Inquiry Causal Chain

 Here is my causal chain for this year's inquiry. This causal chain summarises how different elements of my inquiry connect up. It also supports me in staying true to what my inquiry is set out to do - move students from having a superficial understanding of maths concepts to having a deep and applied knowledge of maths concepts.

Next step: When I see my inquiry group next week, I will begin the lesson with getting students to spend 10 minutes on a times table grid. This will allow me to see if students have this times table knowledge. This is essential as there is no point in me trying to move students onto applying the knowledge if they don't even have the knowledge in the first place.

Inquiry Stocktake

 At our last inquiry meeting, we were tasked with doing an inquiry stocktake to see where we are up to in our inquiries. I found this really challenging. Having spent a lot of this year, figuring out a hypothesis, testing students and figuring out their profile of learning, I am still not feeling entirely clear about my pathway for the inquiry.

Part of the challenge I have is that I don't have the students in front of me to get regular observations of their learning patterns in maths. The idea is that for my inquiry I will be taking the children out for a separate learning programme once a week. Creating a causal chain in my next blog post will be highly beneficial to me so I can see a clear direction ahead. 

For now, here is my inquiry stocktake summary:

Kahui Ako Meeting: Looking at the Research Literature

 At our last Kāhui ako meeting, we looked into the research literature that we are using to support our inquiries. We collaborated in groups depending on what our inquiries were. I worked with Danni Stone and Clarelle Carruthers and we came up with the following:

Theme/ overarching topic or intervention type: Understanding student achievement and how to support maths progress for diverse groups of learners.

My formulating a hypothesis document

Literature we have looked at:

Basic Facts 

Nz students value in mathematics

The Education Hub - mathematics

Why fractions are hard!

Linchevski, L & Kutscher, B. (1998). Tell Me With Whom You’re Learning, and I’ll Tell You How Much You’ve Learned: Mixed-Ability Versus Same-Ability Grouping in Mathematics, Journal for Research in Mathematics Education, Vol. 29, No. 5, P533-554.

Further conversations with colleagues, school leaders

I have more of a need to focus on the children who aren’t applying their mult/div knowledge to solve problems.

How do I move children from knowing their times tables to applying their times tables?