End of Term 2 Maths Reflection

Reflection: City Project (End of Term 2/Beginning of Term 3)

THIS WAS COPIED AND PASTED FROM MY TEACHER INQUIRY SLIDE SHOW.

Firstly I need to say that the project isn’t finished. This means that I will need to spend the first few weeks of term finishing the project. It has taken a lot of time to complete but also Term 2 was an EXTREMELY interrupted term. There was so much happening as outlined in my Term 2 Statement of Intent. To be honest, I think if I hadn’t been doing a project, I still wouldn’t have got through all my ordinary content. There was too much happening and it was literally each week that my programme was interrupted. It was interrupted with positive learning experiences though, so I am not too worried about it.

I think it is best to reflect on different aspects of my maths programme separately, so that’s what I intend to do over the next couple of slides.

Engagement/Enjoyment

This was a huge area of focus for me in this teacher inquiry, so I believe it is crucial to reflect on it. I will be surveying my whole class again at the end of the project to get more accurate data but I have made observations during the term. Students are highly motivated and engaged in the project and many of them have told me how much they enjoyed it. I am going to get some student voice from my target group so that I can ensure the overall feedback from my class reflects the children I am focusing on. Overall I believe that the task has been a lot of fun for everyone involved (myself included) and most would say it’s more fun that the maths they have done in the past.

Learning

Something that is very important to me is making sure that not only is the project fun, but also that the students are actually learning appropriate content that meets learning intentions in our school curriculum document. Going through the document in advance and planning it all out before designing the project ensured that I did this.

The learning I have observed includes the following;

• Measuring and drawing lines with accuracy in mm cm and m. This includes converting between units.
• Planning out the city using scale diagrams.
• Measuring a small scale plan and enlarging it by a scale factor of choice.
• Estimation.
• Creating a net for a cuboid with specific measurements (not an easy task)
• Some created nets for cylinders, pyramids and triangular prisms.
• Calculating perimeter, area and volume.
• Multiplication strategies- in order to calculate the volume and area, I had to teach multiplication strategies with decimals and whole numbers.

Teaching

The way I used to plan my maths programme went completely out the window. I was not able to plan and teach groups daily as I have done for the past many years. I found the best strategy was to be a constant roving teacher who visited each group every day. I didn’t record this but maybe I should have? I didn’t feel that I needed to because what would be the purpose?

The roving strategy worked better tha n structured groups because there was so much problem solving going on each day and every group was doing things differently. Groups were constantly faced with unique challenges and it was good for them to work out strategies to deal with these. I was there to prompt and question where necessary but my goal was mainly to support them to figure things out for themselves rather than just simply TELL them. I had to help a lot with relationships. One group had significant relationship problems mainly due to two students within that group. I had to mediate often and help them to solve their relationship problems.

Sometimes I offered a workshop if I felt many would benefit from it and some days I repeated the same workshop over several days so that students could attend when they were ready. Sometimes I taught the whole class but I adapted my teaching to meet the range of levels within the class. I will use the example of when I taught the place value strategy for multiplication. I taught this to the whole class but ensured multiple entry levels. E.g. 23 x 4 = ?         235 x 4 = ? 2.3 x 4 = ? Students had a chance to practise this strategy before applying it to the volume and area problems. I let them choose which level they wanted to practise and how many levels they wanted to practised. I was able to work with a small group who needed extra support to use this strategy but most were fine. The top kids were happy because they were able to choose to do the decimal work. No one was limited by their level and could choose which work they felt comfortable to complete. There was so much integration happening mainly between number, geometry and measurement and it was taught in a way that was personalised to groups and individuals. I feel there was a high level of student agency, which is something I was worried about losing with the group challenge. I worried that without meeting goals from a test, how would students own their learning, know what to learn and how to learn it but it happened regardless.

Assessment

Obviously a key aspect of teaching and learning is assessing progress and achievement. I was very nervous about this aspect after moving away from so much testing. Previously students assessed their progress in a unit in two ways. They analysed the change between their pre and post test results to show progress. They also used formative assessment to monitor their own progress as they went alone by signing off goals they had achieved. I did give students a pre-test to ascertain what they knew but I am unsure whether it would be purposeful or necessary to have a post test. I think the type of assessment I have in mind will be a better way to measure progress.

Project Assessment plan

Pre- Test- For baseline data to see what the students actually need to learn.

Self assessment- Students can assess themselves or their groups against the criteria they were given. They also have the learning intentions from the curriculum document so should be able to identify which goals they met and which they didn’t.

Formative assessment- Students are regularly assessing themselves as they go to ensure they are meeting the criteria for their city. They know what they need to accomplish e.g. designing nets, calculating volume etc and they are fully aware of when they achieve their goals. They seek the teacher when necessary and in most cases, the evidence of their success is in the form of something they have created.

Peer assessment- I really wanted groups to assess each other against the criteria in order to make them accountable for their actions and to ensure the learning was a priority and not just the task itself;

Teacher assessment- I think that instead of doing a post test I am instead going to use a Google form to ask students how they feel they went and use their self-assessment of the content to identify progress.

Authenticity/Relevance

One thing that was important to me in this inquiry was providing the students with authentic tasks that would help them with real world maths. I am very convinced that I have achieved this goal.

This maths was so real and it wasn’t the kind of maths with ticks and crosses and rights or wrongs. Problems and challenges that came up were very authentic and unique to each group depending on their choices. Numbers were not always easy to work with. Many times they were what I would call ‘ugly’ numbers and not the type you use typically when completing a worksheet or text book activity. They were real numbers that didn’t necessarily work out tidily without decimals or remainders and this was great. There was also no answer sheet to check if students were on the right track. If your net didn’t work, then it meant you had made a mistake and had to figure out why. If your buildings had unusual numbers, well you had to find strategies to work with them because you needed to find the volume.

There was so much measurement going on. There were often times where I saw a direct correlation between what a builder routinely does and what they were doing to plan, measure and build their cities. The maths was definitely authentic and relevant to each group and what they wanted to achieve. This meant that my actual teaching had to be flexible. I wasn’t always sure what my students would need to learn and so it meant that I had to be prepared for anything. Thankfully I have very sound curriculum knowledge at this level and am able to teach flexibly and go with what my students need. I think that the task was also suitable to a wide range of abilities and everyone could contribute regardless of their levels. They all had different strengths and had to work together as a team. I don’t think the lower achieving students would have felt like they couldn’t contribute and I don’t think my top students felt they weren’t being extended. There were multiple level entry points within the task.

Where to next?

Firstly I need to finish the project. I guess that will take about two weeks if we use our afternoons to work on the art aspect of the project and the maths slot to focus on the maths aspect of the project.

After the projects are finished, I feel that the students need to display them in the hall and we can invite parents to come and view them. Also I am going to invite the other classes to vote for their favourite city. We will have categories for this

It’s crucial that the students fill in their self-assessment sheets and make sure everything is recorded on them. Then they will be allocated another group to assess and they will complete a peer assessment on the city that group has made.

After all of this is done, the project will be finished and we will need to begin a new maths topic - statistics.

Student reflection

Once the project is completed, I need to survey my students using a Google Form. I am going to create more than one set of questions as outlined below.

1. Did you enjoy the project? Yes, no, sort of, neutral (This is to make my new graph for T.A.I)
2. Are you good at maths? Yes, no, sort of, neutral  (This is to make my new graph for T.A.I)
3. Target group only- student voice (To reflect on my success with this T.A.I)
4. Self- Assessment against criteria. What have we learned? (To assess learning- replaces post test).