PAT Maths Data

 

This Maths data above shows that every one of my target children made progress in Maths this year. It is really challenging to be able to say what exactly has caused this. When looking at last years results for the equivalent standardised test, you can see that all the children still made progress. Perhaps this group of children are just 'on track', irrespective of an intervention...This is definitely something to consider going forward.

This final graph shows all of this data together, to see progress made across 2 years in maths for these students.

Interestingly, from this data you can observe the summer drop off that we see and know well for reading.

Top 3 take aways from this year

 At our final Kāhui Ako meeting for the year, Chris Herlihy, Principal of Glen Taylor School, prompted us to think about what our Top 3 Take-aways would be from our inquiries this year. 

Here are the top 3 takeaways I have come up with based on my inquiry:

1. Students need mileage when it comes to maths, like we do in reading. That is, if we are wanting children to be able to better apply their multiplication knowledge, we need to ensure we are giving them lots of problems in lots of different contexts.

2. Giving students opportunities to grapple with problems individually as well as in groups is really important. Some children benefit from group work with some children and not others. I have not yet found an answer of how to be more effective with organising a class or group of students to best suit ALL students and their learning.

3. Children really benefit from structure and routine. I think ensuring a consistent structure to a maths programme in the classroom could really benefit children and their learning. That is, expectations are clear from day-to-day and the structure of the learning remains similar.

A challenge to consider next would be how to achieve both 2 and 3 in a consistent way.

Mathswhizz Progress

 At Pt England School, the classroom teachers have their students regularly work on Maths-Whizz. Maths-Whizz is a fantastic online tool which sets individualised maths tasks up for students, depending on their needs. Students only need to spend a focussed 15 minutes per day on Maths-Whizz to benefit largely from the programme. Maths-Whizz has strong connected to the NZ curriculum, and you can even look up student progress and achievement at different NZ Curriculum unit standards.

I looked into the Maths-Whizz data of my target group of students. In particular, I focussed in on their progress in multiplicative thinking at level 3 of the curriculum. This is because all but two students in my target group were already working at level 3 of the curriculum for multiplicative thinking (even though their school year level is only working at level 2 of the curriculum).

NA 3-2: Know basic multiplication and division facts

Here are the results:

As you can see, every students who was already working at this standard, continued to make progress throughout the year. 

6 of these students also began working at a level 4 unit standard throughout the year as well.

NA4-1: Use a range of multiplicative strategies when operating on whole numbers

Unfortunately, I didn't track progress on standard NA3-1, which includes using multiplication to solve word problems. This means I can't see progress in this field of more of an application of the multiplication.

However, as of Week 8, Term 4, this is where the students are working in this standard (NA3-1: Use a range of additive and simple multiplicative strategies with whole numbers, fractions, decimals, and percentages):

Gathering End of Term Research

I have begun to compare research which I have been documenting, along with Year 4 teacher, Clarelle Carruthers. I am going to begin sharing these as graphs to show progress by the children.

MathsWhizz is a great program which the children use in their classrooms on a daily basis. It links to the NZ curriculum. I first looked at where the children were at in terms of their multiplicative thinking within their MathsWhizz usage back in term 1. I have now looked at this usage again at the end of Term 3 to see if there has been progress in this area of maths. This is what the data shows:

From this graph, you can see that all but two students have made progress in their multiplicative thinking at level 3 of the NZ curriculum throughout this year, according to Math-whizz. This is great as these students (Year 4s) are only expected to be working at level 2 of the curriculum. Student E and K continue to not be working on multiplicative thinking at level 3 of the curriculum, according to Math-whizz. However, these two children have demonstrated significant shift in mutliplicative thinking when they have completed a Gloss test. This is a great example of the importance of triangulating data when assessing children.

This graph does not show that throughout the year, 4 of these students have also started completing activities in Math-whizz that include multiplicative understanding at level 4 of the curriculum (Year 7 & 8).