It was wonderful to reconnect with our fellow Manaiakalani Innovative Teachers today at our first session at KPMG's head office to further challenge our thinking in relation to our inquiries: As we have faced the reality of the cohort of learners (and teachers) we are spending 2018 with, how has the thinking you developed ... gelled when ‘the rubber hit the road’?
My thinking, ponderings and wonderings returned to my identified problem: the need to lift the achievement in Maths for all students in Years 1-13 within the Manaiakalani Community of Learning. What does this mean for my inquiry? Am I on the right track? What is the most effective way of getting our waka to move through the water faster?
While getting to know my learners and gathering data for my target students, it has become evident that the language of Maths needs building up in order that learners can express and explain their mathematical ideas and thinking appropriately and clearly. For example, when asked to find a quarter of a set, two of my target students asked "What is a quarter?" In answer to the same question, another explained that the answer is 4 because a quarter is written 1/4. These examples have thus caused me to return to the problem and progress my thinking by choosing to focus on four areas, the first of which is the language of Maths:
This focus on the language of Maths will also build support for our school-wide Teaching As Inquiry.
Now that my thinking has progressed and clarified, my next step in the inquiry process is to prototype a digital framework to support my learners acquiring the language of Maths.
