning tasks done in class.


Here is an example of how evidence is collected from the Tki site.

Maths planning for the bigger picture-Sue Pine

Today we had Maths professional development with Sue Pine our Maths facilitator.
Here are some of the things that we discussed regarding planning for mathematics in the classroom as a team.

Goals- Identify the purpose of a task and what a lesson will look like.
Establish group norms for working collaboratively.
Motivate and engage students with group worthy tasks.
Develop a sequence of purposeful lessons.

Question that we discussed as a whole group:
What are the kind of things you don't like children to say or do when you are working with a group with a maths problem?

• Calling out. 
• Working our answer really fast but not explaining how they solved their answers. 
• Not thinking about the question.

What would you like rest of class to do when you are working with a group. 

• Listening.
• Sharing ideas. 
• Positive reinforcement. 
• Working collaboratively on a maths problem as a group task.
• Managing themselves well and knowing exactly what they should be doing. 

Giving children the chance to work out the problem on their own. Teacher then comes and checks and then moves away so that she does not solve it for the children. 

Where do the problems that I devise sit on the national standards? What is it that my students should be  doing at their level. How can we accelerate their learning at the level that they are at?

Task Purpose-Independent VS group worthy

1. What kinds of tasks would you use to find out what the students know
2. What kinds of tasks would you use to develop students mathematical thinking?
3. What kind of task would you use to check in on student progress and understanding?
4. Which kind of task would you use to gather national standards evidence?

Group setting: get them to use one paper and have shared thinking/sharing of ideas. 

What does a good mathematician do? 

1. Shares their thinking.
2. Represents their thinking in many different ways.
3. Able to explain their thinking and how they go their answer confidently. 

What kinds of problems can we use for our students and is it at the right level?

Useful Resource: Fraction frames, figure it out booklets, numeracy planning sheets, NZ MATHS. 

What might your sequence of lessons look like?

Develop a sequence of lessons to support students learning at your level. Keep in mind the purpose of each lesson.

Posing of questions to find out what the children already know-Accessing prior knowledge.

I found the Professional development very useful and how I pose Mathematical questions based on the national standards.

At year 5 and 6 level children should be at stage 6 by the end of the year. So being able to have the national standards up in the classroom and being able to refer to our year 5-6 Target goals is really helpful towards accelerating children in their learning. 

Year of 2015 students room 7

This half of the year has been a great experience and learning curve for myself in a digital 1:1 classroom as a new digital immersion teacher. I have gained so much knowledge as well as memorable moments with the students in my classroom.

It has been heart warming to see just how far the children have come in their learning as well as grown as a person and having more motivation and enthusiasm in their learning.

Some of the challenges that I faced with my students were behaviour related. Through putting in routines as well as reward systems in place I managed to go from negative behaviours to positive behaviours.

It was not easy, it was definitely a challenge and I took every day as a new day. We worked on having daily goals as well as inspirational quotes and motivational videos which really helped the children see things through a different perspective. We also worked on empathy, and showing empathy towards others.

I found the professional development in Mathematics with Sue Pine was very beneficial as I found that the children made huge progress in their Maths.

I wish all my students from 2015 all the best for next year as I know in my heart they will do well.

Effective Practices In Mathematics

Today at our staff meeting we had Professional Development with our Mathematics Facilitator, Sue Pine on Effective Practices in Mathematics-warm up-Building number sense.

Useful resource: Good questions for math teaching By Lainie Schuster, Nancy Canavan Anderson
Below I have included some of the things that we talked about at our Professional Development Meeting.

1. Choosing/setting a goal for the lesson is a priority
2. How can we design a lesson so that they have an understanding of our concept. 
3. Collaborative problem solving and collaborative planning.
4. Similar maths goals and developing problems together to support maths goals. 
5. Using thinking maths books to write their thinking.
6. How much think time to give the children depending on the purpose. 
7. Important part of planning- Anticipating stage- What might it look like? And when working with the children what it would look like? What would the misconceptions be/look like. 

Using Numeracy planning sheets from NZMaths as a guide.

5 Effective Practices:

1. Anticipating-Anticipate the different ways a mathematical task can be solved. How students interpret the problem.  Doing the problem as many ways as possible.  
2. Monitoring-Paying close attention to students mathematics thinking and solution strategies as they work. Circulating around the classroom while students work either individually or in small groups.Monitoring involves more than just watching and listening to students.  Teachers should ask questions to give teachers opportunity to refine or revise their strategy before launching a whole group discussion. 
3. Selecting-Teacher selects particular students to share their work with the rest of the class to get particular pieces of the mathematics on the table. 
4. Sequencing-By making purposeful choices about the order in which students work is shared, teachers can maximise that chances that their mathematical goals for the discussion will be achieved. 
5. Connecting-Teacher helps students to draw connections between their solutions and other students solutions as well as the key mathematical ideas in the lesson. 

Noticing and responding- asking open ended questions to create critical thinking. 

Giving children open ended problems which has many different solutions. 

The meeting was very informative, especially the 5 effective practices. I believe that that these 5 effective practices can be applied to other curriculum areas as well. 

