Last week we had Diane Ogle visit again (CORE EDUCATION). Something that was very clear from this visit is how far we have come from the beginning of our Maths PD Journey. It will be interesting to review our school wide data to see how this PD has impacted our student's achievement as a whole.
The 'Maths Journey' began in January 2019 with a TOD focused on teaching maths to mixed ability groups using rich maths tasks. This was something Maunga Team had at times trialed and tried to make work within our classes in 2018. We had seen how mixed ability groups worked well within writing and I had heard about 'Bobby Maths' or 'DMIC' so we had done a little research together. We were all excited and nervous about this journey. A key phrase that Diane kept telling us on the day was "It's not a sprint, it's a marathon... You will get there in the end". Speaking to Diane on her last 2 visits it has become apparent that we have reached this point.
In the past 2 sessions she has been in Maunga she has recorded the teaching session and then snippets of what the children have been doing in their groups. After the 1st recorded session, we sat down together to go through the recording to analyze the teaching sequence. Although we didn't get to analyze all (due to technical software issues Diane was having) the message was clear that what we were doing was working from her maths consultant point of view. This was great as it supported our observations and data to date as well.
Following this recorded observation, SJ and I then presented at the NMA maths conference in Whangarei based on our maths experiences and tasks this year especially. This went well and Diane also informed us that she was bringing teachers to observe our teaching on her next visit. When she arrives for this visit she also asks if she can record the session again. On this particular day, we do not have time to be released to discuss the recordings. After school, I was able to catch up, as I wanted to discuss the next steps and her recordings (I am keen to be able to review these myself). She has promised to send these through, and just discussed keeping on with what we are currently doing as it is working.
She also turned the conversation quickly to the next NMA conference and how we should present something around what our next maths tasks are e.g maps and coding. This is where our learning is going over the next few weeks, so will be interesting and exciting to see how this goes. This week we will be re-introducing BeeBots but with the focus on Maths Learning, and getting Student to find different things in the class that can represent the same distance as a Beebot moves. We will also be re-introducing the language of directions. This is important for us as SJ has many new Students and many of my students have either moved up from Iti (NE room) or moved into Maunga Nui (Y2-3 space). We are also planning to make our little maths groups a bit bigger to trial running this maths learning as a collaborative Maunga/Iti learning experience. Especially in the first few sessions when we do more of the unplugged learning. We will be very interested to see how this goes... I know Diane is waiting to hear as well, so fingers crossed.