In regards to Mathematics, being able to anticipate the children's responses and misconceptions can inform our teaching and we can actually critique our teaching to be able to meet the children's needs. 

As a reflective teacher, I believe that it is really important the types and quality of the questions that we ask our students. 

Tuakana Teina Data Discussion Day

Today on the Wednesday 2nd March the Kia Manawanui (Senior Syndicate) met for Data assessment meeting looking at current data and discussing target students and how we are going to shift these children to where they should be at by the end of the year.

Today we talked about setting Syndicate Inquiry goals. (Collaborative Team Inquiry Goal).

Refers to Maori and pacific children and children with special needs and children from low income families-priority.

1. Boys writing
2. Girls maths
3. Accelerated progress in the first two years of school

Setting SMART goals for learning.

Priority Learners - priority learners refers to Māori and Pacific students who are not achieving success fully at school; students with special learning needs; and students from low income communities, who are below or well below the literacy and mathematics National Standards.

The focus is on improving outcomes for key priority groups by accelerating their progress. Progress is considered to be accelerated when a student moves from well below to below, at, or above the National Standard, or when the student moves from below the National Standard to at or above. This means that these students need to make more than one year’s progress in a year in order to achieve at the expected level of acceleration.

The children need to know where they should be at and what their goals are.

Goals should be set with an optimum level of challenge for teachers and students

1. low enough to seem achievable
2. high enough to make a real difference

Goals and targets need to create maximum visibility and alignment with the whole school goals.

Mathematics should be done everyday of the week for target children to be able to accelerate in their learning and meet children's target children's goals. 

This data assessment session was very informative for myself. It was really good sitting alongside my team and collaborating and coming to an agreement on our goals for our targeted group and how we would be able to achieve the results and get the children to the level that they should be at. 

Maths with Sue PD

Today in our Staff meeting we had our Maths Facilitator Sue Pine come visit us to teach us about "Talk moves" and mathematics in the classroom.
She started our session off with a maths problem- this is listed below.
How many different ways can you solve: 18x5=

10x5=50
20x5=100
100-(2x5)=90

9x4=45
45+45+90
9x10=90

She got us to think about different ways.
It was really interesting, because my answer was instant and fast, which was not right at first. So looking at this in a classroom context this would be seen as a Misconception: the way the student has understood the problem. In some way this was good, because it gave me a better understand of how some of the children would think in the class. The misconception that I came up with is that some children may solve it: 8X5= 40 and then add the remaining 1 from the 10 which would make 140

But then I reread the question again to regain my understanding it solved it again. This time I had a different strategy which was like the one above :
10x5=50
20x5=100
100-(2x5)=90
Growing up as a child Mathematics was not a strength of mine but since becoming a teacher I have become stronger at in and also have a better understanding of the children's thinking and those that are finding it difficult in Maths beacause I used to be one of those students growing up.


Number talks: Using doubling and halving as an exercise in the classroom.
Giving them the oppertunity to talk about numbers to be able to think about numbers and think about numbers differently.
Using array to be able to show the numbers.

For younger children: What do you know about the number 5 eg: it is the half of t10. it comes after 4 and before 6.

IF WE CANT REMEMBER OUR TIMETABLES WE NEED TO BE TEACHING THEM STRATEGIES SUCH AS ARRAYS TO BE ABLE TO SOLVE MATHS PROBLEMS. IF STUDENTS DO NOT HAVE CONCEPTS OF ARRASY THEY CAN NOT SOLVE BIGGER NUMBERS.

HOW CAN WE TEACH CHILDREN STRATEGIES TO LEARN THEIR TIMETABLES.
if you can not learn your times tables you actually have a strategy.

WHAT DID YOU DO WITH YOUR STUDENTS TODAY?

Which number strategies, knowledge and measurement do I ned to know by the end of year 6

• Multiplicative thinking
• Proportions and ratios.
• place value. 
• fractions
• decimals
• conversions-Time 24 hour clocks.
• Geometry- 3D shapes, aras/volumes.

Basic fact knowledge

Word problems

Part-whole 

Place value. 

STRATEGIES:

• Advanced addition and subtraction.
• Derived multiplication.
• Fraction of a number by addition and multiplication.

Measurement:

• Time and attributes of objects that are appropriate.
• Sort two or three dimensional shapes.
• Refelction, rotaional, translation. 
• Draw/create nets.
• Draw a plan/front view of an object.

Where do we want our students to be at the end of the year? Especially from a problem solving point of view. 

Every child can achieve to their highest level. If we believe in them.

How can we provide opportunties for children to be able to achieve, even through struggles. 

Using talk moves to extend children's thinking and problem solving. 

Having mixed ability groups for mathematics which extend children thinking and problem solving. This also entails children have have that. Having high expectations for the children so that they believe that they can achieve. 

I found the session once again very informative and am looking forward to implementing this more in my Mathematics prog. and seeing the children fly in their mathematics and getting them up in their levels. It may be challenging but it is always worth the challenge to get to the great results!!